Having spent several days riding non-stop and camping I am currently over a thousand miles from the Mongolian border and staying in a flat in Magdagachy, with several Russians hanging over my shoulder as I attempt to update my blog, I don't think I am going to get far.

The pivo (beer) is being freely poured and it looks like there will be four of us sleeping in this room tonight, it might be more comfortable than last night, somewhere deep in the Siberian countryside when I was sharing my tent with an Armenian cyclist who had nowhere to stay and to convince me of his trustworthiness in the tent-sharing department, used his only english phrase -

"I love you Jesus"

I survived the night unscathed.

The good news is that I have a good road map of Russia now (see previous entry where I was using a rail map), I exchanged my map of the Pamir Highway for it with another traveller who was heading to Tajikistan. My Russian map is the full-blown road atlas which is proving invaluable as it shows where fuel is available- often the fuel stations are far apart and I really don't want to run out of petrol here.