Trans-Siberian trip from Ulaan Bataar to Irkutsk

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July 3rd 2011

Published: July 2nd 2011

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The Great Walsh of China

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cowboy on a Mongolian steppe

Hi Folks,

I hope you don't mind that, although I wrote them at the time, I am only sending them now because I had problems getting on-line. I'll catch up quickly.

23rd May
I closed my last blog as I was about to leave Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Russia. Well, that train journey was a crazy experience! Until I took this trip I thought a train ride was just that you get on the train on time, find your seat or bunk, read or sleep for the duration and get off at your destination. Ha! How naive I was.
First of all I’ll say that in my carriage/wagon there were 2 kupes (compartments with 2 sets of bunk beds on the 2nd class carriage) of Western backpackers – a young Dutch couple who work for Paypal in Ireland and live in Wicklow, a very young student from Boston College who has just done a term learning Mandarin and Chinese culture in Beijing, 2 naval officer graduates from Victoria, B.C. and 2 Danish guys. They were in my carriage, a few kupes down from mine but we chatted off and on over the 20-hour journey.

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13 horses for every person in Mongolia!

They talked about tours they had done in Mongolia for 3 – 7 days with different tour companies. It sounded really good and about $70/day. That’s a big improvement on the $275 for a short trip that I was quoted. (I have found form my travels that locals often view an older woman travelling alone as a mobile ATM machine, so quotes are often sky high. I was able to get the names of the best tour companies for future reference, Golden Gobi and Khongor, both of which have guest houses in UB where you stay the first night before setting off on a tour. By now I’ve heard similar reports from about eight backpackers. A French family had a great tour organised by “Idre” who has a guest house in UB, but others in the discussion group said, “We heard he was very ‘iffy’.”
I shared my kupe with a middle-aged Mongolian couple who were traders and were going to Russia to sell goods they had bought in Beijing. I had heard about people who go regularly back and forth to Beijing and Russia. Many of them were on the train from Zamyn-Uud that night, without tickets. An Australian

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Buddhist prayer flag

woman who has been running an orphanage in UB for years told me they have their goods sent very cheaply on a separate train. Everything has to be brought into Mongolia but the Mongolians can’t afford to buy a lot of the goods so the traders go on to Russia about once a week.
As soon as the train left U.B.at 7:30pm there was a flurry of activity as the traders ran in and out of each others’ kupes, swapping large packets of goods. There were about five carriages on this train and I think that we Westerners were the only non-traders. I couldn’t figure out why they had waited to get on the train to trade. There were black leather jackets going out of our kupe and packets of black belts coming in. The wife seemed to be trying to persuade me to buy a package of about six black-and-white striped trousers. I said “No, thank you” and she tossed the package under my bunk with my backpack anyway. Then the uniformed carriage attendant offered me a lovely, new velvet-type patterned blanket, for putting under my bedcover. I didn’t understand if she was selling it or what so I

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my Mongolian cabin mate's dinner - mutton and noodles

said “No, thanks.” The traders were amused by my confusion. I was really confused by the half-dozen plastic dummy torsos on one top bunk. After an hour or so the traders settled down and checked that all their transactions were recorded in their little notebooks. My cabin mate seemed to quite freely put his stuff over on my hooks before he stretched out and talked on his mobile phone non-stop.
At 9:15 we were given declarations to complete and the Mongolian border officials came through the train, checking passports and visas and taking away our passports for a time. An hour later they were returned and the train chugged a short distance. Then the Russian customs officials boarded the train and asked for our declarations and passports, which were again taken away. The carriage attendant/provodnitsa was like a school teacher when the Inspector came, the way she was ordering everyone to stay in their kupes, not to open the windows, keep all curtains closed, etc. etc.
Next a young Russian man arrived in the carriage and proceeded to thoroughly inspect each kupe. He lifted a floor panel in the corridor and shone a light into an area that would actually

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Home Sweet Home- for 2 days anyway

have been big enough to smuggle an adult. He ordered us to leave our kupe, leapt up on the top bunks and unscrewed ceiling panels. He pounded on the walls to be sure they sounded hollow. The racket was incredible. When he was satisfied he moved onto the next kupe. There must have been 10 kupes in our carriage alone.
There were periods of inactivity when my cabin mate sat quietly on his bottom bunk, looking rather anxious. (His wife had disappeared, probably to visit with her women trader friends.) He had a little English so I said once or twice, “Maybe I’ll make up my bed now”, but he was so stressed he said “Just leave it alone!” So I would beetle down to the backpackers to chat. All this went on for hours. At one point the attendant told me to go to my kupe because another officer was coming. When I did so I found a Russian woman customs officer shouting at my cabin mate about something. He was obviously trying to defend himself and she gave him pages of forms to complete. When she left he said to me, “It’s OK, OK.”
I then realised why

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Ulaan Bataar to Moscow, Trans-Siberian Railway

he had put some heavy things hanging from the hooks on my bunk, some actually under my bag. The same with the packet of striped trousers under my backpack. It seems the attendant/stewardess had a “friend” who was bringing many new blankets to sell in Russia and was rewarding the attendant for each one she persuaded someone to hide under their bedcover. The initial flurry of trading on the train was swapping so no one would have 20 packets of the same goods, proving that they were illegal traders – as if they were fooling anyone.
When he was sure that the officers had gone, my chubby cabin mate peeled off two brand new pairs of blue jeans he was wearing and madly tried to smooth them out to look shop-new. (This of course was familiar to me who regularly wears layers of clothes onto a RyanAir flight) At 1:00am we were told we could go to bed, but the train would not be moving until after 3:00am.
I had read that there is a complicated process at the Mongolia/China border and at the western border of Russia whereby the wheels (?) of the train have to be changed each

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my first glimpse of icey LakeBaikal, Siberia

time to fit the different-sized rail of the track. Today someone told me that that was because during World War II the Russians were afraid that Hitler would invade by rail and they changed the size of all of the tracks in Russia. Is this true? I don’t think so because all they would have to do is change a short length of track to stop a German invasion. (These mysteries keep me awake at night.)
The next morning when we woke up we were in Siberia, tootling along beside Lake Baikal, which was covered with chunks of ice. Oh, oh. At the first train stop there was a rush of traders out onto the platform to do business. There were those fancy blankets, now being displayed for Russian customers. I spotted the plastic dummy torsos, now wearing T-shirts and blouses and hanging by coat hangers from the traders’ arms. Our provodnitsa kept insisting that we Westerners stay very close to the train because it might leave without us. When the Dutch fellow said to her, “But what about the traders, they are quite far from the carriage door?” She said, “Ah, but I get rewarded if they make lots

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Lake Baikal shoreline further north

of sales” and gestured counting money. We were onboard when the train started to move but the traders only ran for it at the last minute, climbing onto the moving train and shouting at us Westerners to get out of their way. Such drama!
At the next train station they once more flooded the platform but Russian customs officers came along and told them to stop trading and get back into the train. They did so, but ran through two carriages and out onto the platform further down and resumed trading. Some of these traders were going all the way to Moscow doing this at every stop. Who says travel by train is dull?!
I arrived in Irkutsk at 15:30 and had booked a hostel online so I wasn’t stressed. First I had to convert my e-mail booking from Real Russia to an actual e-ticket. Once we enlisted the help of a young woman with great English, we were able to get them issued at an ATM-like machine in the train station. Next I persuaded her to bring me to an ATM to withdraw roubles. I’m sure you all know this but it is better to put extra money into

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heavy trading during a brief stop in Russia

your credit card account before travelling, then withdraw cash with the credit card when abroad. That way you don’t have to pay interest on the withdrawal and you don’t have to carry cash or exchange money. There are ATM machines pretty well everywhere nowadays, but not all of them have an English service so the discrete help of a local can be very handy.
I followed the hostel directions issued online and caught the tram to the appointed stop. The conductor charged me 3 fares – two for my luggage, which was a bit much. Finally I found the hostel and entered the building with the code given, so I knew I was in the right place. I knocked on the apartment door and rang the “backpackers” bell for ages. No one was there. I went back outside and asked a friendly neighbour if she knew where the hostel owner was. She noticed a phone number on my booking form and rang it. Wrong number. Finally she managed to contact the hostel owner, Dimitri, who said he was out on Lake Baikal and had forgotten all about me! He sent his little brother round to collect me and bring me

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those blankets!

to a woman who ran some sort of accommodation. Dimitri assured me, “I’ll come to you tomorrow and I promise I’ll make it up to you!” That’s the last I heard of him.
This second hostel owner, Galina, was about 50 and said she had learned German in school. Well, she had about 10 words and used them up in the first few minutes so she resorted to sign language after that. Let’s just say she was a poor communicator. She couldn’t smile to save her life and more or less left me to fend for myself while she used her laptop on the kitchen table. When the phone rang and she went out I took a peek and saw that she was on a page of “love.mail.” Hmm, maybe she had a story to tell, pity she couldn’t talk.
She directed me to a cafe that served the cuisine of the local ethnic group, Buryat, so I went for dinner, then a long walk along the embankment of the Angara River. Yuri Gargarin Boulevard runs along the riverside and is named after the astronaut, who isn’t from Irkutsk.
Then yesterday I took a mini-bus from the bus station to

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our carriage "stewardess" supervises all activities

Listvyanka on the shore of Lake Baikal, at the mouth of the Angara River. I had wanted to take the Circum-Baikal Railway from the south end of the lake, up to Port Baikal which is said to be less touristy than Listvyanka, but the timing wasn’t right so I had had to continue on to Irkutsk. I was still determined to see Port Baikal, across the river from the much larger village of Listvyanka.
Well, I kept asking where one takes the boat to Port Baikal but no one seemed to know. Finally I saw a boat loading up with passengers so I asked the man onboard, “Is this for Port Baikal?” and he said it was. What followed was a less than memorable hour-long cruise along the rocky shoreline of Lake Baikal in the company of babushkas/grannies who were visiting from Uzbekistan. It was freezing! When I finally got back on dry land I said to myself, “At least the price was right.” (No one asked me for money so maybe it was a family cruise.) I finally found the information centre and the woman said that I couldn’t get to Port Baikal from there. It was a pretty

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"Have you a trading licence??" Oh-oh.

young woman in the hotel who, with excellent English, showed me on a local map where I needed to take a mini-bus taxi to get the boat to Port Baikal.
Ok, I got the taxi, but I was to discover that the driver overshot the ferry dock stop by a mile or so, so I had to walk back. Luckily the weather was OK and the wind wasn’t too bad. The ferry soon left and, in the charming company of the Chinese consul to Irkutsk and his wife and visa officer, we sailed across the bay. Unfortunately the last ferry was departing in a half-hour so I was only able to take a brief look at Port Baikal, enough to make me want to return some day.
I then taxied back to Listvyanka, starving, and followed a tip that people were barbequeing shishtlak for sale at the market. I had fond memories of the pork chunks on spears from my time in Ukraine. What a delicious feast! I had a very contented mini-bus ride back to Irkutsk. I decided to get off with the other passengers and not go on to the bus terminus. Mistake #1 since I had forgotten

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my cabin mate is back out selling belts

my map at the hostel. I then decided to follow my nose and walk.
Well, that was a very interesting walk. I found myself on Karl Marx Street and discovered why Irkutsk was called “the Paris of Siberia” in the 19th Century. Most of the town had burned down in about 1875, but about a decade later there was a gold rush and the town boomed. The beautiful buildings on Karl Marx Street date from that era. They are well-preserved and make quite a contrast to the sagging old log cabins.
I met a Russian who had taught himself very good English with Linguaphone tapes and he helped me to find a supermarket. There was lots to see and hear en route. I’m sure I walked an extra few miles trying to find my way, but I wasn’t worried because I knew my way from the river embankment if all else failed. Over two hours later, and just before dark, I found my way home.
I slept like a log after all that exercise!
Bye for now,
Sheila

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