Well we made it in to Russia after a 12 hour border crossing from Mongolia, most of which involved sitting on the train scratching our head wondering what was going on !! Luckily no hassles with the visas after all the stress when organizing the trip.
We got off the train in a town called Irkutsk and then got driven to Bolshoe Goulostnoe on the shore of Lake Baikal. FYI Lake Baikal is the largest/deepest/oldest freshwater lake in the world. It is also very cold as we found out when we tried to go for a "swim". Our swim consisted of mad dashes into the water, a quick dunk and then a mad dash back out before our feet went completely numb. Very refreshing! I think the water was about 5 or 6 degrees. Not the warmest.
We stayed in a local's house and ate local food - borsch, potates and lots of fish (omul) from the lake. Oh yeah, we also drank lots of vodka (pepper vodka - pretty firey stuff) and raw frozen fish from the lake. The village was quite small and most of the houses were traditional Siberian wooden houses. Was a great place to relax after a couple of nights on the train.
Weather has been great, 25 degrees yesterday and almost feels warmer today. It has been staying light until about 11pm. Quite wierd. Is going to be even worse (better?) in st petersburg where they celebrate "White Nights" at the end of June where it hardly gets dark at all, only for an hour or so. Should be great fun, quite the party apparently.
Am catching the train to Moscow in about two hours which involves being on the train for three nights, nearly 4 whole days. Should be interesting. Should get a bit of reading done! Have bought a Russian-English dictionary to try and learn to read some Russian before I get to Moscow. It is quite strange getting used to a Cyrillic Alphabet.
So far Russia has been great. Pretty much what I expected, very, well, ... Russian I guess. Moscow and St Petersburg should be great. There has been a change in plans in that we are now contemplating going all the way overland back to London instead of flying from Prague. Sounds like more fun than "cheating" halfway through!!
Anyway, there won't be any updates for a few days while I am on the train ....
you're doing the same trip as another one of my friends, except in reverse. he's on a train to Irkutsk from Moscow - and before he was in St. Petersburg and he's on his way from Irkutsk to Mongolia.
ReplyDeleteTwilight Zone.