Boring Post, please move on.....

Yekaterinburg – 26th September

This is a boring post, so move on or skim read. So in this dull narrative I’ll give you an idea of how I started out, how I fumble my way around and also where I have been so far. The blog I had never intended on being a chronology of what I have done that day, I got up this morning, farted, scratched my arse and went to the toilet before I had breakfast….. Big Wow, don’t bother, I don’t want to know!!

So currently I am in Yekaterinburg which is the official capital of the Urals region of Russia and Russias fourth biggest City, quite industrialised and polluted but it is a city where Mr Boris Yeltsin was born and where Nicholas II was executed. I will then be taking the train to Irkutsk where I will be there for a period (maybe a week??) travelling to Lake Baikal to do some mountain biking, before I get a train somehow to get to Mongolia where I hope to arrange a 10 day tour of the Gobi Desert where I hope to stay in local Gers with Mongolian families. At this point in time I have only booked my train tickets to Irkutsk and only the accommodation, I have a vague idea what I want to do, but I tend to leave it open so that I can change things around if I need to. I have been a little more disciplined in Russia because of the Visa restrictions and the time I am allowed in the Country so I have had to plan more than what I would expect to do once I have left Russia.

So very briefly from the beginning, once I had put my notice in I started the preparation of my trip which was not so much of a lot in reality, I applied for my Russian, Mongolian and Chinese Visa and made an outline plan of what dates I would be visiting each country. Getting the Visa was not such a big deal, I had to fill out few forms where l had to tell the embassy some ridiculous information such as:

a) What countries have you visited in the last 10 years?? - China
b) Where are you staying for your entire trip? – China/Russia
c) What provinces do you plan to visit? – China

Filling a form in isn’t difficult. However, I had to tell a few white lies when filling them in of course, as I had no idea where I was going to be in any of these places. I knew that once I had the visa I was pretty much free to do what I wanted and go where I wanted, with the notable exception of Tibet. There are some certain requirements to register your Visa once you are in Russia but in reality it reads worse than it actually is. The difficulty for the people who I have met whilst travelling has been obtaining the Visas whilst they have been abroad and they have had to visit embassies etc. I did it from the comfort of my home so there was no real inconvenience.

Whilst I was in the UK the only thing I had booked was the train out of Middlesbrough to London and from London to Cologne. This is because you can get cheaper deals when you book in advance in the UK. On the continent that’s not necessarily the case. I didn’t need to book any accommodation because in London I was staying with Mr and Mrs Kenty, and in Cologne I stayed with Sick Boy and his brother Stick Boy (aka Mark and Peter). The rest then I pretty much just made up on the run. Hostelworld.com and seat61.com have been my main sources of information, hostel world naturally to find somewhere to lay my head, and seat61 is a great website to use for how to travel in Russia and Europe by train.
Although I am pretty much planning most days on the hoof, I still have to have a vague itinerary that I am working towards, I wouldn’t need this if I didn’t have Visa restrictions, but I think once I am out of China then I will be a bit more free and may not need this anal chart.

So the chart I am using is shown below, its more comprehensive than the extract below, it helps me forecast timings and manage my budget (which I haven’t really set, I just want to be sensible). Yes, I am a weirdo, and most people I have met don’t have ‘useful’ tools like this, I guess I just like spread sheets. But as well as the blog, the spread sheet is helping me document my travels.
My Anal Chart, which actually doesnt view well on HTML,

Trains Day Date Stopover Cost (£)
Boro:London Friday 02-Sep-11 1 £65.00
London:Cologne Saturday 03-Sep-11 3 £92.50
Cologne:Berlin Tuesday 06-Sep-11 3 £26.85
Berlin:Warsaw Friday 09-Sep-11 1 £36.11
Warsaw:Vilnius Saturday 10-Sep-11 3 £24.63
Vilnius:Riga Tuesday 13-Sep-11 2
Riga:Tallinn Thursday 15-Sep-11 2 £10.00
Tallinn:St Petersberg Saturday 17-Sep-11 5 £26.85
St Petersberg:Moscow Thursday 22-Sep-11 4 £53.00
Moscow:Yekaterinburg Monday 26-Sep-11 1
Yekaterinburg Tuesday 27-Sep-11 2
Yekaterinburg:Irkutz Thursday 29-Sep-11 2
Irkutz Saturday 01-Oct-11 5
Irkutz:Ulaanbaatar Thursday 06-Oct-11 1
Ulaanbaatar Friday 07-Oct-11 14
Ulaanbaatar:Beijing Friday 21-Oct-11 1
Beijing Saturday 22-Oct-11 5
Beijing:Shanghai Thursday 27-Oct-11 14
Shanghai:Hong Kong Thursday 10-Nov-11 7
Hong Kong:Japan Thursday 17-Nov-11 21

Once I arrive at a place it is always tempting to plonk yourself in a taxi and say drive, well that is the easy way out if you know the language but since I am a REAL foreigner then I have to plan this out by using google maps, directions from the hostel website, and public transport. Being able to get your bearings in a city that you have just arrived in is difficult and I often realise how much of a vulnerable, helpless soul I am whilst I am carrying my entire 12 month existence on my back. So these of course are the times that I think I carry some risk. But I have managed so far….

When I find my accommodation then of course I want to see the city, meet new people and find out more about the place. It’s not difficult to find out information on a place and I am often surprised by how friendly people are. No sooner have I absorbed a city then I am preparing to leave and have somewhere else to go. It seems unrelenting at the moment and I feel like I have aged 5 years already!!

Being able to take breaks from travelling is important, and having the relative comfort of a home helps me recover from the manic hostel living. I have managed to take a well needed break from hostelling it by being invited to stay with Vincent, a former work friends’ son who is living out in Moscow. It has been a blessing to be with people of some familiarity and a bloody comfy couch. Vincent, Ali and Dasha have been great hosts and I owe them a lot. Ali showed me around the Kremlin, Dasha taught me what to drink to recover from acute alcohol poisoning, and Vincent taught me that tough Scots get sensitive when watching museum films about the Cold War.

But I need another holiday and break from this relentless movement across the globe.

So in warmer climates, i.e. not Siberia or Mongolia, I will find a place preferably by the beach and stay there for a while. It tough, but I’ll be damned if Michael Palin is going to have all the fun.

me with a gun!!

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

A not so stoney faced Russian woman...

The Red Arrow, train from St Petersburg to Moscow

My Catalogue Pose by St Basils nr the Kremiln

Article By David Beattie of Rounton Coffee