The Trans-Mongolian Part II - Ulan Baator (Mongolia) to Irkutsk (Russia)

Ok, after going back through my pictures I just remembered this leg of the train journey left in the eveining....not in the morning!

So, at around 8pm (I think!) we jumped on our second train bound for Irkutsk in Siberia, Russia. And it was here on the Monoglian station platform that I saw my first russian moustache.....however...it was on a woman. Her name Gallena, and she was our larger than life, slightly petrifying, Provanitza (carriage attendant). She knew next to no english, but after a few offeres of ciggarettes and chocolate, she was the tour groups best friend.

This train was slightly nicer than the previous. It was a lot cleaner, slightly more comfertable, and the carriage attendants were constantly walking up and down the carriage making sure everything was kept in a neat and tidy way.

This train journey was to take 2 nights, so once we sussed out that the border crossing wasn't until the following morning, we decided to have a few drinks on the train with some french guys we had met. It was here that we also met the drunkest tour leader in the world (thank god not our tour leader!), but an aussie girl leading some older folk on a Sundowner tour, which apprently cost a substantial amount more than our trip. This girl was really unbelivable, first of all she knew nothing about the trip and kept asking the F-RAT about when the train was stopping and for how long, and second, she kept leaving her group and crashing our cabin & drinking our vodka! She got so drunk on the first night we met her that we did our best to avoid her for the rest of the journey. Once we had kicked her out of our cabin as she was falling asleep, us lot continued drinking until around midnight when we all went sleep.

The following morning at about 5 am, we the first of our borders, Mongolia. Here we were stuck for around 2 and a half hours while they checked passports. 1 hour later we arrived at the russian border, where we stayed completely stationary for almost 9 hours. The first check we had was customs, where we filled out forms declaring what we did or did not have. Then our passports were taken and visas checked. We got the passports back around 5 hours later. Then they searched each and every cabin for drugs. Then they bought the sniffer dogs through, which was probably the worse part of the whole ordeal for us.

We were sitting in our cabin, patiantly waiting to leave, when all of the sudden the dogs come through sniffing around the outside of our cabin. Then the dog sat down....directly outside our door! Within 2 seconds our cabin door had been slammed shut, and the 4 of us could only sit there and listen as we heard the unhinging of bolts from the wall oppisite our door. Around 10 minutes later they re-opened our door, and we could see where they had completely dismantaled the wall. Even though nothing was found, the guard still wasn't satisfied, so he brought another dog in with 2 other guards...and this dog did the same thing! This time they didn't shut our door, so watched as they dismantaled the whole section of the wall oppisite our cabin, ripping out the lining and insulation in the wall. After around half an hour and still not finding anything, they gave up and put the wall back together again. Although none of us had a guilty conscience, having the area OUTSIDE your cabin searched at a russian border is definitely not something I would like to go through again!

So at around 3pm, the train set off to its first Russian stop, where we were able to get off the train for around half an hour. This is where we got our first taste of Siberian summer fashion, which on the girls included 5 inch high heel shoes, the tightest whitest and highest pants in the world, with a colorful often sequened top tucked in. On the guys it was black tracksuite pants, pulled up extremely high, and a black tank top. It was most bizarre, it was as if fashion in Siberia was still stuck in the early 80's!

We jumped back on the train and headed off towards Irkutsk, where we arrived the following day at around 9am, jumped on a bus, and headed strait to Lake Baikal.

The village where we stayed was called Listvyanka, a small little town right on the shores of the massive Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is the biggest and deepest fresh water lake in the world, and during the winter months is completely frozen over creating a roadway between each side of the lake. It had only defrosted around a month prior to us arriving. It really was the most amazing thing to look at. It was as if you were looking out at the ocean, not being able to see where the sky began and the lake ended. And the water was so clear, that when we did a boat trip out on the lake, you found yourself suffereing from vertigo as you could see directly to the bottom in some parts. The water tempreture at that time was around 1 degrees, so we decided going for a swim would not be the best of ideas!

Our group stayed in a bed and breakfast run by the charming Nikolai, who without any knowledge of the english language and us with no knowledge of Russian, continued to innitiate quite indepth converstaions with us all for long periods of time! It was really quite amusing....

We stayed in Listvyanka for one night, and the following day we headed back to Irkutsk, where we spent the day wondering around before catching the next part of our trip across Siberia to Vladimir.