There’s nothing I like more than waking up in the freezing cold darkness of random locations in the Russian country side, but I seem to be finding myself in this situation a lot recently. Perhaps we needed a new plan, perhaps we needed to wake up later, perhaps we needed to wake up so early it was still light, or perhaps we needed to fly home. For some reason or another flying didn’t seem to be the plan we went with instead we woke up earlier than the day before to drive even further, which only meant it was darker and colder. Whoever the hell said the night is always darkest before the dawn is clearly batshit insane because this field was darker than yesterday’s field and that was a hell of a lot closer to dawn. Not to worry though we packed torches for this exact reason, and we can pretty much pack our car blindfolded by this point.

 

I swear we don’t keep doing this on purpose but we ended up picking a field which was the perfect distance from our favourite petrol station’s loving sausage roll embrace. By “perfect distance” I mean we had traversed a large wedge of the map before we found that very specific brand, we had passed other petrol stations but we knew in our hearts it wouldn’t be the same. Not only did this petrol station serve food, it also had shower facilities which after two nights of sleeping in rubbish tips and fields we sorely needed. The shower facilities left a lot to be desired, they were little more than a small faucet suspended over a porcelain dish. Ok, ok they might have been sinks in the toilets, but damn it they were better than nothing. Over our hearty nutritious sausage based brain food we looked at the map, if we pushed it we might make it to Moscow today. The early rise put us in good steading for making it there for the late evening. We hit the road without wiping the crumbs from our freshly “washed” mouths. The morbid warning from yesterday had been long forgotten, as we passed endless trucks on open roads. There something oddly satisfying about over taking a string of trucks at speed perfectly timing the gaps between for the rare oncoming vehicle.

 

Out the window we saw a few trees in the distance in a field of grass, up close there was a rock on the side of the road. A few minutes later there was another tree close to the road as well, not as close as the rock had been but pretty close. That tree had flashed by before a long gap of grass. Then some bushes passed by but I don’t know what type they were but they had leaves. The leaves were green and quite similar to the leaves on the group of trees which took us a second to drive past. We overtook a big white truck which was driving slower than us which is why we overtook it. Unlike the rock I told you about before the next load of rocks were smaller but still quiet rock like. The traffic which was coming towards us from the opposite direction had been mostly trucks, but there was a few cars mixed in. Some of the cars had been blue but most of them had been black or white or red or silver or purple. In the distance there looked to be a field but next to the road there was more grass, it might have had a few of those rock like rocks dispersed amongst it but I couldn’t be sure. I could be sure that the tree we then passed was a tree because it was larger than the bushes which came after it, and that was interesting. The trees were of course much larger than the grass, that’s how I could tell that the tree had passed and we were driving beside grass. Once the next stretch of grass had been past we drove by an area which might have once been home to trees but was now also just grass. Seriously, why are you still reading this?

 

When it finally started going dark we had made solid progress past all the trees, grass, traffic, and rocks, well not all of them but I don’t really feel like describing them again. If you’re the sort of masochist that would enjoy that, feel free to read the previous paragraph and imagine that it was dark. The traffic slowly got denser as we got closer to Moscow. That’s not a scathing indictment of the Moscovian drivers, although they were driving moronically given the heavy traffic. Some of the drivers with spotless white 4x4s decided to make use of their choice of vehicle and were forging their own paths through the muddy shoulder, while others opted to force their way through the stationary traffic. Not having a horn to use was causing Chris stress, but the large gap where our exhaust muffler should have been meant I could give the engine a few roars and ward off the encroaching Russians instead. Admiring the scenery outside while we rolled in a traffic jam, Chris suddenly became a giddy child.

 

Instead of telling me what he could see he pointed out the window and there it was staring me in the face, a huge billboard “McDonald’s 2km”. Now I know you’re probably looking down at us from your traveling high horse, like eating McDonald’s is some form of travel cheating. But when you haven’t even seen one since Europe and have been misled so viciously by rumours on numerous occasions, you fucking stop for one. If you still disagree with our actions well then I’m afraid we can’t be friends. Gone are the days of ordering a random amount of mystery meat, now we could order our mystery meat in handy burger shaped portions. We stood dumbstruck admiring the glorious establishment we had found, not only was it a McDonald’s it was also a brand new McDonald’s with self-service touchscreens. After a prolonged period of prodding at the screen like a pair of confused Neanderthals we sat down to stuff our face with a delicious meal.

 

After the last morsel had been crammed into the last remaining space in our face holes, we used the free Wi-Fi to book a hotel in Moscow. Given we had spent the last few days driving non-stop only to sleep in a cold wet tent we decided to spend a full day absorbing the sights of Moscow. The only problem was that Moscow was still a few hours driving away, and the traffic hadn’t eased up while we stuffed our faces. For some unknown reason the traffic within Moscow was relatively light perhaps because it was now well past bed-time, by the time we reached our hotel it was 1.30 a.m. We had driven 821 miles and crossed 2 time zones. Perhaps it was the jet lag or perhaps it was because we had been driving for well over 21 hours, but we were well and truly pooped Moscow’s sights would have to wait to be absorbed.