To be continued....

---

We left Mongolia on the 15th and boarded the train headed to Irkutsk which was to be our first stop in Russia. Once again we had a compartment to ourselves, and the Provodnitsa (carriage attendant) was a jolly, gay German who would surreptiously wink and blow kisses to me on his way past. The trains between Mongolia and Russia are full of Mongolian traders, smuggling their wares across the border. We had been warned to check the shelves and under the seat compartments in our carriage, so that there was nothing stored there that did not belong to us. What we were not warned about was the endless procession of these traders up and down the carriages in the no-mans-land between the two countries, looking for somewhere to spread their loot. A woman came and innocently hung a jacket up in our compartment, when she left we felt the pockets, and sure enough there was something stashed there. We closed the door and emptied the pockets, it turned out to be only a couple of pairs of gloves. We wondered firstly, how the traders could possibly remember where they had stashed everything, and secondly, how much money they would get after going to all this effort.

The border crossing took around 5 or 6 hours. It began on the Mongolian side just after 10pm, so we didn't actually complete the crossing until after three in the morning. During the crossing there is only a 20 minute window that the toilet is opened, so we stayed awake for this, handed over our passports, stepped outside the cabin whilst the Russians searched, and then we both went to sleep. After many hours, our passports were handed back, our customs declarations handed back (Patrick slept through all of this) and we were allowed to turn out the lights and really sleep.

On arrival in Irkutsk, we farewelled our friendly Provodnitsa, found our way out of the station and jumped on a tram to go two stops to what we hoped would be our hostel. The difficulties we had is that a) we don't read cyrillic, b) we don't speak Russian, c) Russian addresses are hard to decipher and d) signs to hostels are not really displayed clearly (for instance the sign for the hostel we are staying at at the moment is a small paper sign plastered to the inside of the window, three floors up, with nothing, nothing on the door outside). After walking around the same block several times, we realised our mistake and finally found a door, with a doorbell and a sign that said "backpacker hostel". Alas, they had no beds left, but we were able to get a double room in an apartment across the way for 1200 rubles a night (about AUD $66...not cheap).

We very quickly realised that Russia was going to be bloody expensive, and not the place to take our time, so we got very organised, very quickly. Within an afternoon, we had organised visa registration, organised our trip to Lake Baikal, been to the internet, re-packed our bags so that we could leave one pack behind, bought food and were ready to leave the next morning to make the Circum-Baikal railway. The train only goes Thursday, Friday and Sunday, and we had read that you could take the local train down to Temnaya Pad, jump off and walk for an hour down to a village called Angaskolkya and meet the Circum-Baikal there. The timing though was quite important, if we took the train on Thursday, and it was delayed etc, it meant that we could potentially miss the Circul-Baikal and it wouldnt be too much of a drama as we could find a place to stay and then meet the train on Friday. If we left it until Friday, it meant there wasn't another train until Sunday, and even the helpful staff at the guesthouse were a little dubious of our plans. So, we rocked up at what we thought was 9am, presented our sign in cyrillic, which said "2 tickets to Temnaya Pad", only to be waved away by the ticket seller and told the next train wasn't until 17.30pm......huh?

Our watches were an hour slow....even though we had not crossed any timezones.......SHIT!! After all our careful planning we could not believe it!!

---

Comments

[simone]

loving your blog.... looking forward to reading part 2