Only a small post to say we entered Russia safely. So far we’ve seen areas of lots of huge, huge farmland. On our first night four car loads of us camped behind a gathering of trees on one of these huge farms. Cooked up a storm of friend potatoes and had some Russian beer.

Now we are in Barnaul in Russia. We’re both still getting sporadic doses of the sprints. We are setting off tomorrow all going well to make it into the Altai mountains on the Russian side to see the total eclipse in more fitting surroundings than a smelly city.

So far Russians are nice but a bit scary. We hope to be in Mongolia on the 4th August if not earlier.

RUSSIA UPDATE!

Since we last posted here we got the full solar eclipse outside Barnaul. It was really surreal. We watched it with a family of Russians who gave us their floppy disk to look at the eclipse through. There was a random American man cycling through Russia and Central Asia who stopped for it too. The cows were mooing and the birds were confused and legged it en masse.

We then spent 3 fabulous days camping in the Altai Mountains near the border with Mongolia. The scenery was spectacular, camping spots everywhere by rivers, forests, mountains, lakes! All the nice stuff we didnt have in Turkmenistan [hee hee Turkeymenistan is getting a bashing again!]

Had a surprisingly nice time in Russia. Many people in other countries along the way had warned us away from it but yet again it luckily wasnt true!