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In my latest audio enabled post, I take a look back at my journey from Russia, across the Trans-Siberian railway into Mongolia. If you’re viewing this through a RSS reader, there’s a chance it hasn’t shown up –- I’m working on overcoming this gremlin, however in the meantime I invite you to visit the original post. Continue reading ‘Trans-Siberian: It’s Right Down My Street (Audio)’
Russia is macho. Resilient. Fearless. But even the strongest of souls will succumb to the trance inducing effect of their local water. Read, vodka. They love the stuff. Alcoholism is more a local hobby. Continue reading ‘The Reprint: ‘Punch, Drunk, Love’’
This weeks Reprint shows one of the beautiful entrepreneurs of the Trans-Mongolian railway. Many of the stations are located in seemingly forgotten corners of Siberia, so a string of cabins full of hungry punters is a splendid bonus. Continue reading ‘The Reprint: ‘All in a Days Work’’
“You miserable, mangey, manky maggot! I bloody kill you! How dare you come into my restaurant and make such demands of me! Beg! Beg for mercy you flake of feeble fuzz. I’ll crush you with my clenched palm and smear you over the window with my elbow. Now, run! RUN! What you still here for? RUN!“ Continue reading ‘The Reprint: ‘The Victor’’
I’d seen him from a short distance, twelve months previously, he travelled alone aboard a plane to Moscow. He wore a dark tracksuit top zipped over a light t-shirt, and loose pale green shorts covered the knees he cradled by his chest. His hair sprayed out in loose brown curls beneath a khaki cap, highlighted by scribbles of grey. His pale thin lips lined a shallow smile, and his early morning eyes seemed glazed with relief. As his homeland slipped beneath a thin veil of cloud, he lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, his lips parted just once to release his farewell thoughts: Let the journey begin, my friend. Today, he lay upright on the rippled white sheets of a double bed, in a simple, homely room on the island of Bali. Continue reading ‘A Thousand Glorious Times’
“Excuse me Sir, you are stay here?”, I turned slowly around, beads of sweat dripping feverishly from my brow. Somehow I’d wound up in the lobby of the imaginatively named, Beijing Hotel, a five star marbled metropolis catering for the rich and famous, and seemingly not the sick backpacker I currently portrayed. An hour earlier I had shunned the suggestion of Peking Duck to my Austrian friends – still with me since Mongolia – and admitted defeat to my impending sickness, under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Square and was attempting to find my way back to the hostel. Beijing Hotel was merely the stage to obtain some yuan to begin the long and shaky road home. Continue reading ‘Feeling Peaky in Peking’
Dumdum-De-DUM, dumdum-De-DUM, dumdum-De-DUM. It took me the whole 5 days from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, to decide how I would portray the drum of the Trans-Mongolian train I alighted this morning. Say it with me, dumdum-De-DUM, softer, dumdum-De-DUM, emphasise the capitals dumdum, De-DUM, one-two, three-four, dumdum-De-DUM. Never has a journey left me so relaxed. To my right are a set of antelope horns, the hostel foyet is filled with lounge music and all I want to do is hug the keyboard, close my eyes and drift off to dreams of faraway places. Dumdum-De-DUM. Continue reading ‘Trans-Mongolian; it’s right down my street.’
