Ab, you could well be right. I've had another look at Bing Maps, guesstimating Richard's route towards Tokyo. There's a mixture of straight line features, a few which are 'healing over' and could well be seismic survey lines. In high res image areas it is possible to zoom in and see the power lines in some corridors, not pylons but goalpost style poles which are not that obvious from above. The Russian grid, from the numerous Siberian, hydro, gas and nuclear power stations now extends all the way to China.