The road to Barnaul, Russia. Nothing happens today. It's brilliant. We just drive 250km along smooth tarmac, through fields of sunflowers, listening to tunes. I could roll along like this forever, nodding my head, thinking up plans.
For now the plan is to get half-way to the border, pulling in at a place called Barnaul (pronounced barn owl) to pick up supplies and use the internet to work out where the hell we're going. We don't have a map of Russia, which is fairly stupid. We also need to work out where we cross into Mongolia, and what the hell happens when we do.
Barnaul seems like a weird name, until you get there and see how many ridiculous-looking women there are here. Very soon your head's rotating 360-degrees. Before you know it you're emitting a string of small pellets.
We head for lunch at the first place we find, a spot called the Goodwill Kafe. This is where things slow down. The kafe happens to be a health-food gaff across the hall from a gym that seems almost exclusively populated by particularly ridiculous-looking women. I've never seen anything like it. The effect is especially powerful after five-and-a-half weeks sweating in a Punto with two men.
To continue my line of film references, it's like the bit in O Brother Where Art Thou where the three weary travellers are seduced by the sounds of the Sirens, a group of women washing clothes in the river, only for two of them to wake up on the rocks and find their mate has been turned into a frog. We're sent into a daze with sushi, cappuchino and luxurious cheese-cake. Time slows down. Sadly my hope isn't realised: that we wake up later to find Jeff has been transformed into a dildo.
By the time we've finished our lunch, uploaded some more of this nonsense and got the information we need off the internet, it's getting towards the evening. We decide to stay at Barnaul and press on the full 600km to the border tomorrow. Steve goes off for a nightmare queuing session at the bank, while Jeff and I pick up some supplies, and chat in English to some kindly youths who tell us how to get out. We have to head to Biisk. 'Only don't stop there,' they advise, 'it's a criminal town.'
Not that Barnaul is free from peril either. I risk going back to the cafe to get directions to a hotel. In Homer's Odyssey I seem to remember Odysseus getting his men to tie him to the ship's mast to block the irresistible lure of the Sirens' call. I rely on the fact that I've got a big ginger beard and haven't changed my clothes for a week. Plus my top is stained with Jeff's talcum powder spit. That should keep those wiley bitches at bay.
Turns out there's a hotel next to the kafe. I go up as instructed to the 13th floor. The receptionist looks like a porn star. Two enormous breasts take our money and hand me a room key. What is it with this town?
Not only is the room affordable, it's covered with loads of Soviet war images, with aeroplanes on the ceiling. This place is a boy's dream. The art work makes us feel well protected. It's dangerous out there, so we bunk down for the night, happy and secure and in our own little world. Those bastard women cannot touch us here.
'We'll be at the Mongolian border tomorrow,' says Jeff. 'That's fucking nuts.' Yep.
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