Russia - data and voice cards needed.

[sleepy]

After my journey, a quick update.
In Moscow I entered a peripheral mobile phone shop where nobody would speak English and me no Russian, but just using few keywords (and handing only the photocopy of my passport) for 500 Rubles I got a Megaphone SIN with 100 MB/day for 30 days in all Russia (everywhere they told me).

This turned all to be true and all the buying procedure lasted no more than 15 minutes. Everybody in the shop quite amused by this strange(r) buyer, but also very competent and to the spot.
As I got out of the shop the connection was already alive and kicking, with all necessary bells and whistles. If only it were always like this!

The coverage was quite good along all the Russian part of Transmongolian railway line. Almost always at least edge connection was available (with inevitable holes all along, but not so many to get "desperate").
At the border with Mongolia I made a very long VOIP call home. Sometimes calls by standard service have poorer quality...

The main problem was keeping the phone charged, since on the Chinese branded wagon only 48 V DC was available. Strangely some chargers would work, others would not. I have some theories for which would and would not, but I leave it to another place!
Therefore, what I needed to economise was electric power, rather than traffic (I shared the load among many phones and batteries to ease the "pain").
Here as it will be in China, GoogleMaps proved to be invaluable to follow our advancement in the trip!

Cheers,
Sleepy