Reflecting our remoteness, there are few stops today – Amazar at 05.55 for 18 minutes, Magdagachi at 14.53 for just 15 minutes, and Belogorsk at 21.37 for 30 minutes. Time to read a book and watch the world go by.
But then it starts to come back to me. Last night, after a few glasses of quite reasonable red wine from Azerbaijan I had made a communication breakthrough with the woman who runs the restaurant. After several days living on fried eggs and stale bread rolls, I discover that caviar and salmon might be on offer for breakfast. Or was this all actually just a twisted dream sent to my brain by my digestive system?

I shuffle purposefully down the train towards the restaurant carriage, hoping that I have worked out the right time zone for breakfast. I calculate that local time is six hours ahead of Moscow time. I’m greeted by a tired looking chef, hopefully a sign of overnight fish trading on icy station platforms. The deal has apparently taken place at a place called Skovorodin. The curtains are drawn, almost like this is a well-guarded secret. Two police officers hang around for some time talking to passing passengers, but I have no idea what is being said. Are they guarding the fish?

The woman who takes my order is heavily made up and wearing a dress that might have been used in a mid 1970’s James Bond film. Apparently the caviar comes with pancakes and garlic butter, but the salmon has already gone. The pancakes taste simply heavenly, and cost me just 290 Rubles, or about £3. As I’m finishing breakfast the lady selling ice cream passes through the carriage. In her time zone it might be the perfect time for such a treat, but it’s not on my breakfast agenda.

When get back to my compartment I notice that Larissa, the carriage “provodnitsa”, has put all her gear on – a sure sign that we will shortly be stopping. She always dresses like we will be walking on the surface of the moon before leaving the train, and today the temperature on the platform doesn’t disappoint. I gingerly walk down the platform taking short snorts of frozen air whilst thinking about where else in the world you could experience such great food in an otherwise cold and inhospitable place.

You might think that this post title is a fairly cheap way at getting a Pink Floyd song into my blog title list for this trip, and I suppose that you are right. But actually it reminds me that I have been carrying a small mobile humidor across the world, so perhaps it’s time to have a cigar to celebrate crossing the finish line.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog and thank you for being tolerant of the occasional poor spelling and grammar. It’s quite hard writing this on an iPad in a bouncy train with an at times overly enthusiastic autocorrect tool.

In case you are curious I have written a few notes here on my inspiration and motivation.

I hope Alan Whicker will never be forgotten. He once gave Michael Palin some great advice which I follow to this day. Anyone can be uncomfortable travelling, but what can you do to make your conditions as good as they possibly can be? I always try and make the effort to make a few creature comforts really count. An espresso machine, some decent wine, a Christmas tree, a “Red Cross Parcel” from the Edinburgh Explorers Club – they all helped me to keep smiling and stay sane.

Robert Twigger is a modern day travel genius. He thinks deeply about the motivations and satisfaction that you can get from travel at a spiritual level. Talking to him last year was a real boost to my resolve to keep going with my Trans-Siberian plans (even though I ducked out of the Kazakhstan route).

Having also had the privilege to meet Ran Feinnes last year, I can tell you that the glint in his eye and his quiet and polite spoken manner are just so infectious when it comes to just making a decision to get on with doing something. To him failure is not a remotely conceivable option.

I met “Zaz” Shackleton (Sir Ernest Shackleton’s grand daughter) last year at the Royal Geographical Society. This set me off on quite a bit of research on Sir Ernest’s life, and together with Keith Parsons, my expedition fitness coach, we became semi obsessed with finding some of the places that he lived and worked during his short but incredible life. Probably best of all was finding that we could meet in the front room of his 1904 Edinburgh residence to discuss plans and progress (it is now a little known hotel). I love the phrase “a sense of place”, and it is very apt in this context.

Keith never lets me forget how he thinks everyone else secretly wishes they had the focus, time and temperament for my adventures and keeps reminding me of the real “wonder” value of my journey – something that at times I can easily overlook when I’m bogged down in red tape.

So without knowing too much about me, or my plans, Alan, Robert, Sir Ran, and Sir Ernest, along with Keith, have provided my inspirational and spiritual support. What a team!

But my travels are always made most memorable by things other than rolling stock, or even the satisfaction of thorough preparation. Like all of my journeys, I once again met some incredibly interesting people, and this is what can transform a great journey into an amazing one. There are too many people to name here, and in fact many people who’s names I just don’t know, as we speak different languages..

I hope that this post doesn’t sound too sentimental. When I’m on the rails I tend to focus on just a day or two ahead. To look a week or more ahead would almost certainly induce a form of train travel “vertigo”. Far too scary! But when I look back on my exploits I have to pinch myself. How lucky I am to be a Trans-Siberian explorer, and just how did I manage to actually do that?

I hope you will join me on my next adventure. I have a pretty good idea about where I’m going, but it’s too early to publicly commit to it right now without some more research to give me confidence that I’m really doing it.

When I used to work in the rat race, my “HR Business Partner” (sic) used to tell me that “feedback was a gift”. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on my blog, good and bad. How can I make it more interesting to you? You can leave comments here without needing to register or log in, but do let me know who you are if we met “on the rails”. You can also drop me an email if you prefer from the link – above right, but ask any travel questions via the Trans-Siberian Travellers Club forum please.

Thanks again and farewell for the time being.

My first foray into Shinjuku nightlife proved slightly confusing. I wanted to find some bars in a district called “Golden Gion”, but which ever way I walked around the blocks I ended back up in the Tokyo equivalent of Soho, albeit possibly a bit safer but much much weirder.

My local bar here is a place called “Heart Beat”. This is a common concept in Tokyo – a barman, a cook and about five seats in a bar the size of your average bedroom. The cook operates in something the size of a cupboard, from which he does the cooking (with a cigarette clamped between his lips). I drink Sapporo beer whilst helping out the barman with his English menu on his iPad. There are some wonderful misspellings! A bored businessman drinks Scotch and we compare watches. He wins as he has quite a rare Rolex Submariner that he seems to know very little about.

On my second foray into Shinjuku failure isn’t an option. Yuka steers me personally in to a small street close to the west side of Shinjuku station for a close target recce on a place that I would never find without her. In fact moments after being shown it, I can’t find it again.. If you ever saw those Harry Potter films, it’s like a Japanese version of “Diagon Alley”! It’s packed with tiny places serving food and drinks to salarymen who are not ready to go home. Their significant others would never hope to discover them in this hidden and secret enclave of underworld Yakatori and booze!

My firm and immediate favourite is the “Albatross Bar”. It has a rather trendy barman who plays very cool music and mixes cocktails for a couple of men in suits. He serves me like I have been drinking here for years – once I have worked out how to turn around and sit down in a space not big enough to swing a millipede.

The Albatross has made an extra effort with its chandeliers. These would be well placed in a small stately home, but in here I find myself talking to them, through them and around them at the bar as the dominate the inside of the place. Using a phrase “at the bar” might imply you have a choice where to be. You don’t as there is barely three feet of space in front of it.

I found these places incredibly friendly and safe to be in. If you are coming to Tokyo you must try and find this bar scene. It really is the “underbelly” of Tokyo and the kind of place Dechard would certainly enjoy a quiet beer in before pursuing and terminating illegal replicants.

Wikipedia suggests that its poison is 1200 times stronger than cyanide and close to Sarin or VX gas in the way it paralyses your central nervous system. You can’t buy a pufferfish as it is illegal to prepare one without the licence, hence they tend to be kept alive in tanks at special fugu restaurants.

I met up this morning with Yuka, my guide and fixer in Tokyo. Our first port of call is the Tsukiji fish market. It’s a huge and busy place selling 10% of the world’s fish every day. The prices of some of the fish are extraordinary, but still much cheaper on a kilo basis than at my local supermarket. There are not many tourists here as groups are not allowed into the wholesale part of the market, and I can see why with all that’s going on. (In passing, the whole market is being relocated prior to the Japan Olympic Games, so this spectacle may not be on offer for much longer).

Long cutting swords are an essential tool in the fish mongers arsenal. After a decade of fastidious sharpening they are several inches shorter though. Every famous restaurant has a local supplier here, many specialising in certain types of fish or fishy bits. And ninja snapper turtles..

After the market its time to taste some incredibly fresh sushi. It hasn’t even had to travel more than a couple of hundred metres from the market.

I’m immediately struck by some great sushi bar etiquette. All the staff literally all shout a greeting to every new customer, it’s kind of a lucky tradition and makes you think at first that you might not be properly dressed or have accidentally left the door open – but once you know, you certainly feel very welcome!

I try all the main sorts of nigiri (except smoked eel – I have never been a fan..). It’s got an incredible “melt in your mouth” feel, simply stunning. The chefs are great too – you can interact with them as you eat the nigiri that they carefully prepare, piece by piece. Until today I had no idea that wasabi was a root vegetable.

The day finishes with some sake tasting. I know so little about sake and its hard to know where to start. Hot? Cold? Pasteurised? Fresh? Which season?.. Diving in, we try three very different brands. Time to sweep away my memories of hot and tasteless sake in English Chinese restaurants in the 1980’s – this stuff is like fine wine.. Some of it with prices to match.

I’m going to look out for some good sake to put in my cellar when I get home. I didn’t have time for any official Japanese whisky tasting, but that’s now on my radar too..

I have had an interesting insight into Tokyo coffee culture today. I suggest to Yuka, my guide here in Tokyo, that we stop at Starbucks on the way to Shinjuku station. However she has other ideas. Our first stop of the day is a coffee bar in Shibuya with a difference. It has two resident goats. Apparently you can take them for a walk down to the local station, but when Yuka asks for their leads we find this is only possible after 3pm. The goats make a lot of noise until the barista fixes them some food.. They certainly didn’t teach me this skill on my barista City & Guilds course!

The second coffee bar of the day, also in Shibuya, is no more mainstream. It’s a “cat cafe” where people go to stroke feline friends over a cup of coffee or a fruit smoothie. This place is just weird. It’s on the third floor of an anonymous block off a busy side street.

Reception has a little window, and it’s overseen today by a large black cat who looks through the glass like it might decide which humans to admit. We don’t actually spend time here as you pay by the half hour with the cats as well as for the coffee and cat food. I would also point out that I don’t even like cats..and I don’t think the cat at reception liked me either!

Our third coffee stop is at an amazingly zen place called Omotesando. It’s a tiny garden in a semi domestic street with a wooden screened platform like some sort of shrine. At the altar a kind of mad Japanese scientist barista makes very serious cups of coffee. If coffee were a martial art, this chap is clearly a black belt master. I’m deeply impressed when I watch him make a close to perfect cup of espresso and reject it for some tiny unexplained reason.

Between coffee stops I’m keen to see some pachinko. If you haven’t heard of this, its a form of semi legalised gambling using machines that fire ball bearings at slots like a pinball machine without the flippers. After WW2 there was lots of obvious spare capacity in the Japanese ball bearing industry and it took off. Inside the parlour it’s insanely loud and busy with some clearly addicted punters trying to get an edge on their chosen machines.

The best players have baskets of ball bearings behind their seats marking them out as pachinko “Top Guns”. The machines are designed to absorb every ounce of your senses and make you lose track of time. They even have integrated chargers for you phone if you are making a day of it.

Yuka and I give it a go, and it’s clear she is much better at it than me. However, we quickly blast through 2000 Yen without anything to show for it ten minutes later!

As a visitor to Tokyo things are not always as they seem, you just need to embrace the weirdness and enjoy it. I certainly am. I just wish I was in this great city a bit longer.. Never mind, blogging next about deadly fish!

You probably know that these days the word “Shinkansen” is used to generically describe a number of different types of Japanese high speed train. My train today is another Hikari Super Express, this time the 464, bound for Tokyo. The fastest, with the least number of stops is the “Nozumi”. You cannot use these trains with a JR rail pass, but you can use the second tier of trains (same type of train, more stops) called the “Hikari”.

Kyoto’s main station is a very modern place, integrated with shopping malls and hotels. The whole place smells of popcorn and freshly baked cookies. The soundtrack is a blend of indecipherable Japanese tannoy announcements mixed with the rumble of trains overhead as you emerge upwards towards the platforms.

On the platform a train arrives every five minutes or so and takes off after a loud electronic beeping noise warns anyone in any doubt on the platform. The trains themselves seem almost silent and so aerodynamic that they cut their own hole in the air ahead of them.

Time to put my feet up for the three hour journey. The snow slowly disappears even though we are heading north. The slopes of Mount Fuji glisten in the winter sun. The windows seem too big, but that’s because your mind confuses the cabin with that of an aircraft. There are no digital indicators of the train’s speed. The Japanese must just take it for granted that as its a Shinkansen train, it’s going to be travelling at Shinkansen speed. A lady greets each new passenger with a hot towel. There is a trolley service selling basic snacks, but surprisingly to me, no proper food is served on the train.

All too soon we pull into Yokohama and ten minutes later we are at Tokyo’s central station. I have forgotten that I’m actually staying near Shinjuku station and not this station, so my taxi costs a small fortune..

Time for what Louis Theroux would call a “weird weekend” in Tokyo.

I seem to have crossed that fine line, and it takes 48 hours to get my body fully fit for operations again. For the first day I can’t stop groaning with amazement every time my body rests on a soft bed in a cool and quiet room that does not move with the rails or the waves. I can’t believe my appetite for sleep. And then on the third day I feel like the title of this blog post, reborn, not as a British secret agent, but as a Trans-Siberian explorer.

Kyoto is massively busy. It’s an extended public holiday and a time for local families to vist the shrines. I feel like I just can’t move in some places and the recent snow is slowing us all down even more. Oh well, it’s my own fault for arriving at such a special time.

It’s a great couple of days to adjust to the Japanese way and join in the purification and luck making rituals of the New Year. Russia and Japan are probably polar opposites when it comes to visible etiquette, manners and the friendliness of public servants. I don’t know if this level of kindness and support ever wears off, but for my short stay it’s nothing short of a wonder.

The Shinkansen has its own dedicated “terminal” on top of the regular station, and I’m soon on the right platform. As this is a terminus, the train arrives on the platform more than 20 minutes before we are due to depart, so I can hop straight on. I’m in carriage no 9, which is “green”, or first class.

The guard bows at us when he enters and leaves the carriage, and the difference between sitting on the floor of unreserved limited express and sitting in green seat of the Hikari could not be more extreme.

Before we set off a very well dressed elderly man with big gold framed glasses and a Louis Vitton laptop bag greets me quite formally and sits down next to me. He looks vaguely familiar. I work out where I have seen him before. It’s “Sugai” (or his spitting image) – he’s the Yakuza crime lord from one of my favourite Japan based Hollywood films, “Black Rain”.

The train is delayed by about ten minutes due to snow. It doesn’t seem to be slowing down much though. No weak excuses about “leaves on the line” here! Mr Sugai and I both get off when the train stops in Kyoto and we go our separate ways. It’s time for me to get some well earned rest.

Eventually I get an escort to my platform and shown where the “non reserved” carriage will stop. There is a long queue already and it’s clearly going to be rammed full as its a public holiday today. Let’s hope I even get on it.

The train looks to me like a mad Gerry Anderson take on a British 1960’s “Deltic” train. The drivers cab is on top, looking down like the cockpit of a 747. I’m happy just to be able to squeeze on, and my home for the next couple of hours is the corridor washroom outside the toilet of second class carriage no 5. Perhaps not the image of tourist friendly image that you have in mind of the Japanese rail network!

The problem of being here is two fold. Firstly, there is no view of the outside world, and like being in a cabin without windows on a ship, this leads to travel sickness as the train bounces around on its way across rural Japan. Secondly, the toilet is locked and the corridor is full of sick or desperate people about to seemingly have an accident over my luggage, including one poor little girl who I’m convinced is going to be ill right over my carry on bag.

If I had a seat this train would be like any Inter-City train back in the UK. As I don’t, if you imagine getting a train from Kings Cross when the reservations system has failed and you have no seat and the air condititioning isn’t working, it’s very similar.

But it’s only two hours and I manage to do some writing and editing, so time passes relatively quickly. I’m perched next to a punk rocker who helps me work out where to get off – quite important when you can’t see the platforms outside and don’t speak Japanese.

We pull into Okayama on time and I’m relieved to make it off. Now I have to find my Shinkansen connection to Kyoto.

To say I’m feeling pretty rough is an understatement. My muscles ache from constantly bracing against the roll and pitch of the ship in bed, my stomach aches from an overdose of Korean seafood, and my head hurts from dehydration and lack of sleep. I calculate that I have had about ten hours sleep since arriving in Vladivostok four days ago. Once again I get one of the crew to carry my big bag down the perilous gangplank (which he does on his head!) and at last I’m standing on Japanese soil.

Unlike in South Korea, the order of disembarkation here is Japanese first, “Foreigners” second, then thirdly Koreans. I have no idea why. There are only four Japanese, one Russian and six other Asian foreigners on the ship. Immigration and the Ebola screening goes well, but I’m singled out for special attention at customs.

The officers simply do not believe that I could be here on holiday. After all, what sort of tourist from Great Britain arrives in a place like Sakaiminato with a beard and lots of luggage in the middle of winter? We run through some basic questions using laminated cards translated from Japanese into English, then they start to search my luggage. They clearly haven’t found what they are looking for, so they decide to take me to a side room for a full search and ask me more about my smoking habits. I consider telling them that I’m good friends with Paul McCartney, but decide better of it.

My tin of Coleman’s English Mustard powder is singled out as a possible narcotic, but everything else seems to be fine apart from (rather bizarrely) a roll of sealable freezer bags I’m using to keep my food fresh. There are no questions about my Handpresso machine or my medical kit containing emergency opiate based pain killers and needles. I wonder if they think the freezer bags are to distribute my mustard powder on the street in wrap sized amounts?

As they are still not happy, they conduct a full body search, and this reveals 10040 Korean Wan (£6.42) that I have carefully concealed in my right trouser pocket. They clearly don’t believe my story, which I try and explain further. I discover that the magic words are “writing a book”, as when I say this they decide to release me straight away! It’s funny when you see this kind of stuff on TV “fly on the wall” programmes the suspect is always very nervous and aggressive. I have been the model of charm and good gaijin manners, so I feel a bit hard done by. Anyway, I’m in.

When I get to the terminal building the Korean tour groups are crowding the only exit and my bus to the railway station is leaving. The driver kindly stops and let’s me and my snow covered luggage into his immaculately clean bus to take me to the railway station. It’s deep snow outside and wheeled bags are no use here. Note to self – get an international patent for strap on luggage sledge runners.

Everything runs smoothly at the railway station and I convert my JR rail voucher into a pass which entitles me to a week’s travel in first class (known in Japan as Green Class) on most types of train. I manage also to make some reservations and sit down in the waiting room to ahead of the arrival of the “manga train”.