January '09

No improvement in the markets - we cheer ourselves up with a trip to Stanfords in Covent Garden to buy maps for all the countries we’re thinking about travelling through.  Only a tiny (but critical) part of Kazakhstan is missing.  Our first real expenditure towards the trip – about £50 – exciting!

We meet up with ‘Russian’ Tim (who's not Russian at all) – an old friend of an old friend who seems to have friends in every town within 500 miles of Moscow.  Over a few beers and plenty of cigarettes in highly appropriate ‘Baltic’ conditions on a wintry night in King’s Cross, he imparts a plethora of invaluable knowledge for a substantial part of our trip – and more importantly, the parts we’d been most concerned about.

Find out we can’t drive in China.  Bugger.  Then find out we can drive in China, but it’s going to cost us a thousands of pounds for the privilege. Hmmm...

Second and third spreadsheets – visas and kit checklist.

 

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