Day from hell, doesn't even begin to cover it..maybe double day from hell as I was up for nearly 24 hours due to office stupidity. I started the day with my normal breakfast at Nicholai's place, followed by a quick look around at the markets and then doing my shopping for the train the Ulaanbaatar. I had my room until 10pm and basically spent the entire time fighting with the office about getting a transfer in Beijing. I checked out of my room and went and s...

Had a bit of a day off today, had breakfast at 9am and then sat around until about 12pm trying to readjust to the right time zone… I had once again ignored my own advice to get off Moscow time as soon as possible. I stayed in the chalet for most of the day and at about 4pm went back down to the café for sunset. The sunset over the lake was unreal. It was like seeing hell above heaven, fire in the sky above and icy world below. The Lake is not just one...

Welcome on board the Trans-Siberian railway….no you read that correctly, I'm not on a Trans-Mongolian train for this part of the journey. As always with the epic three day train ride I will focus on the high/low lights in no particular order to illustrate the wave of crossing five different time zones on a train. I am in a carriage by myself…when I say by myself I mean with a load of stinky Russians. I spend the first night attempting to sleep in one of ...

I awoke this morning as I have so many times in the past, in a bed that was moving, somewhere in Western Russia. My alarm actually jolted me out of sleep and I got straight up, having slept in yesterday's clothes, and set about waking up my passengers, some of whom were in carriages with stranger Russian's who clearly did not appreciate my early morning wake up call. The train seemed to be lingering in the middle of nowhere for what seemed like ages, and a mi...

I didn't really do much of anything today as it was the passengers free day. I had to check out at 12pm and decided to go to the station to see if anything was going on and if everything was still the same as it was last year. It was, and I was supposed to go over to the other side of the city, but I had a last minute panic because I thought I had read the train tickets wrong and rushed back to the hotel. Of course, I hadn't and I was panicking about nothing...