Young - Trans-Siberian odyssey: 5,000 miles by train from Beijing to Moscow

Part of the Trans-Siberian Writing Challenge
21 September to 10 October, 2008.

BLOG:transsibwriter.wordpress.com

TWITTER:KateYoungWriter

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Thanks to:

My travelling companion and friend, Nikki Bennett; my fianc Hugh Couch and my family for being so supportive. To Steve Collins for helping me design the printed version (2009) and to Mike Hyman of Collca ebook publishers for allowing this book (and the charity) to reach an even wider audience.

THERE can be few things sadder than the death of a young person and the apparent death of an ambition. But both have inspired my Trans-Siberian Writing Challenge and the resulting travel diary.

The young person was my colleague Jeremy Price, who died at the Earl Mountbatten Hospice on the Isle of Wight in October 2007, aged 34 just two years older than I was at the time.

I had worked on and off with Jeremy on the Isle of Wight County Press newspaper for about eight years and like many journalists, he had left the newspaper for another title on the mainland and later returned to work with us again. But throughout all this time he was fighting a very serious battle with a brain tumour, which would eventually overcome him.

When Jeremy returned to the newspaper for his second stint, he sat on the desk next to me. At the time, I was planning this long trip to China and the Trans-Siberian Railway with a group of women writers from all over the UK. We were going to write a book together whilst doing this extraordinary journey.

Jeremy piped up one morning: What you all need is a challenge to keep you writing! And we laughed. All through the morning we kept coming up with daft ideas about how we could keep writing longest silly poem, comic verses, loony limericks who knows, maybe there was a Roger McGough amongst us (Jeremys favourite poet).

It wasnt until after Jeremys death and following the group of women writers dwindling from the original 11 to just two that I felt I should still do some sort of a challenge and raise money for the Earl Mountbatten Hospice, which had looked after Jeremy so well in his final days.

My travelling companion, Nikki Bennett, is a Bath-based poet (www.nikkibennettpoems.com) and I am a journalist, so a book created between us could have been a rather bizarre mixture of styles. Instead, we decided to work on our own individual writing projects whilst travelling together.

I found myself challenged to write at least 100 A5 pages during the 18-day trip so as well as travelling more than 5,000 miles overland and seeing the highlights of China, Mongolia, Siberia and Russia, I would have to write at least six pages a day to reach my target.

In my day-to-day work as a journalist, I write about commercial subjects such as motoring, bridal, home improvements, fashion and beauty, places to visit on the Isle of Wight, Christmas shopping, new businesses opening and much more. It is a job I have done for more than ten years and done it very well, but I find myself getting increasingly bored as predictably the same things come up again and again every single year. So I continue to do them well, but I cant help thinking there is something else for me out there.

As a child, my ambitions were to travel and write books. A lack of funds meant I didnt have a holiday abroad until I was 27, but during the past six years I have managed to get away to destinations in Europe and North Africa a lot more and have recently ventured as far afield as Croatia, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.

Regarding writing, my degree is in Creative Writing and Publishing with Political Studies and I have written numerous prize-winning poems and short stories, so there is a writer in there somewhere!

By setting a writing challenge to write an unforgettable travel diary whilst on the once-in-a-lifetime trip, I hope to rekindle a lost ambition and hopefully unleash the creative beast that lies within me.

Not that you would have known it in the final 24 hours leading up to embarking on what had become known simply as the Big Trip. Indeed, the only creative thing was probably the use of my bad language!

Due to an extraordinarily busy time at work, I wasnt able to pack until the evening before the trip. Various people in local phone shops had assured me my mobile phone would work in Russia, Mongolia and China, so I rang my mobile phone provider just to check I was activated for international roaming in all three countries.

The guy in the call centre proceeded to laugh loudly. Apparently, Pay As You Go customers like me were fine in Russia, but the phone wouldnt work in Mongolia or China. The only solution was to go contract minimum of 12 months.

So put me on contract now I fly out tomorrow! I howled down the phone. The reply was he couldnt, because it required a different sym card that had to be send by post. Blast!

The same evening less than 24 hours before my flight my digital camera developed problems, so my fianc Hugh loaned me his, which meant I had a new camera to get used to as well as a new contract phone (yes, I went to the nearest phone shop on Sunday morning before I left the Isle of Wight).

On the coach heading for Heathrow, I found myself thinking about Jeremy and how he would have felt about me taking off on this mad writing challenge I know he would have laughed about my technological dunderheadedness.

Jeremy was always an extraordinary reporter. Soon after he was diagnosed with a brain tumour, it was found to be in a place where it couldnt be operated on, yet he carried on for years with the same sense of professionalism and good humour.

When he was working for the Colchester Gazette newspaper in Essex, he wrote about his daily zapping and his illness in a weekly column. In 2004, it was entered into the Norwich Union-supported Medical Journalism Awards and was commended in the feature category. Jeremy was the only regional newspaper writer to reach the final.

In 2006/7, when he had returned to the Isle of Wight County Press the difference in him was marked in that his short-term memory wasnt terribly good. He used to carry out interviews over the phone and after he had put the receiver down, he would turn to me and ask whether he had arranged a photograph or asked a specific question.

But Jeremy being such an excellent reporter, he only had to look at his notes to find he had. He was a very precise note-taker and always coped with his illness with such good humour.

I hope I have been able to record my incredible trip with the same level of precision and good humour.