Thirty-six hours after leaving my apartment in Tokyo, I'm now at Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan on mission for my job. The last week or so has been a mad dash to make the necessary preparations to visit eight cities in six countries in just over a month, so you've probably noticed that I haven't been blogging as often.

Before I left Tokyo, I was mid-way through setting up a mini travel photo site to allow me to post digital images while I'm away. Once I'm done tweaking the presentation over the next few days, I'll post the link so you can follow my travels, if you're interested.

The journey getting here was epic: limousine bus departure from Shibuya in the middle of one of the biggest typhoons ever to hit Tokyo, a 10 hour flight to Moscow, transit for 4 hours, a 4 hour flight back towards Tokyo to Bishkek landing at 3:30am their time, followed by another 3 hour wait while one of our party was missing in action, then a 4 hour bus road to the lake. Is the destination or the journey getting there the best part of travelling? Either way, I'm exhausted!

Some random thoughts from the journey: horizontal rain at 120km/h, can't get real milk with my coffee (again!), middle-aged Russian woman in the tightest pants I have ever seen, surly flight attendants, beef or chicken?, shabby cattle class, barking immigration officials, flesh flesh flesh everywhere, Russian sausages, damn my bags are heavy, "sir, don't steal that glass", non-locking toilet doors, "don't worry, the x-ray's safe for ALL film" (read: put it through and don't argue), puking next-door-neighbour, "ma'am, do you speak Russian...come with us...you don't have the right visa" (I did), rolling verdant hills, turkeys and donkeys, stench-filled toilet pit, gushing river, eating smoked fish and unleavened bread with fingers, swollen ankles and sore muscles, salty alpine lake with lobster-red overweight sunbathers, my laptop won't connect to the internet(!), 48 hours mostly awake...I need to sleep!

On Saturday, I leave here to continue my travels for another four weeks in Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and returning to Japan on 11 September. The rest of my trip will be purely devoted to photography, so I'm really looking forward to the visual discoveries that are about to cross my path.