Then the driver took up his own refrain. "Ten dollars,'' he said. "Ten dollars.''

Ten dollars is, in roubles, about two or three weeks' wages.

"Roubles,'' I insisted. "Ten roubles.''

"Dollars,'' said the driver, letting the Lada navigate itself.

"Home, you, me,'' repeated Tania and this three-way chorus persisted until we came to rest in a side street.

It was enough. I thrust ten roubles into the driver's hand and escaped from the cab, out into the blessed rain, hiding as soon as I could behind a wide tree. I was curious to know whether the driver would take Tania home as contracted, or indeed if he might supply her with the night of passion which, perhaps, she had been expecting from me. No such thing. Tania pushed open the door with her stubby legs and started to emerge into the open air. She wriggled, got one foot on the ground but then caught the other on the sill. Her luck had run out at last and she slipped and fell flat on her face, rolling over eventually, into a puddle.

The driver got out and advanced carefully round the front of the Lada, pulled Tania to her feet and began to wipe her down with his hands. Tania was staggering again but even so managed to push the driver away, climbing onto the pavement and heading back in the direction of Gorky Street. I followed her as far as the nearest corner and recognised, at no great distance, the outline of my hotel. In front of me two men appeared, walking with the gait of those who know where and how to find more than their vodka ration. Tania greeted them and they talked, circling slowly, convinced they were standing still.

It was time for me to go. I went down some broken steps, into an underpass an underpass steaming with the night andthe smell of stale urine. A beggar with a stump for a leg was sitting on a box; an old lady held out her hand, er eyes too deep to see.

Up on the other side, out in the rain, were the old ladies selling flowers. You can buy flowers everywhere in Russia, and it is wonderfully reassuring. The bunches were three or four roubles each and I bought an armful. I would use them the next day to decorate my compartment on the train.

LUDMILLA LED US down the platform at Moscow's Yaraslavsky station, with a green umbrella held high above her head. There were 24 of us on Tour 38, all destined, eventually, to bond together in a kind of siege solidarity as we undertook the longest train journey in the world.

Slowly the 17 coaches of the Trans-Siberian backed along the platform towards us. Two carriages were ours, next to the restaurant car; two travellers to each four-berth, first-class compartment. I was sharing with David from Wales.

My first visitor, an accountant from Guildford, popped his head through the open door. "I'm giving a stirrup-cup party,'' he said. "Russian champagne.'' We all knew that the train was supposed to be dry from end to end, but we had smuggled a healthy supply of alcohol on board. We crowded into the corridor: the couple from Walsall; two nurses, working in Saudi Arabia, male and female; Betty and Lewis from Oxford; two boys from Basildon, reading Turgenev; and a teacher, later nicknamed "Mastermind'' for the unending nature of his knowledge.