tran siberian express (not) = russia to china via mongolia

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so we got on the train and we were greeted by a tiny cabin with 2 bunkbeds and a local named anton - it / he looked like something out of an old war movie but within minutes we settled in and made it our home for the next 3 and half days...the facilities were basic to say the least we had a tiny bathroom with toilet and sink no shower and the catering consisted of a tank with hot water - if you want to lose weight and do no excercise we recommend the cup a soup diet...

so how did we keep ourselves amused on the train for 76 hours - lots of sleeping trying to communicate with the locals using sign language picture dictionary,thinking of ways to make our meals more interesting / exciting and looking out the window at all the snow.

after anton the snorer left....we had a nice old lady move in for a day who left us an apple and then finally a local who spoke english hello natalia if you reading this hope you are well were good in china trying to remember what we have done in the last 2 weeks for our blog..... after natalia left we had another lady move in who bought us some chocolate she obviously though we needed some food/nourishment...

we eventually arrived in Irkutsk 5am on 9 march to - 18 degrees and no clue as to the location of our hostel, the taxi driver had no idea either but we made it and were very excited about being able to shower again eat solid food and sleep in a proper bed even if we did have to share a room, with 4 smelly boys.....not much to report about irkutsk other than the smoking, constant vodka drinking and of course the famous (frozen) lake baikal which we visited on our last day and could only manage to put one foot on the ice cos it was so cold...it so frozen that cars can drive across it and they even have road signs on the lake. Our new friend natalia happend to have a friend maria who lives is from irkutsk so we ended up discovering where the good bars are in irkutsk...not that we experienced russian night life we ended up partying in our hostel most nights with our fellow travellers 2 very drunken english girls, a paranoid american, 4 young danish boys and a lebonese french russian gay couple.. as you can imagine it got quite messy lots of beer vodka and falling windows - we of course were fast asleep and were woken by the sound of the 6ft window crashing on poor danish boys head...his friend of course was more concered about his beer but we thought he would have been more worried about the flower pot that he bought earlier with his beer!!!!

after an eventful night we had to prepare ourselves for our next train journey to mongolia another 36 hours, more soup and a boarder crossing that took longer than the train ride from irkutsk to ulaan bataar luckily we had our danish friends to keep us company. This time it was a chinese train which meant it was a bit more modern than our previous train - we had a tv that didnt work and lots of flashy signs telling us the tempreture local time in moscow and if the toilet was vacant - compared to the last train this was luxury.....we managed to maintain some level of sanity whilst sat on a non moving train for 12 hours while everyone else around us was losing theirs we had danish poetry sessions, deep and meaningful conversations with travellers who are trying to find themselves!!! and mongolian women getting very upset by smelly shoes whilst trying to eat her lunch

we couldnt wait to arrive in outer mongolia....to be continued!

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