Siberia and it's 35 degrees! Above zero!

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Well, we made it. Four nights and four days on the Trans-Siberian Express, (I know, not so express). It was the train that made 44 stops along the way. So we have left Europe and we are now in Asia, we went through five time zones, travelled 5,185km, (will have to work out for yourselves what that is in miles) and we are still in Russia, blimey! Does this country never end?

On the whole it was a great journey, but what with the clocks going forward one hour every day and on one day two hours you didn’t know whether to eat, sleep, drink or read but the majority of the time it was never what you should be doing for that time of day and what with it not getting dark until 11.30pm it was better to just give up and live for that moment.
In our carriage, except for two other tourists it was all Russians and seeing I speak niet Russian conversation was at a minimum. We did, however spend one evening in the restaurant carriage having a couple of beers then moving onto the vodka with a couple of locals (all of a sudden I was speaking fluent Russian) just as we were beginning to get the lingo our lovely barmaid over flowing with her customer service wanted us out and it was still early, well for us it was, so a little bit of under the table encouraging went on with the I am really happy to serve you barmaid so we could stay that extra half an hour and we still got kicked out.

As for the scenery it just goes on forever but due to having supply an ever hungry China economy with timber the Teigra forest (I think that is the name) has been completely decimated and now is just a shadow of its once former dense self. Shame!

When we did finally get off in Irkutsk, Siberia completely disorientated it was a very sticky 38°F, again I was not expecting this, we took the 70km bus ride to Lake Baikal, which is (drum roll) the largest fresh water lake in the world, which is where we will be spending the next two nights. So until the next update, see you.

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Photos

A snack
Nowhere else to eat. I shall eat in my bunk bed then.

Getting to know the locals
Sometimes there just isn't enough vodka!

Our cabin
Stealing a few solatude moments in our very modest and compact compartment

Our train
One of the many stop offs

Our route
If you can make it out.

Forever heading east
Siberia and the view from the train

Comments

[EdVallance]

Thanks for the blog and pics, I'm glad you're enjoying Russia :) Russia's taiga forest has yet to be decimated though, it still covers an area larger than the USA :)