Taking a breather in Moscow

We are about to spend our third night in Moscow having had a relievingly smooth journey so far.

On our way from London, we stopped for a quick tour of Berlin. On the way we had experienced our first sleeper. Luckily, none of the 6 sleepers (well 5 sleepers plus me - Steve) snored too loudly.

Our whistle stop tour of Berlin included: Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate (where East and West Berlin met during the cold war). We also had a tour of the Holocaust memorial.

We had to quickly learn some Russian on the 24 hour, next leg of our journey to Moscow, as all 3 of our carriage attendants spoke only Russian. We were amazed when we walked into our cabin as we thought that we had accidentally walked into a wardrobe! Eventually, we worked out that the 3 beds folded down from the wall and covered the seats. We were very relieved to have brought some snacks as no food was available on the train (although babushkas pulled out frozen fish and squashy gherkins at one of the stops in Belorus).

We were rudely awakened at 5 am by Belorussian border guards who handed us some important looking, but impossible for us to read, forms and took our passports away. This seemed like a good time to get to know the people in the next-door cabin. Luckily one of these spoke English and had even visited Wimbledon.

There was further excitement when the train had to be lifted onto a different set of wheels (the tracks in Russia being a different size to stop invaders).

Eventually, we arrived, tired but enthusiastic and then had to cross Moscow by Metro with signs only in Russian. Since then we have been enjoying: practising our Russian, visiting Red Square and the Kremlin and sleeping in real beds.

More adventures to follow soon. We couldn't work out how to put the images in this time. Please see our albums and slide show.

En Route

Moscow is snowy but not as snowy and cold as expected.

We're off!

Here we are with our overnight bags. This should last us as far as Brussels. We've had a hectic few weeks getting ready to go.
	Lorraine and Melissa thought that we might get thirsty on the trains so they bought us these:
Shelagh and Cass' counselling skills came in handy for keeping the peace during our last mad rush in Leicester:

Ready for the off?

Mel says: 'The best thing about leaving somewhere is that you get to see (nearly) all the people you love in a very short space of time.' :

Steve says: ‘The best thing about leaving parties is you can see everybody at the same time thus negating the need for excessive socialising! This sort of attitude can lead to...

More photos in the public album.

Training complete and only 3 weeks to go!

Mel and I have now finished our training courses at the VSO training centre in Harborne, Birmingham. We now have 3 weeks to make the final arrangements and put stuff into storage before heading off to St. Pancras for the first leg of our journey. As many of you know, we will be travelling with one of Mel's ex-students who is going to Nepal for a short gap-year placement and, by amazing coincidence, wants to travel overland at the same time as us.

Our route will be entirely by train as far as Chengdu in western China, from where we have to take a short flight to Kathmandu, Nepal. The first leg involves train from LOndon to Moscow, via Brussels and Berlin. We will arrive into Moscow on 23rd February.

After a couple of nights rest in Moscow we will be boarding the non-stop trans-Siberian express to Beijing, China. This is a 6 day journey, stopping briefly in several Russain towns and in Ulaan-Bator, Mongolia (where temperatures will be between -11 and -22oC). Hopefully we won't go too stir crazy walking up and down the train all day!

After a couple of nights in Beijing, we intend getting a train to Chengdu where we will also stay for a couple of nights. From here we have little option but to fly the last leg, as the time taken to cross Tibet and the Himalayas by land was prohibitive. Something to consider for the way back.

We're due to arrive in Nepal on the 9th March where we'll no doubt wander about aimlessly and suffer culture-shock until we begin in-country training on 14th March. We'll be in country to greet the several other VSO volunteers who we have met on our training and who arrive on 13th March.

We expect to be in Kathmandu for between 6 and 8 weeks, mostly having pretty intensive language training, until we set off on the very last leg of the journey to Mahen Drenagar in the very far west of Nepal, sometime in April or May.

Thank you for reading this Blog and we hope that you can enjoy sharing our journey and adventures via this site. We're pretty excited, as you can guess, but we'll try and remember to keep you all updated.