We now leave the Tran-Siberian route, and board the Trans Mongolian train, a much more modern train than our last train that brought us to Irkutsk. The train slipped away from away from the platform just as the sun was beginning to rise. A hundred years ago the train would have continued to Port Baikal then driven onto a British built ice breaker then travelled across the lake onto its destination. However, the stormy sea and thick ice made the journey unreliable so the alternative was to build a railway through the mountains at the south end of the lake. This was to our advantage, the train thread its way through, rising, then dropping, twisting, through some tight curves, in something akin to the Polar Express film, then finally skirting the frozen Lake Baikal for more
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