Moscow to Irkutsk and beyond

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Moscow - Irkutsk

The afternoon in Moscow was perhaps the closest we've come to arguing thus far,

after walking round the Kremlin (I only just managed to get the camera in and had

to leave most of the lenses outside) - we were all tired and irritable, and somewhat

lacking in the ability to make any real decisions....fortunately after some aimless

meandering we found a restaurant, which had a great view over Pl Revolyutsii

Square & the statue of Karl Marx, and good quality food (they stopped doing beer

at 7...but we stayed anywyay!)

We got the train dead on time at 23:25, and were greeted by our non-too smiley

provodnitsa, who whilst not smiling at us, was still very helpful, and also quite

irritable once we made her repeat herself a number of times, but this too was

pretty good humoured, as she proceeded to rool her eyes and tut at us....still we

managed to get sorted, and had a few beers, and cracked open the vodka!
on awakening, we realised how much of Russia really is identical, and how very

poor it all seems, essentially it the view went from swamp to trees, swamp trees,

swamp trees, village, swamp trees and so on
All the buildings are made of wood, bar those former Communist buildings, few

buildings seem to have phones, or probably even electricity.

Day 2 on the train, we had a Russian girl who was only with us briefly overnight

(not what it sounds like!!) from Perm (one of the mosty desolate forsaken, former

industrial cities I have ever seen (and also what Half-Life 2 or STALKER must have

been based on) to Tyumen.
Then another whole day of swamps and trees...with the excitement coming when

we spotted some cows - the first we'd seen since Poland! And then even better -

we saw chickens!!!!
The evening of day 2 we had a couple of hours with Vassily, a friendly chap, with

very little English, so we cracked on with the vodka, and were even assisted with

some basic Russian (courtesy of Dimitri - an Irkutskian(?) which I've now forgotten

because of the vodka!!)

Day 3 on the train. Yaaawn...OK now the lethargy and body clock confusion sets

in - definitely not boredom, but some kind of lack of enthusiasm. We get Edward -

a regional manager for an oil company - his english is very good. Then we

adjourned to the restaurant car, more for the beer than the food - we have eaten

there once, and Russian food certainly lived lived up to all expectations. It was

greasy, watery and didn't really fill us up - I can't remember the last time I saw

chips drip oil!
At this point we realised that despite the local clocks being 9pm, Moscow Time

was still on 4pm in the afternoon - and that being the time the trains run on, our

body clocks were really now getting confused - we had the 8th time zone change

in less than a week. Slow motion jet lag...very odd.

We're now in Listvyanka, staying in Hotel Baikal, with a fantastic view

overlooking Lake Baikal, having enjoyed the first decent showers for a week.

Bliss!!


It's a former Intourist Hotel, so presumably in the past for high up party members. While here we had a full

moon rising over Lake Baikal, which was truly spectacular, and a gorgeous once in a lifetime sight...



As a slight update - we're actually now in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, having endured an 8 hour border

crossing to Mongolia....but more on that later...

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Photos

The restaurant car
Hmmm...save for beer only - Russian food really is like you'd expect

Full Moon over Baikal
It was a full moon over Lake Baikal, and I don;t think we could have asked for a calmer, or clearer night...