Off and plodding

We have survived our first day and all is good.
Unfortunatley our brand new all singing and dancing camera decided to stop working before we even got on the first train to Brussels, what are the odds on that happening?
So now we have to carry a broken camera half way round the world to get it fixed when we get home.
We speant last night on the tran from Cologne to Warsaw in reclining seats that were not too bad in the end.  The lights going on every hour for tickets to be checked was not too good though.
We are planning to find a luggage storage at Warsaw station and head out for the day and find a new camera. It will be nice not to haul our backpacks every where for a while.

Now it's time to panic

Time seems to have flown VERY quickly and what do you know, this time tomorrow we will have barged our way through the rush hour London commuters with our backpacks and be settled on the train to London to start our trip.
The 1st leg is London to Brussels then Brussels to Cologne.  We have an overnight train to take us from Cologne to Warsaw but no chance of a decent night’s sleep as it is reclining chairs! That takes care of Friday.
Saturday we arrive in Warsaw and have a few hours to see the sights and have some dinner before we head off from Warsaw to Moscow overnight. This time we are travelling 1st class, but not by choice it is just because that was all that was available when we booked but after a night on reclining chairs I think we will need it.

There is just time for some last minute checking, double checking and triple checking we have everything and then it is just one more sleep to go .......

Is it time to panic yet????

OK, so quite a lot is already sorted out and ready but oh my life there is still so much not ready.
As an example we have no sleeping bags which we now realise are very crucial as quite a few nights on our Tibet to Nepal trek are spent at 5000m in monestary's like the one at Everest Base Camp with no heating, rock hard beds and no electricity. 
We have not yet downloaded as many books as we can onto our Kindle's to entertain us on our train journeys.
We have tried the super noodles we have brought to eat on the trains and they are pretty rank, but they are edible .... just, so some more food is in order to take I think.
We have no itinary for China and India yet and the list goes on and on. 
But to be fair, in our defence we do have all the train tickets to get us from London to Beijing arranged, the hotel in Moscow,  hostel in Mongolia and Beijing are booked.  The trek from Tibet to Nepal is booked and deposit is paid for and the youth hostel in Kathmandu and Pokhara are booked.  Everything else will be booked as and when we decide where we are going.
6 days and counting

Bow has lodgers arriving

Bow is preparing the house for the arrival of Allen and Penny (my mum and dad) and their dog Hollie.

There is no time like the present ....

As those of you who know us are aware, we have been talking about doing a 2 year trip in our tuck for as long as we can remember.  Due to unforeseen circumstances we could no longer use Ella our big green Volvo and so the hunt for a new truck was on.  We found a Renault TRM 2000 but turning that into our home on the road was not going to be a quick fix and so we decided that a back packing trip by train and bus was a solution to get out and do some travelling in the short term.
Our planned route is to go from London to Russia (via Europe) and then on to Mongolia, we then enter China and take a tour from Tibet to Nepal via Everest Base Camp and then enter India to arrange our way home.
We head off in 9 days and counting,