This afternoon we boarded the plane to go to Kamchatka, the Eastern-most area of Russia. It is to the Southeast to Siberia, but not quite Siberia. The plane stopped for refuelling in Anchorage. Although the plane was there for nearly 40 minutes, they would not allow to get off the plane and have look at the Land of Sarah Palin.

Later that day the plane arrived at Kamchatka. Well not quite later that day, as we crossed the international dateline and in doing so, lost a day. Let us see...we lost three hours traveling from Toronto to Vancouver, another four hours travelling between Vancouver and Kamchatka, and a whole 24 hours when we crossed the IDL. By now no one had idea what day and time it was at home. Just as well. One is not supposed to think about anything else when one in on a tour like this.

We checked into our hotel Avecha, probably the best in the city. Once we had a look at our rooms we didn't want to know what the second best hotel would look like. In fairness I must say each room had its own single beds, en suite bath with a single bath towel. There was even room to move around (two feet either side of the bed).

Our dinner was at the hotel's dining room called the Coliseum (patterned after the Roman one). After dinner, there was dance music. The first number was Jai Ho, a Hindi song from Slumdog Millionaire. Strange. Here we were in a remote part Russia, hoping to savour the culture of a distant land but were incongruously surrounded by statues of Roman Emperors and were being entertained in Hindi!