I wandered away from the huge crowd that was still cheering Boris Yeltsin, and went over to the other side of the Russian Parliament building. For all the brave words from the balcony, the precarious predicament in which Yeltsin and his followers found themselves was abundantly obvious.

Essentially there would be nothing to stop a fleet of a few dozen tanks converging on the Russian Parliament, firing into the air, quickly scattering the crowd, and arresting Yeltsin… and the people knew it. A very makeshift barrier had been created from pipes, rocks, twisted rebar, old furniture, and other junk. This barrier went round the building or at least part of it…

To get inside this you had to go through one of the few gaps, where there were volunteers checking people’s bags, presumably for weapons – my little backpack was given a cursory glance as I passed through.

I watched as more bits of makeshift barricade were brought in. It was really hard to see how any of this would stop even one tank. As such, it seemed to me to be a somewhat futile gesture, but perhaps symbolic of the will of the people, and it at least gave them something to do.

Of perhaps greater significance was the presence of TV crews round the few tanks that had come over to support Yeltsin’s side. The coup leaders had shut down the newly independent national news outlets, but if foreign TV crews were able to keep recording and transmitting, then it would be that much harder for the Red Army to just storm in, with guns blazing, and then pretend it hadn’t happened.

Wherever the renegade tanks and trucks had parked, there were many civilians talking to the soldiers and tank crews.

Keeping these military personnel on the side of the people was clearly number one priority for everyone. Flowers had been placed in the muzzles of the guns, and there was generally a relaxed and confident atmosphere.

Clearly this wasn’t at all how the coup-leaders had expected things to pan out. They must have been bitterly regretting their failure to seal off the Russian Parliament, and capture Boris Yeltsin, at the same time that they put President Gorbachev under effective house arrest in the Crimea.

Leaving the vast and swelling crowds behind, I went past another makeshift barricade, and started headed back down Kalinina Prospekt – the long boulevard leading back towards Red Square and the Kremlin.

As I headed down through “no man’s land”, I was uncomfortably aware that this apparently stable stand-off could end at any time without warning. At each end of the long avenue I was walking down, were 2 fearsomely powerful, and ideologically opposed forces, who were not going to back down easily.

At one end, inspired by a charismatic elected national leader, was the apparent will of the Russian people to shake off communism, and at the other end was the might of the Soviet Red Army, under direct orders from the Kremlin, with 75 years of experience of quickly stamping out dissent.

And wandering along in the middle, with a little camera, was me….

As I walked, I had one ear listening out for any signs of immediate danger, and in the other ear an earphone feeding me the BBC’s continuous coverage of my predicament. I didn’t want to miss anything new that was said by the Moscow reporters. Since she started reporting the coup yesterday, Bridget Kendall’s normally measured and soothing tones have already jumped up half an octave. If they were to go up any higher I wanted to be the first to know, so that I could quickly figure out which way to run.

It was a very curious sensation to hear dramatic updates of the international headline news story, that were essentially telling me what I had just seen with my own eyes. I could honestly have reported it myself! At the same time I was struck by the fact that although events at the Russian Parliament building were known to me and the international news reporters there, they weren’t known to the vast majority of Russians, since the coup leaders had taken control of the national media.

When the Kremlin came into sight once more at the east end of Kalinina Prospekt, I was still no closer to answering my main question of the day: Is this coup going to succeed, and is the world therefore going to slide back into another Cold War era?

I was well aware that many worried people round the world were, at that very moment, asking themselves the exact same question…

However, three important clues to the answer were waiting for me as I approached the Kremlin roadblock on Kalinina Prospekt. The first clue was that animated debates were now taking place between members of the public and each soldier, all the way along the line of troops.

The atmosphere seemed noticeably less tense that it had in the morning – even a few smiles were exchanged.

The second clue was a poster I found, that was stuck to an adjacent wall.

It was clear that the poster was a statement from Boris Yeltsin, presumably condemning the coup – I could recognise his name in Russian letters. It seemed very significant to me that even near the Kremlin, under the noses of the supposedly loyal soldiers defending it, these posters were not being taken down. They were in all likelihood being distributed all over the city – getting the word out even in the enforced absence of a free press. I hoped that whatever the statement said would have the desired effect. In due course, a full translation of it came my way:

I came across the third clue as I walked back towards where I had been in the morning. Two tanks were parked, close to the Kremlin defence line, with protestors swarming all over them. It was one thing for this to happen at the Russian Parliament with the tank crews that had switched their allegiance to Yeltsin… but here, close to the Kremlin?

I kept listening to the BBC reports, but there was as yet no mention of what appeared to me to be significant developments, in terms of the growing confidence of the protestors. The reporters here were no doubt seeing the same thing… but could it be that I was witnessing news events that the BBC hadn’t yet managed to report to an anxious world?

Confirmation of this seemed to come when I turned the corner to where the army had been setting up the outer roadblock earlier, when they accidentally blocked in the demonstration. There was no longer any sign of the outer roadblock, and I could walk back down to Marx Prospekt. Here an amazing sight was waiting. A line of tanks had arrived but they weren’t being used to block any roads. They were just sitting there, covered with people, with their guns pointing in the general direction of the Kremlin.

I watched and thought to myself. If I were one of the coup leaders, and looked out of the Kremlin to see this, it would have been the last straw. Tanks that I was supposedly ultimately commanding, now pointing there guns towards me, covered with people protesting against me?

I could almost see the mood changing before my eyes. More people were flooding down Marx Prospekt to join in. The symbolism of the front tank pointing its gun at the Kremlin was not lost, and this tank filled up with enthusiastic protestors.

As an example of people-power in action, this was about as good as it was possible to get. If these people had stayed at home the scenario would have been totally different. But they didn’t. They cared enough about their country not sliding back to Marxist-Leninism, to defy the state of emergency, come out in their tens of thousands, wave flags, and climb on the very tanks which were sent as a symbol of totalitarian authority to intimidate and quell their protests.

I suddenly decided that I, too, am no fan of totalitarian authority, and had no desire for a return to the Cold War…

…so I looked for a suitable tank to climb on…

…and found one.

This seemed a totally appropriate thing to do at the time. But if someone had told me 3, 6 or 9 months ago that towards the end of my round-the-world trip I would be standing on one of a fleet of Soviet tanks, with their guns pointing somewhat threateningly towards the Kremlin, and that I’d do so as a protest against a new self-declared Soviet president… I think it’s fair to say that there is absolutely no conceivable way that I could have imagined such a possibility! Yet here I was…

As I climbed off the tank, waved goodbye to the tank crew, and started heading for the Belorussky Station, I felt very optimistic that the coup was doomed. I also felt physically and emotionally drained from the intense excitement of the last 36 hours.

At the station I found Gill, from the Trans-Siberian who had also stayed at the same apartment last night. She was travelling on a later train to Warsaw. I boarded my train, struggled to climb into my assigned top bunk, and fell into a deep sleep.