Today we are based in Khiva at a hotel across the road from the west gate of a most amazing mud brick-walled city. It has colourful domes and minarets which today were piercing the brilliant blue sky. Legend has it that Khiva was founded when Shem, the son of Noah, discovered a well here and […]

The formalities of border crossing made us forget that it is really Thursday though again sleep meant that we missed the end of the Steppe and the beginning of the desert. We could have slept longer but around 10:00 we were woken by what seemed like an army of itinerant traders selling food, drink, clothes,

We left Volgograd at 19:59 yesterday by train and have so far travelled down the Volga River valley towards its delta and the Caspian Sea. North of Astrakhan at Aksaraiskaya at 02:25 this morning we arrived at the Russian border. Here immigration and customs formalities take place on the train and for more than 2

Having travelled overnight we arrived in Volgograd bang on time at 08:19. The railway station from our hotel room. The city was shrouded in freezing fog which cleared to reveal a very grand city. It was founded in 1589 but made history when known as Stalingrad. In 1942 the city became the scene of an

Today we commenced the long train journey from Moscow to Hong Kong. This first leg had us depart from Moscow Paveletsky Station on an 18 hour overnight journey to Volgograd, 1071km to the south. We are in a first class compartment with a la carte meals served to your own table. Between us we ate

The street plan of central Moscow is a pattern of concentric circles which mark the city’s development outwards over many centuries. In the middle is the Kremlin, the fortified hill which is the country’s political headquarters. It is the former citadel of the tsars and now the residence of the Russian president. It has been

This morning we explored Moscow by open top bus and were able to identify features that one misses the very first time such a journey is taken. We boarded this outside our hotel. It was interesting that the ice rink sponsored by the GUM Department Store was still in Red Square supported by something like

The first leg of the journey was from Manchester to Moscow by air via Brussels. We departed at 06:15 on an airbus A320 which has been specially painted with imagery from three of the Belgian painter Rene Magritte’s iconic artworks. According to the inflight magazine the creation of the aircraft’s livery took almost a year.

Our latest expedition sees us travelling by train along the Silk Road across Central Asia. This is our trusty guidebook and these are the first two of our train tickets for the journey along the Silk Road. The first part is from Moscow to Volgograd along what is known as ‘The rhubarb trail’. Along here

Wednesday 6th April We left Newark Liberty International Airport somewhat late as the original aeroplane experienced a mechanical failure on Iceland and so a replacement had to be found. At the airport we were able to see how the setting sun illuminated the high buildings of Manhattan. Once under way we followed the old Great