Hello from Yaqoob

Dear friend,

Assalamu alaikum. I received your letter safely and I am so happy about your remembering. Hopefully you will remember me like this in future. I was waiting for your letter because I wanted to know about the Andy's health condition. So your letter makes me quite satisfied about that. How is Andy now? Inform me about his health and I wish for his good health.

Thanks a lot for your well wishes in your letter. Everything here we can find by postal address safely. Don't worry about it. Wish that I will be able to see your visited pictures soon and thanks for that in advance.

I am also happy that you have recommended Pakistan for tourism and inviting the people to come to Pakistan. You are right that there is very bad impression about Pakistan in European countries, but this is because of media propaganda and people trust that. I also accept that we have still some internal and external problems but inshallah slowly all these kind of problems will be improved and will go on the right path.

I wish that in all the world will be peace. For that I pray to God that He will bring harmony among the different religions. So that all the religions will keep peace and sectarian harmony in all the world. And then all human beings will be able to lead their lives happily and safely around the whole world in a peaceful environment.

I appreciate too your views about Madina Guest House. I spent all my income on the improvement of this guest house for tourism. Through this guest house I want to develop the tourism not only in Northern Areas but also in the whole of Pakistan and other parts of the world. For that I pray to God that He will give me courage to develop tourism.

I am starting the Trek and Tour Company next year. For that I want help from my foreigner friends. I hope that you will help me in this way. The company name is Madina Guides.

You are always and any time welcome in Madina guest house with your family and friends. It is your home. Thanks once again for your good views and wishes about my country and particularly my guest house. Pay my regards to your family and friends. And also best wishes for Andy and his family. God bless all of the world.

See you again Inshallah.

with regards.

Your Sincerely,

M.Yaqoob

And finally...

...What you've all been waiting for! The one thing keeping you going these past few weeks, the constant pull on the back of your mind, what you where looking for while rummaging through our 60 odd posts....The results to the beard competition!

The final round took place in St.Petersburg on a man-made beach outside a fortress (the name of which I have momentarily forgotten, but I can tell you that it's reddish and inside there is a church with a ridiculously tall gold spire). Lucy and I took our seats on the panel on a piece of drift wood and the three eager competitors sat in a nice little line facing us.

The judging consisted of three parts - accessorising, walking the cat walk and beard fondling.

Contestant no.1 (Mr Andrew Daynes) was the first to take the stage. The beard admittedly was quite large, however the attention of the judges was drawn to his ludicrous idea of accesorising and original, but slightly dubious, idea of cat-walk walking. The beard fondling on the other hand was wonderfully done and very affectionate - it's always good to see a man who loves his beard.

Contestant no.2 (Sir M. Pushkin Pye) took quite a different approach to the presentation of the beard. His accesorising was minimal and functional with only a pen tidily kept in his beard (which was later used to sign a document a la KBG office portrait). The walk was again in a minimalist style, but clearly decipted the gait of a hard working office man. Pye then chose to do the original "looking into the distance while thinking hard" fondle of the beard, which did not show much imagination, but what paticularly apt for this presentation.

Contestant no.3 (Mr P J Burgon) took a brave step into the unknown with his surreal presentation of a naturally stylish beard. His whole set lasted less than a minute. The accesorising consisted of a few aptly placed twigs. He stood up and mimed a Laurel and hardy "A ha", sneakily working in a slight fondle of the beard and then walked away with a very plain gait.

The judging was hard because each contestant naturally exceeded in their own niche. This said, the judges felt that the Annual Beard International Growth competition should be taken seriously. Contestant no.1 or 3 possibly took the presentation too far. Not only did contestant no.2 show respect to his beard and the competition, but the judges felt that his use of the beard as a pen holder showed initiative and has taken the competition to another level. For these reasons, the first prize of our respect for at least a month went to Contestant no.2, Sir M Pushkin Pye. The other two had joint second (no prize).

A note to armchair travellers out there

For a chance to sample some of our route - admittedly in reverse - from the comfort of your own home, press the relevant remote buttons to display BBC 4 this Thursday (22 September) at 7:05 pm and travel four days in 55 minutes: Great Railway Journeys - St Petersburg to Tashkent

No longer someone else's horizon

Travel for travel's sake within the EU seemed rather dull and somewhat pointless: the whole adventure is essentially safe and secure from door to door. Things tend not to be delayed by clouds or lack of traffic. On return from Tallinn there was little to endure other than an in-flight another-gin-and-tonic-please-luv South Walean with tourettes and being surrounded by a trolley-wobbly crowd of warming but ridiculous no-I'll-pay-for-the-tea pensioners while waiting for the bus.

Two months through the sealess stretches of Asia may only scrape the surface but we have seen enough to see why the world's broadcasters of bomb blasts and doom need editors: there's a vast expanse of banally impoverished but friendly, clean and ruggedly beautiful borderland to filter out.

Mike will finish with a line gleaned from Marco Polo - the Venician with a hole; Lowri may well sign hers with "y'know"; and I could, and Andy would say I should, end with:

I have not seen the half of what I've told.

I will, I think, recount some surreal eavesdropping from Stanstead, instead: Sat next to us in the airport's mock pub was an old Mediterranean man who looked and sounded as if he was rehearsing to cease a role from Al Pacino. Sat next to him was a wide-eyed, quiet African man in a loose-necked suit. They were discussing Kashmir. The Mafioso was expounding his wisdom on the matter:

Musharraf will do a deal with the Indians and he'll screw the Americans - he'll screw the British - and they won't realise.

...and with that they upped and left and my pint arrived.

Wanted: one hermit (apply within)

Sankt Piterburh, Petrograd, Leningrad, Санкт-Петербург: brainchild of Peter the Great, seat of the Romanov dynasty, Venice of the north, Axis from which the Revolution spun, and now host city of the 2005 beard competition results.

The sleeper sided into town. Four sleepers got out and met a fifth. Lucy. We all had breakfast and woke up. The skies were wide. You could smell something fishy and the gulls knew it. Like Cheltenham, but not very. It was regal, it was regency and it was being redone. Soon no-one would know Communism ever happened. Deep underground the metro was a socialist, but it was kept behind black doors. Up above: Domes of spilt blood, a golden skyscatcher spire, admiralties, military academies, the gilded halls of the Winter Palace and Oktober's battleship - Aurora. Sailors dressed as sailors. Brides rode bronze horses and toured the town. Canals cut out islands. There was a club that wouldn't stop celebrating the new year. We laughed in the streets. The Hermitage is the federation's most visited place - no wonder the old guy upped and left. It could last you a good five years in eight second per exhibit snippets. With a ballet, we left, asleep, for Tallinn.

Ruby slip-up

Just after - and possibly partly due to - the last blog, Mike got arrested. The reason and explanation of which is probably another your-round job, sorry. The event could be recounted like a Len Deighton thriller, with daring paragraphs of my tailing of him and his escort through the side streets round Red Square and returning to the hotel to replace sandals with boots to better fit the mood, but before the sentence is complete it all begins to sound a bit ridiculous.

It is far better to leave you with the happy conclusion: circumstances gave us another chance to seek the marvelous services of the British Foreign and Commonweath Office who, despite mildly provoking the police officers by directly conveying our fears of bribery, were timely and efficient in killing the police laughter brought on by Mike's seemingly empty threat of "Consulate!". Their call to the unmarked station gave him the chance to utter the immortal line, "He wants to speak to you."

All home in one piece (minus an appendix and probably some fat...)

After a hectic 10 days attempting to see 5 cities (Samarkand to Tallin) we all managed to land in London Stansted on time with the respectful EasyJet.

First of all I'd like to point out that my "virulent stomach bug" only lasted about 12hours, I am now perfectly healthy.

The last few days of our journey took us back into civilization. We had toilets you could sit on, actual showers, English menus and the roads got progressively better the whole way. Of course, even as the countries became more civilized, we still had our experiences! In Moscow Mike had a minor run in with the Police. He was held in the station for about 3 hours while we ran about calling the Embassy and trying to find out what was going on. He was set free about 2am when he told us his story, and it seemed that he'd had quite a good time to tell the truth. He'll have to tell you about it some other time...

We moved on to St Petersburg the next evening, which again was not without it's moments. Lucy greeted us at the train station and we all went in search for a hotel. I wanted cake for breakfast. We have found that whenever I want cake, something would happen so I won't get it. We couldn't find the first hotel, because the guide book had mixed up the numbers on the map and we where actually the opposite side of town. We then bumped into two people with back-packs where looking for another hostel, they gave us the address. We went to the address to find a building site. In the end, we found the hostel behind a scaffolding. It also happened to be about a minute walk away from the hermitage! We walked about the city taking in the homogeneous European architecture and the enormous northen sky. The next day we went to the winter palace where we looked for a portrait of my Russian ancestry and the hermitage where I found two pieces of art that I've studied! In fact, we spent the whole day wondering around these grand buildings, and could have done with a week! To finish our trip with style, we went to see a ballet in the evening than had supper at KFC at midnight.

With only an afternoon left of out trip and a whole new city, we didn't want to waste it. We spent most of the afternoon walking around the beautiful and unique old city of Tallin. I bought some shoes in a 50% off sale (you can take the girl out of the city...). Mike found a restaurant that brewed it's own beer so we had a smashing dinner there, had a bit of a night out (money and sleep allowing) and left for home the next day.

It's now amazingly strange coming home and hitting reality. We've all seen and experienced so much. I can safely say that even with all the stomach bugs, the altitude sickness, the border guards, rupturing appendix, Russian police, bad roads and a lot of insects it was 100% worth it and I'd do it all again. That said, although I've spent a month in one of the worlds highest mountain ranges and tea was served with every single meal, there's nothing quite like welsh mountains and a good mug of milk tea.

Michael Pye (an artist's impression)

Back in the (former) USSR

Arriving, all bagged up, at Tashkent station after a rather complex but ultimately successful attempt to get tickets to Moscow, we felt rather short of melons.

In what has become our travelling style, we got tickets by first being invited into someone's home. The four of us de-shoed and sat four-abreast on a sofa and were shouted at in Russian and eventually understood this to mean that our hosts - one of whom was woman we had paused by outside the closed foreigners booking office - would reserve us tickets if we could give them our passport details. With the opinion of them teetering on the edge of suspect profiteers and genuine aidees, we sat muttering our options to each other and eventually were shown the local booking office. At which point, the two women were waylaid by the station's militia and we were spotted by an English-speaking ticket officer with one daughter as an Uzbek airways air hostess and another at Cardiff University. With her help we got our tickets and evaded the now yelling barbushkas, but not with out a mad twenty-minute dash by Andy through deserted Sunday streets of Tashkent in search of the last $50 worth of Uzbek Sum, while the cashier muttered nervously.

With three days on a train you develop an interesting gait; one that only improves with the cheap beer, vodka and fake Champange available at the longer station stops. Is is also very comforting to know that despite the fact you can sleep all day you will get to Moscow on time.

The route took us quickly out of Uzbekistan in an Sunday evening, through the blank, camel-scattered planes of Kazakhstan, into Russia with the stamp-happy border guards waking us at five in the morning after a short but pleasant second night's sleep and to Moscow mid-afternoon Wednesday through endless birch forests and factory towns of the Volga.

The CIS train network is staffed by a lot of nuttters. Each coach gets a set of light-blue-coated attendants who don hats and blow whistles nice and officially at stations but spend the rest of the time playing cards, listening to there walkmans and complaining that you're not wearing shoes, then that you are, then that you don't have sheets on the bed then that you do and get very enraged that you are trying to photograph the immaculately concealed military installations of the blank featureless planes. It's all very confusing. At all the big station stops a pair of guys in orange jackets make their way down the train with special hammers. At every wheel they stop and hit the hub cap and then the wheel itself. Tonk-tink, tonk-tink, tonk-tink, tonk-tink.

Anyway, we have made it to Moscow and, with far greater ease than in Tashkent, have bagged ourselves tickets to Saint Petersburg for tomorrow night. See you there.

There is no golden road to Samarqand

This is not entirely true, but it was only as we were leaving Tajikistan and chasing the sun into the Uzbek plains that one was found. The journey from Dushanbe was another stunning but patchy-road affair, with the four of us nicely filling a taxi. Careful thumbing of the guidebook landed us an idyllic camp-fire-by-the-lake-side night in a deserted soviet holiday camp at Iskander-Kul. The two-day finale of Tajik mountains through the windows gave us encore upon encore from rushing streams, crumbling cliffs, and houses in orchards up the slopes before the silk curtain finally fell to form a patchwork of crisp hills the melted into the plane and the eerie flatness of Uzbekistan. We walked from the arsy Tajik guards to the computerised Uzbek border post. Computerisation has not removed the paperwork, but has cunningly made the guards less arsy. They are now distracted playing duck shooting games.

Once again among other travellers, we now have a day to explore the minarets, maddrasses, mosques and bazaars of Samarqand before heading for Tashkent and the train to Moscow tomorrow.