The most beautiful place in the world!!!!!

3 days on a train is not to be underestimated!!!! wake up, look out of the window, have some food, look out of the window, have some food, go to sleep! all within a 6ft by 4 ft cell!! we felt like animals at the zoo - add to this that the train runs on moscow time, you cross 3 time zones, and there is only about 5 hours of sunlight a day and you are in a bit of a muddle!!!! But it was so completely worth it!!!

We arrived into Irkutsk at 6am (Moscow time, 11am Irkutsk time, and 3 am GMT!!!) and were met by the guy whose house we would be living in for the next week or so. We had decided to take him up on the offer of a lift from the train station to his house as it was 70km towards the middle of nowhere!

We are staying in Listvanyanka which is a small village by a river sourcing lake baikal. It is so beautiful that we are staying for an extra three days! (only bad point is that the two computers are broken so there is no internet!!!)

We arrived on sunday and after settling in decided to go for a walk into the town but didn't get very far because we had to stop every 5 steps or so to admire the view!!! From our house it is a 2-3 km walk into the town along a path right by the lake. On the left of the path is a kind of snow covered forest with lots of hills, and on the other side of the lake are huge snow topped mountains (apparently they are pretty far away and if you try and walk accross the ice towards them it seems as if you never get any closer!!!!). It is alot warmer here than we expected (-10 to -12 ish) and this means that the lake isn't as frozen as it should be, as a result the ice is still forming and you can hear it moving along the river, scraping past other sheets! There is also a fish market and we have spent most lunchtimes with a piece of smoked fish on a piece of wood on the shore just taking it all in!

On tuesday our host - Valere - took us for a small hike. We went right to the end of the village and up into the forest. It was amazing!!! Although Jim didn't see a lynx ( more dissapointed that you would expect!!!) Valere spotted fox and squirrel trails. He also picked leaves along the route to make us some tea (cups of snow melted over a fire!ace!). Nice to get a bit of exercise and from the top of the hils we had some incredible views! (which can only be done justice using photos!)

Wednesday we went cross country skiing which was difficult but alot of fun! again we had lunch and tea over a camp fire. After skiing we took a well deserved banya (russian sauna) and have already organised our next one!!!!

Tomorrow we are taking a ferry over to port baikal to walk through the old train tunnels etc which should also be really good!!!! Apart from that I think all there is to do is to look at the photos!!!! - Oh there is also a huge ice sculpture with an ice slide which is lots of fun! haha!

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