Siberia. Magadan to Novosibirsk via the Road of Bones. Picking up from 634 Kilometres and a Rescue: Joining the Trans-Siberian. The series starts here: We Needed an Expedition, Not a Holiday.

The day was stunning — blue sky, a light breeze, and the road entirely to ourselves, warmer now that we were further south than we’d been in weeks. On the way to Chita we detoured to Nerchinsk, a small town whose museum was once the Neo-Moorish Butin Palace, a strange and grand thing to find sitting out here among the log houses.

We pulled blue plastic booties on over our shoes and took a guided tour, Olga translating as we went. The local history centred on the Decembrists, exiled here in the 1820s after their failed uprising against the Tsar. One room held an old Soviet school classroom, complete with the desks and posters, which brought back memories for Olga in a way that needed no translation at all — I watched her face do most of the talking before she said anything.

We had our photo taken in the Grand Ballroom, in front of a huge Rococo mirror bought at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair — at the time, the largest glass mirror in the world. Getting it here, to a palace in the middle of Siberia, must have been its own small epic. The other standout piece was a rare 1857 stained-glass window, Archangel Michael Defeating the Devil, shipped from Munich — one of only three known to survive.

Back on the road, we drove close to the Chinese border, two military jets running in formation overhead, tracking the line as though the line needed tracking. It was the first real reminder in days that this was still a country with borders that mattered to someone, even out here.

Lunch was out the back of the Land Cruisers again, in a field stacked with haystacks the size of houses. By late afternoon we passed under a camera gantry and arrived in Chita, the first proper city we’d seen since Vladivostok.

Breakfast the next morning was different — French, for a change. Janine liked the break from the local spread we’d grown used to. I missed the Russian habit of pancakes with condensed milk. There was no driving today, so the Land Cruisers went to the car wash, two weeks of Road of Bones finally coming off them.

The city tour started at the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, an old wooden church now housing the Decembrist Museum. Built in 1776, and still standing — I was genuinely impressed it had made it this far.

From there, on to Lenin Square, where I collected another photo standing next to a statue of him. The Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God dominates the square and is every bit as impressive as that name suggests. On the way back to the car we passed a clothes shop, and Janine had to go in. She loved a mink hat but was worried about what it meant for the mink.

I pointed out it was already dead. It wasn’t going to un-die itself on account of Janine’s conscience.

She bought it.