Great kindness, bloody-mindedness and long, long legs

Roadside stall selling stuffed animals and birds

The Russians are as much of a mix as ever- great kindness has been shown to us by some, and others are bloody minded. But the girls ..in towns..are as stunning as ever, gliding along on never ending legs.

Lake Baikal dried fish stall

The countryside, and there is a lot of it, is medieval still- log huts in verfy dilapidated condition, no running water or drainage, dust and dust and dust everywhere, yet people with mobiles. We have noticed that many of the villages we passed last time are now bypassed, so the old fashioned Russia is to a great extent now hidden. For very many life is very hard, but for those in the cities, and they are hundreds of miles apart, life is very different indeed.

We have never had any response from the Smile Train clinic in Volgograd in spite of several e mails, so because of that, and the fact that the roads even now are pretty bad (but improving), we have decided to cut out Volgograd and the Crimea, and cut across from Samara to get to the Ukraine border asap, and then spend more time in beautiful Kiev. We hope to be there is 12-14 days.

Typical Russian wood house

Tomorrow we hope to break the 3,000 mile barrier, still averaging 30 or so mpg and in terms of litres of petrol used, Myrtle is just 4 litres ahead of Kotka. We are averaging ten hours on the road a day so it is pretty tiring

Rubble road in Russia

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