:: zone3 ::

Serious thinking of doing theMongol Rally next year. Waiting for entries to open on the website.

Haven’t decided on what route to take yet, although starting to think about it. Given the time of the year, St Petersburg could be a good option making it for white nights… Am very interested to see as much of the ‘Stans as possible and get a feel for what the ex-Soviet states are like and how they are changing since 91.

Just now need to convince friends to join the expedition...

This is an interesting sign of currently international relations…

Putin revives Russia's long-haul bomber flights

For the 1st time in 15 years, nuclear strategic bomber are holding position ready to strike other countries. I read about this buried near the back of the Sunday Star Times today. Although this doesn’t have quite the short-term impact of the other World News headlines like hijackings and hurricanes, I would have thought such a serious deterioration warranted something a bit closer to the front of the paper.

Have done something with the photos I took while on holiday...

If go to: Photo Page, can have a look. If you regsister, you get to see the larger versions of the pics instead of just thumbnails...

Well, now in Mongolia… After Irkutsk, it was another couple of night on
the train. Starting to get a bit over trains, but still make for a fun way
to cross from Russia into Mongolia.

While waiting around on the Russia side of the boarder, got someone I know
to give my hair a cut at the train station, think the locals thought we
were crazy.

Crossing through into Mongolia you quickly notice the change. The hills are
more rolling, dustier and the people friendlier… From first impressions,
think I’ll be back to visit again pretty soon.

Four nights on a train makes for quite a long time, from Moscow to Irkutsk
and then a one hour bus ride to Listvyanka. Can get up to a fair bit of
antics on a train for that long, including a little tormenting of the trainee tour leader (sorry EJ :)).

Listvyanka was nice for a short stay, a small town on the shore of Lake
Baikal. Still largely frozen over from winter. Had an evening of fun
playing on the ice and taking photos.
Some people even thought the ice was 'safe' right before going through it...

Siberia is pretty cold still, between 0 and 5 most of the time, with some
snow...

Got around to updating this after a few days off line

Well, the Hermitage is big. Very big. It has about 2.5 million exhibits,
makes Te Papa look very small in comparison. Spent about 4 hours walking
around looking at works of art. Getting to see works of De Vince and the
like. Pretty cool when get to see some works have seen on the History
channel recently.

After finishing up in St Petersburg, was off to Moscow overnight by train.
Spent the day walking around the Red Square and visiting Lenin, pretty
much looks as though made of wax.
Included a fun couple of hours of Metro station hopping. The Russia’s made
a number of the underground stations pretty much works of art. Made for
fun jumping on and off the trains…

An interesting city to get around. On the way back to the hotel last
night, was about to turn the corner. The women ten meters in front was
stopped by a man that would look in place in a Russian mafia movie dressed
all in black and directed to cross to the other side, I promptly decided
to do the same. As was crossing, could see why. About ½ a dozen mafia
looking guys had the house on the corner surrounded and about a dozen
uniformed Police were milling in the entrance with sub-machine guns. Would
have loved a photo, but thought better of it.

Had a nice walking tour around the city, a lot more beautiful old buildings
to see. St Petersburg is one of Russia’s younger cities, ‘only’ 350ish
years old. A lot of the buildings are over a hundred, they’re the young
ones.

Well made it to St Petersburg...

Made for about the worst set of connecting flights have ever had. Wlg to
Akl was fine. Got fun from there.

The plane to Shanghai brunt up a lot of fuel due to the weather on the way
and with fog in Shanghai had to divert to Naha, Japan to re-fuel. That put
things a bit late getting to Shanghai, had 60min to until my plane to
Moscow took off. Shanghai customs etc was fast lucky (fastest I've had in
any coutry), check-ins for my next flight had just closed, but they let me
on...

Then that flight was delayed in Shanghai, so got to Moscow with again
60mins until my next flight, however there is no way can transit Moscow
that fast... Getting myself on to a later flight to St Petersburg was fun
considering I about 5 words of Russian and the airport staff don't speak a
lot of english. Had some Russians that were on the same flight me to
Moscow and also going to St Petersburg, they were pretty friendly and helpped
me get re-ticketed and on the right plane.

Off on holiday for the next 5 weeks to Russia, China and Mongolia...

Taking the Trans-Seb from St. Petersburg throuh to Beijing, then going on to Shanghai.