Siberia. Magadan to Novosibirsk via the Road of Bones. Picking up from Front Row for Don Quixote: The Last Day in Novosibirsk. The series starts here: We Needed an Expedition, Not a Holiday.

After the ballet, Olga drove us to the airport for a late-night flight to Seoul, then on to Auckland.

Leaving the Land Cruiser for the last time, I gave her a pat and said thanks for the service she’d given us. I hoped someone would fix her tyre.

In the airport we bought some Matryoshka dolls. Souvenirs had been thin on the ground the whole trip, and it felt wrong to come home with none at all.

Thirty-six hours later, we landed home.

PS: We had a road trip planned with Greg for the following April — Moscow, Crimea, Georgia, Armenia, Chechnya, Volgograd. Covid put a stop to that, and we stayed home instead.

Greg made it back to New Zealand eventually.

He still had our misplaced travel bag.