"We View Ourselves on the Eve of Battle..."

Well, here I am. It's a bit after 12:30 in morning on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009. Less than twelve hours from now I'll be sitting in a plane ready to leave for foreign shores and exotic ports. Or, in reality: frozen shores and heated bars...that has a nice ring to it.

At any rate, here I am. I have packed, cleaned my room and begun the process of trying to upload as much music onto my iPod as I can before going to bed. I'm finally getting tired but I've spent the entire day in a continual state of active excitement. This...is totally cool. In less than twelve hours I will be embarking on a journey that is going to take me around the world. Literally. My path will take me from Seattle to Amsterdam and then to Moscow. After 5 days in Moscow I am going to take an overnight train ride to Nizhny Novgorod where I am going to explore Russia's "third capital" for 3 days. From there it is another overnight trip to Ekaterinburg a place where, in 1918, the last Czar of Russia and his family were executed. After a couple days there I will hop a short (few hour) train to Omsk. Omsk (note to be mistaken with Tomsk) is smack in the middle or Russia...no seriously, it is. After two days in Omsk I will spend roughly 36 hours aboard the train on my way to Irkutsk and Listvyanka, on the shores of Lake Baikal. After a few days playing around there I am headed to the eastern shores of the world's deepest lake to a town called Ulan Ude, where I will leave the Trans-Siberian Railway in exchange for the Trans-Mongolian. This will take me down through Mongolia to the capital UlaanBaatar (which has aprox. 358 different spellings best as I can tell). After 3 days in city-by-the-steppes I will head down into China and across to Beijing. After a few days in Beijing I will finish the trip by flying to Tokyo and from Tokyo, back to Seattle.

As Bob pointed out I seem very confident in my ability to live through this entire experience. (Bob, thank you for your faith in my abilities...Tom, the same goes to you).

I hope to be able to write to you all through this blog on a near daily basis, the only exceptions being the days I'm on trains. Every city will have it's own posting, at the very least.

I must leave now, "Little Wing" by Hendrix just came on and I need to appreciate it fully; I will talk to you all from Moscow.

Cheers,

Armen