Today I
- slept in late
- at a great breakfast
- helped Liz pack her bike
- wrote some blog posts
- uploaded a bunch of photos
- wandered into town with Michael to take our Russia photo
- had awesome crêpes (blini) for lunch
- did a bit of shopping
- took a few photos
- went to the museum
- ate dinner
- packed my bags
- went to bed (well I haven’t yet but that’s definitely next)
and not a lot else and frankly it’s been awesome! The other tremendous thing which happened today is that the new rider Steve brought me a new set of tent poles so I’m back to having a 100% functional tent with the added bonus of lots of spare tent pole parts!
The plan for the coming weeks doesn’t look too bad either – particularly the almost-civilised bags at 0645 tomorrow morning…!! About the only potential hiccup could come on the last day when we’ve got 158km to cover with a border crossing in the middle – let’s hope getting out of Russia’s easier than getting out of Mongolia was.
The next stage begins!
So I get up early and hit the computer at 6.15am to get some work done and have spent the last hour catching up on your blogs. So, plan didn’t go quite according to plan but enjoyable nevertheless.
Oh dear – sorry for disrupting your plan…! Glad you’re enjoying following along 🙂
Crepes, good coffee and FEIJOA ALCOHOL DRINKS! Are you serious? Don’t ever leave that place!
lol – as you know you can keep the feijoa drinks, but everything else was worth staying for!
Thanks for the help packing the bike! It’s sitting in the hotel in Novosibirsk, waiting to get on a flight to London, first thing tomorrow. Already really missing you guys! Looking forward to following along on he adventure via your blog!
No worries Liz, hope the trip to the UK went smoothly. Enjoy your time there and keep in touch 🙂
Siberia is not at all as I expected! Loved the bugs and butterflies, lovely to see so much wildlife after the (apparently) barren grasslands of Mongolia.
I take it Sandy had already left by the time you arrived in Gorno?
Yay for the tent poles. Will be weird for a while settling down with new people, hope everyone gels well.
How are you managing with language? Or have you learnt the words for beer and icecream in every language you’ll need ?
I think the north of Siberia is very much as we all envisage, where-as the south is much more like the Waikato! And yes, it’s been lovely to camp on actual grass rather than gravel and a smattering of greenery.
Sandy was still in Gorno when we got there, so got to say a proper farewell to her as well as five other members of the crew. This time there was only the one new person (Steve of the tent pole fame) and he’s settled in well.
I’ve perfected pointing and miming…! In most places I’m limited to ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ with lots of smiling, pointing, drawing, Google translate and the very kind nature of the people I’m interacting with to fill in the gaps – so far it’s been working well (you try miming ‘I need to buy some epoxy glue to fix my tent poles’ next time you go to the hardware store and see how it works out 😉