i haven't looked at a clock in... days?

time has become a completely irrelevant concept. i have literally no idea what a clock might say. we are experiencing an odd version of jetlag as time-changes slowly stalk us like a panther. every now and again the trans-siberian guide book we are using to inform us of our position tells us to put our watches forward another hour. i've been ignoring it, it just confuses me further. the trains continue to run on moscow time until you leave russian soil. it might be midday now (local time), but according to our body clock it's about 10ish and according to the train timetable it's 9am. i think.

to help with the confusion, the butch russian lady has just served us breakfast and lunch in the space of 90 minutes. last night we watched the sun set from the restaurant car. our watches said 11.30pm.

but it was 10.30. the restaurant closed at 10pm, but it was 1am.

i've given up. to add to my puzzlement i've started reading the time traveler's wife. it's not helping my grasp of chronology.

last night i went to sleep at 2am, slept for 8 hours and woke up at 12. i'll get out of bed in a minute and have lunch. maybe i'll save breakfast for an afternoon snack. i think we're still on this train for another two days.

we're officially now in siberia. it happened at some point overnight. we stopped in yekaterinburg in the darkness while they changed engines and now we're speeding into the landscape with the sun glaring down upon us. it is marginally cooler though. we have been told that 2 weeks ago it was a constant blizzard here.

for a bit of exercise and a change of scenery i walked the entire length of the train. 3 foot wide corridors divided by huge heavy doors at each end of the carriages. the links between them show the trains age and mileage. opening a big steel door you are confronted with a precarious looking square of chequerplate resting between the two carriages, jumping about randomly as the train sways back and forth. gaps - big gaps - either side reveal the speeding tracks beneath the train, a blur of rock and wood and metal. you could easily lose a flip-flop.

or a foot.

although every carriage is pretty much identical there is a completely different atmosphere on each. it was weird. some lively, some just quiet, some were down-right sinister. in some i was stared at as though i was a poacher on their land. it was a strange relief to return to my 6 foot cube, "home," as i currently like to call it.

we appear to be passing through english countryside. it is like we're on a train through the home counties or something, occasionally passing allotments. the subtle difference is the scale. soviet forces decided to dedicate this area for farmland. they cleared a natural landscape of 25 million hectares for food production.

great britain is 13 million hectares.

and it turns out those allotments are villages.