12 September - We have Visas

Well, despite comments about fleecing the west for the cost of these things, it all went very efficiently, and we are now the proud possessors of posh looking visas for Belarus/Russia/Mongolia/China.

We bought our tickets for the Trans Siberian/Trans Mongolian,  and arranged visas through a London based company called Real Russia Travel. I can highly recommend them. Your country of nationality may be a problem with visas, they offered very sound advice, but tickets are easy and mailed anywhere.  www.realrussia.co.uk/

With a week to go, "things" are being bought, like power adapters and high capacity cards for cameras. iPods etc. need power, and as we both have Kindle (with lots of books) on iPhone and iPod, power goes quite quickly.

We also need plastic plates and knife/fork/spoon sets for the train, so we aren't totally reliant on the restaurant cars (especially the Russian which is apparently not the best, unless you want to live on bootleg vodka and potatoes). They also only take rubles. All the restaurant cars on Russian trains are privatised, so it all depends on what they can buy along the way, and then what they do with it. Mongolian are apparently much  better, and they take US$, the Chinese is the best. However as we have to put up with Russian for 5 days, a little independance will go a long way. So we stock up on sausage, bread, dried noodles etc. for the leg from German to Moscow. WE assume (hope) we can replenish stocks before we leave Moscow. There is also a samovar at the end of each carriage kept full of boiling water.

Other important tools include of course a corkscrew.

Then of course there are guide books, so we know where we are going, AND how to get there.

International mobile phone sims have been bought, so we don't end up paying a fortune in roaming charges. A company called Go-Sim provides numbers based in Estonia, which work on a call back system. Seems to work, and the charges are TINY. To call from Russia to Australia is just 59 US cents a minute (37 pence) and to receive is just 15 US cents a minute (9 pence). All calls within Russia are the same cost. If I used my French number in Russia (or anywhere along the way) it would cost 2,90€ a minute - which is a wopping $4,15 US! www.gosim.com

So the shopping goes on!

In the days not so long past, all you needed was a camera (with film), a notebook and a copy of Baedeker. Plus of course a letter from His/Her Majesty, AND the trusty revolver to protect against Johnny Foreigner!