This morning began with a lot of waiting around and much teasing from the guys about my new Russian friend. Although, it could have been much worse, Andy was thoroughly expecting the walk of shame. After breakfast I packed up all my stuff and hung around until 11am waiting for our transfer to Irkutsk. Mr. Maxim our driver arrived on time and I loaded up the van and said a big good bye to Nicholai, who managed to communicate to me that I should come back to ...

Continued from last entry.... It was at that point that Valera came downstairs bearing a navy blue and red fluffy robe and proceeded to dress me in it. The robe actually had a hood and no way to tie it up. Valera pointed at himself and punched the air. Fighter?! I said Da! Said Valera excitedly, obviously pleased I'd gotten the drift so quick. He held up three fingers and made the sign for knock out, three knock outs, impressive. Champion, said Costa...

Today started out pretty much the way you would expect after last night's antics. With me getting up just in time for breakfast, eating breakfast, copping a lot of jokes about how drunk I was and then going back to bed until 1pm, waking up watching some TV and then at about 3pm coming to the awful realization that I was starving and that I would have to go all the way into the town, and sit down at a café to get food. That however, is where the expectations ...

I woke up early this morning, again on moving train and still not fully adjusted having crossed five different time zones over the last three days. I woke my group up and we went about organizing breakfast from whatever food we had left over from out three day journey. Andy still could not find his horse meat. Just before we arrived in Irkutsk, Colin put the tin of horse meat in Andy's jacket pocket. Hilarious. We all packed up and got off the train and m...

Welcome back to the Trans-Mongolian Railway! Again, I am finding it difficult to discern one day from another on this epic three and a half day journey across Russia to Irkutsk, Siberia and then onto the small beautiful town of Listvyanka. As before I am going to attempt to describe the events of this journey, in no particular order, not because I'm going for some crazy new writing style, but because when you get caught in the wave of crossing five different ...