Poputnik

Summer in Finland After a few weeks of two or three day stops interspersed with two or three days of train travel I was pretty tired of movement by the time we got

One of many stops on our various trains across the beautiful vastness of Russia As a teenager and young adult, in the late 1980s and 1990s, I had a strong engagement with Russia

1:00am in St. Petersburg After Moscow we made a short trip to Petersburg before leaving Russia with a few hours left on our visa. We travelled on the very comfortable overnight train

St. Basil's Cathedral and part of the Kremlin, seen from Moscow river. Red Square is on the other side of the Cathedral. After four days on the train, we arrived in

On the way to Moscow Many journeys seem long, are long, but when you look on a map, you can be almost disappointed at what little impression your exertions have made on it.

Welcome to Severobaikalsk Severobaikalsk is a lovely town on the northern end of Lake Baikal, only built in the 1970s to service the construction of the BAM (the Baikal-Amur Mainline [http://en.wikipedia.

2am on the rough road south from Yakutsk After having vacillated about hitching or bussing, we left Yakutsk by mini-van on the evening of our third day there. Even though our luck hitching

Inside the Kingdom of Permafrost, Yakutsk We finally reached Yakutsk, little-known and far distant, sometime before 4am. We were kindly dropped to the door by our hitch-hiking hosts and tramped up the five

The Trans-Siberian ready to depart from Vladivostok. Our last day in Vladivostok, like all the others, was very pleasant. While I tapped away writing on the computer, Niamh went into town and met

Vladivostok - Russia on the Pacific! What had started as a very nice introduction to Russia, with all sorts of reminders of Russian generosity flooding back, continued once we reached Vladivostok; after a

The entrance to the international departure hall at Suifenxe railway station The two-day journey from Beijing to Vladivostok was one of contrasts – between, of course, China and Russia, but also between the new

A tiny part of the bigness of Beijing If Bangkok was big, Beijing is huge, as is China as a whole (or what we've seen of it, which is Beijing and

China - a land under construction Although our stop in Hanoi was brief, it made a good impression. I didn't feel I got a good understanding of the place, but as

On the train from Saigon to Hanoi We've been a week in Vietnam, leaving tonight on a train to China. It's my third of three short trips to Cambodia

After leaving Otres beach near Sihanoukville, we returned to Phnom Penh by bus and spent three nights there. We stayed at a nice little place near the centre of town and poked around

Bangkok Bangkok is a big, vibrant, diverse city. In particular it's big, with a population of roughly seven million. Chinatown, one of the oldest parts of the city, has ½ million people

The view from my sleeper heading to Bangkok Arriving in Singapore Every step of the trip from the islands between Kupang and Bali had been like arriving in some fantastic land of riches

Another relaxing day ends on Atauro island If you're in East Timor, a few days at Barry's place on Atauro island is well worth a visit. Based on permaculture

Dawn from the KM Kelud between Jakarta and Singapore Our time in Java was sadly short as information about the possibly weekly overnight ferry from Jakarta to Batam, across from Singapore was difficult

Pedro Lebre, April, 2014 I was first put on to Vila Harmonia by the permaculture guru Lachlan McKenzie, who spend many years in East Timor and drove the creation and publication of a

South of Flores Indonesia is one of the last places in the world to still have a functioning network of passenger ships [http://www.insideindonesia.org/feature-editions/riding-pelni], the state-run Pelni service. I&

A view from Kupang centre across the bay Kupang is a lovely little city on the western end of Timor – I don't think there's much of the mythical sleepy

The beach behind the Jesus statue at Dili ... inevitably called the Jesus' backside beach by some droll wit As we started, so we continued, hitting the sack late and waking bleary-eyed at

Writing a blog about writing a blog Sitting in the Darwin pre-dawn in the heavy still air, the foliage verdant, listening to the first birds of the day and the occasional hissing growl