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Published: July 12th 2006
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Skimming Stones, Lake Baikal
Skimming Stones, Lake Baikal We arrived at the Russian border in the early evening and after hearing numerous horror stories about Russian border guards, were suprised when they let us pass without even looking in our bags. The only grief we encountered was that as foreigners, ours were the only passports taken away for inspection and when the train began to shunt around we did get worried that we would never see them again. This was not to be however and we left the border after 2 hours, passports in hands.
We pulled into Novosibirsk, the 'capital' of Siberia at 9:00 and had the whole day to kil before getting on the next train. We were able to locate a left luggage office and left our bags before heading to a Russian copy of Kentucky Fried Chicken for a very greasy breakfast. The rest of the day was spent playing cards in a park and checking world cup news on the internet before we headed off to buy some food for the train and then back to the station. Novosibirsk is what I would imagine a typical Russian city to be like. Large conrete, grey buildings with a lot of miserable looking people. Thank
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal god we were only there for one day! We encountered a lot of confusion as to when our train left. We bought our tickets in Semey, where all train times are given in Astana time. In Russia however, all departures are displayed in Moscow time so we were really confused as to whether our train would leave at 19:54 Moscow, Almaty, Novosibirsk or Semey time. We figured the best policy was simply to wait on the platform. Finally, at 22:54 (Novosibirsk time) , we boarded the train for Irkutsk.
The train to Irkutsk took 34 hours and we were stuck in a carriage with a very miserable mother and daughter pair who tried their very best to avoid even eye contact with us, despite our attempts to at friendliness. We arrived into Irkutsk two days later at 08;10 and, feeling very disorientated after a poor night's sleep on the train we used our Russian phrasebook and managed to ask a taxi driver to take us to the cheapest hotel in town. We arrived outside the Arena Hotel and walked in through the door to be greeted by leather sofas and a very twee reception area. Not bad at all.
Lone fisherman in the mist, Irkutsk Water Basin
Lone fisherman in the mist, Irkutsk Water Basin We talked to the receptionist and asked her for the cheapest room available. "That would be in Block 2" was her answer. She directed us around the corner to 'Block 2' and we walked in through the warren of prison-like corridors fully equipped with metal doors and concrete floor. Our room was not quite as bad as the Canub in Baku but was still pretty mangy. We managed a couple of hours catch-up sleep before heading out to register our visas as all foreigners must register with the state department within 3 days of arrival in the country. After dropping off our passports, we walked over the river to the train station, where after half an hour of wandering about, we managed to find the international ticket office and purchased our onward tickets. We went to collect our passports and with the registration completed, we were now legal visitors to Mother Russia.
After a pretty achieving day, when we walked past 'The London Pub' on the main square, we decided to treat ourselves. We entered and the first boon of the day arrived...Newcastle Brown Ale on tap!!!! I seriously had to pinch myself - truly unbelievable. We sat down
Siberian River, Transiberian Express
Siberian River, Transiberian Express and almost immediately the England v Ecuador game which we had missed whilst on the train the previous night was beamed onto the TV screen in the bar. The third bit of good fortune was that the fish and chips we ordered actually tasted really, really good. A very achieving day and an even more achieving evening saw us drinking the Brown stuff until we were kicked out at closing time.
In the morning, we somehow managed to put aside out hangovers and walked up to the bus station where, after a good bit of haggling, we chartered a taxi to drive us the 70km to Listvyanka on the shore of Lake Baikal. Known as the "Jewel in Siberia's crown", lake Baikal is much bigger than we imagined and is apparently stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived the skies darkened, the heavens opened and visibility was poor. Having come all this way though, we decided to make an effort and spent two hours skimming stones into the lake - something which caught on very quickly with the Russian visitors. After our arms decided they couldn't skim one more stone, we headed to the small restaurant to sample that Russian speciality Plov - basically rice with some carrot and mutton in it - filling but tasty. We headed back to Irkutsk just as the sun was beginning to come out and I managed to persuade our glum taxi driver Sascha to take a dirt track down off the main road to the lake where, popping out of the mist sat a lone fisherman with the beautiful scenery of the Irkutsk water basin behind him. This view alone made the trip out to Baikal worthwhile.
We drove back to Irkutsk and picked up our bags from 'The Prison' before heading down to the train station. Then BANG! We find ourselves right back on the tourist trail. With two entire carriages of the train given over exclusively to tourists travelling from Moscow to Mongolia, we had hit the Trans-Mongolian Railway route. We ended up sharing a carriage with an American-Ecuadorian called Marcel, who, nice as he was, his presence just kept reminding us that our isolation from the beaten tourist path was now lost.
We hit the Russian border the following day at 13:00 and waited 4 hours before our passports were even collected for inspection. After another 3 hours waiting and a thunder storm, we finally pulled out of Russia, again without any kind of bag inspection. We moved a short distance to the Mongolian border where it took another 2 hours to go throught the whole thing again and to fill in our health declaration form to certify that we hadn't been in contact with anyone who has SARS in the last 7 days! After nearly 10 hours waiting at borders, we were finally on our way through the moon-kissed Mongolian steppe. Destination: Ulaan Baatar.
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