April 23, 2008

Long Time No See

Well OK, long time no blog actually. I'd love to say it was because we were so ludicrously busy getting ready that we didn't have the time, but that's not the case at all. In fact we've been hanging round waiting.

Waiting for what? Well waiting to hear back from people, the one thing that's really beyond our control. And that's meant that our start date has been pushed further and further back, back till we miss our weather window for the Altai region of Russia, where it borders Mongolia.

It's this part that is probably the most remote, the most adventurous part of our journey, the Altai mountains have heavy snows in winter, and the roads can become impassable, some even say that the Mongolians shut the border crossing when the snows come. Whatever the case is, a winter crossing is likely to be very difficult, very cold and potentially very fatal.

But that doesn't mean a winter trip is completely discounted. I've been reading Tobias's website where he talks about his winter crossing of Siberia, check it out it's well worth a read, and his pictures are stunning. He makes it quite clear that the "Trans-Siberian Highway" is passable all through the winter, so we could still go ahead, we'd just have to make a couple of route changes and instead of crossing Mongolia East-West, we'd drive North-South.

So watch this space.

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