The Long Trip Back Home, day XIII-XXIX: Russia to China
Last time I updated I was just into the beginning of my trip through Russia, still in the European portion and having just met up with my travel group, experiencing Russian cuisine, traffic, customs and even our first banya experience.
The day in Vladimir started rather overcast and gray, and it ended up raining on and off for the rest of the day, dampening our visit to the old ecclesiastical capital of the Russian Orthodox church before it moved eventually to Moscow in the 13th century. However it left behind a legacy of lovely - and quite old and venerated - churches in its trail through history, some of which we visited. Eventually returning to our hostel for one last shower, we were driven later further south through Vladimir to a small village called Murom that happened to be on the Ural Railway line, spanning Moscow and Yekaterinburg through Kazan. Our train arrived right on time at 0200hrs, where we said goodbye to our local guide (Dasha) and sorted ourselves into the allocated bunks for the overnight trip to Kazan.
As there were ten of us, and compartments only held four bunks, the male Swiss (Mattias) and I got the two overflows, sharing another compartment with two other Russians who were already asleep at this hour After eventually sorting ourselves away and making our bed, any possible sleep was completely ruined by the incredibly loud snoring by both of our acquaintances: by the time we finally pulled into Kazan station into the arms of our next local guide (Ayrat), we both had barely 4 hours' sleep under our belts.
Kazan turned out to be quite a pretty place: as the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan within the Russian Federation, it had invested its federal stipend and local funding very wisely in renovating the core buildings in its centre. Kazan was also in the middle of Muslim Russia, the first time we had been in a predominantly non-Orthodox city since we arrived in the country. This was quite telling by the fact there was the beautifully-rebuilt Kul Sharif mosque - instead of the usual cathedral, although there was one nearby - in the centre of the city's kremlin. Kazan was one of the last cities Ivan IV the Terrible (at the time still the Grand Prince of Moscovy) had conquered, before eventually crowning himself the first Russian Tsar in the mid-17th century), so the town had a impressive history.
Aryat stored our luggage in the company's local office, took us for breakfast, and spent the rest of the day walking across and exploring the city, while the weather initially held off (nice and sunny in the morning, then gray and miserable in the afternoon) and made exploring the city far more engaging. We visited the Kul Sharif mosque and Annunciation cathedral (built not long after Ivan IV crowned himself Tsar), explored the city kremlin and used its elevated position to look over the river Kazanka, visited the Millennium Park and the Soviet History Museum (a hands-on look into Communist history, complete with the ability to dress up in clothes of the era), before the rain put a dampener on things. By this time, the fatigue had hit be badly, and the lack of decent sleep the night before was catching up, so it was only with some extra effort I was able to acknowledge visiting the Federal Tatarstan University (where Comrade Lenin studied in his youth, apparently), before dinner at a Turkish restaurant (complete with sheesha pipes revived me temporarily). After a stop by a neighbouring hostel to use their showering facilities - as it would be the last time in a while we would get a chance at a proper wash - we took one last tour of the city on a mini-bus to see Kazan by night (its kremlin and mosque lit up beautifully from across the river), a stop at a large supermarket for a major shop, before we were dropped off back at Kazan's main station, said goodbye to Ayran, and clambered back on the train at 0200hrs local time, heading eastwards again.
We were now onto the core part of our Trans-Siberian Railway journey: three days on the train between Kazan and our next stop in Irkutsk, 5,000km and 5 timezones away.
Over the next three days, we settled rather well into life onboard a train: getting to know the provodnik (our carriage's male attendant), who looked after the carriage's cleanliness and the samovar (hot-water urn, guaranteed to dispense hot water any time of the day or night), and signalling how long the next stop would be for (he spoke no English, but we could communicate fine enough after a while). Mattias and I were paired up again in the overflow compartment, but this time with two younger and more considerate Russian carriage travellers - Yura and Rafil, both young males, both Tatar and from Kazan, heading to Ulan Ude, so they'd be with us our entire journey - so my patchwork Russian got a workout, but they spoke a smattering of English, so it was an even trade. As is customary on Russian trains, everyone shared everything, so there were equal portions of bread, soft drink, pot noodles and nuts/crisps from the Western tourists, and kasha, beer, vodka and cucumbers, and Russian ginger cakes from the locals.
We got used very quickly to the sensation of a constantly-moving train: the constant slow swaying, tilting around sharp corners, and sudden braking all made usually mundane actions more carefully considered (like using the toilet, walking down the narrow passageways, and simply eating a meal). I had already adjusted to overnight rail travel earlier in my days backpacking across Europe, but I had never stayed three entire days on a train before, so even I need to make adjustments to get used used to things. The carriages - mostly Soviet make and updated in the last decade to approach modern standards - were dated but comfortable, housing four sleepers on fold-in bunk sleepers able to accommodate even someone of my length decently (as long as I didn't adopt the foetal position while sleeping, as I'd easily fall off the bench bed). As we occasionally walked the train to get to the restaurant car, we shuffled through plaskart or 3rd-class carriages, which were simply open compartments with the occasional curtain for privacy in an impressive attempt in controlled chaos, so despite some of the things we had to put up with (thankfully no snoring compartment acquaintances!), we were all thankful we weren't travelling plaskart.
As people got on and off over the next three days, compartments would free up or become claimed again, so we fanned out and contracted back to our home compartments as necessary, some of us liking the solitude for reading or watching downloaded TV, others for card games (yes, someone brought a deck of Uno cards!), talking, and the home compartments for sleeping, with occasionally the restaurant car hosting long-lasting card games and the occasional meal. We also very quickly got used to a train diet: with constant hot water but little else outside the restaurant car and Russian donations, I stuck mostly to tea (having bought two varieties in the Netherlands specifically) and pot noodles, while others branched out into instant mashed potatoes, and some even brought dehydrated camping meals. There were also the occasional times where, after pulling into platforms with some time to spare (usually 30-45min), enterprising babushkas would sell anything from Russian souvenirs, to hot food (pilmeni, vareniki, burek, pierogi) and salted fish, with kiosks selling a wide range of snack-foods, pot noodles, ice-creams, drinks and alcohol. Sometimes the train would stop for an extended period (about an hour to an hour and a half) and the more curious of us would do a quick walk into the town itself (I did this in Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk), coming back with other food (shashlik, kebab/shwarma, and one of the Swiss even found a Subway sandwich franchise) for the day's meal.
The train stuck to Moscow time for the entire trip, for ease of reference and timetabling: this meant as we trundled further eastwards and we crossed more and more timezones, the train became an odd example of a temporal anomaly, as the sun appeared to set earlier and earlier out the windows and rise earlier and earlier in the mornings. The railway stations too also kept to Moscow time, despite being in completely difference timezones themselves, so we started to need to reference which temporal frame we were basing our time on (as it was easier, we just stuck to Moscow time until we got off the train, as both the train and the stations we stopped at used the same). By the time we arrived at Irkutsk, our gateway city to Lake Baikal, we were five hours behind local time, and it required a bit of effort to snap back to the proper timezone.
We ended up arriving at Irkutsk railway station around 0400hrs local time, to be met on the platform by our next local guide, Ksenia, who did rather well getting a bunch of half-awake Western tourists and their backpacks onto a waiting mini-bus - with a brief stop in the city centre to grab our passport details for Russian visa registration - before we had another hour's journey eastwards to the small village of Listvyanka, on the south-western shores of Lake Baikal, arriving at a private hostel around 0530hrs, where most of us headed straight into a bed that didn't vibrate or otherwise move, sleeping for another 4hrs or so until a late breakfast at 1100hrs that morning. As we slowly started adjusting back to a sensible timezone, we took a walk that afternoon along the pebble beaches along the freezing waters of Lake Baikal, the world's largest deposit of fresh water, stretching 60km in a lazy crescent on the surface but well over 8km deep; we later visited the Lake Baikal museum which gave us precisely these details, along with a interesting history of tectonic plate movement that formed the lake over millions of years. There was an option to go quad-biking (which I passed on, having done it plenty of times in the past, and already keeping an eye on my Russian budget) and instead sat on the pebble beaches, filling in the hour chatting with the local Russian guide.
The next day was a fairly decent walk up into the mountainsides along the lake, including a ride up a chairlift to a breath-taking view of the south-western bend of Lake Baikal from about 75m up, followed by a boat-ride across the south-western tip for a walk along the tracks of the old Circumbaikal Railway, previously the route of the Trans-Siberian as it hugged the shores closely (but later bypassed, taking a more direct route from Irkutsk). Some of us were mad enough to take a swim in the icy waters (well, I waded in up to my knees, and it was barely a minute before my feet went numb!) before taking the boat back to Listvyanka for another banya experience, and a late night around a bonfire drinking beer.
Wednesday was another late departure, driving another hour back to Irkutsk for a day-visit discovering attractions (churches, the local parliament, a Lenin's Coffeeshop), another major shop (for another train-ride), and a bad moment for me as I nearly threw my back out on an uneven stretch of footpath and had to walk gingerly on a handful of painkillers for the rest of the afternoon. After dinner in a pub, we were ferried back to the station, said our goodbyes to Ksenia, and departed Irkutsk at 2200hrs local time.
It was a shame we had to depart Irkutsk at night: we ended up missing some spectacular panoramas of the southern shores of Lake Baikal on account of darkness as we slowly trundled eastwards. We also decided to ignore the train's Moscow time and star to re-reckon time locally, as the next (but final) time change would come at the Mongolian border otherwise. We fell back to life on a Russian sleeper train unsurprisingly quickly, spending the day playing cardgames again in the restaurant carriage, with Mattias and myself in the overflow compartment again (but with no one else! We had so much space and no one else to ruin our sleep!), living on tea, beer and pot noodles, until we arrived again early in the morning in Ulan-Ude at 0500hrs, stumbling off the train into the arms of yet another local guide Sveta, loading onto another mini-bus and ferried to a hotel (whoa, hotel rooms! Upgrade! Mattias and I were lucky enough to get our own single rooms, the first time I had some privacy since before I arrived in Moscow), and slept for another 4hrs before another city visit.
Ulan-Ude wasn't a big city, and it wasn't overflowing with attractions (except maybe the world's biggest Lenin head, staring proudly across the city's central square), so after spending a pleasant rest-of-the-morning visiting said statue and the surrounding buildings and churches, we took the rest of the day off, myself needing it in particular as I was still recovering from back issues, so I was happy to indulge in a long, hot shower, get caught up with things online, and catch up on some more sleep.
Friday had us on a special leg of our journey: it was only 13km east of Ulan-Ude the train diverted from the main Trans-Siberian railway (continuing east onwards to the Russian Far East and eventually Vladivostok) onto the Trans-Mongolian railway (continuing now south directly to the Mongolian border 5hrs away). We had officially begun our Trans-Mongolian service proper.
We adapted rather quickly back to life on the train: with an overnight trip into Mongolia ahead, we had already done the supermarket run before boarding, and so after a quick nap once rolling onwards (the service started at 0700hrs local time, we were ignoring Moscow time the train itself was running on again), the usual cups of hot tea, bread and plastic pots of hot noodles started appearing. The ride was rather uneventful until we reached the Russian bordertown of Naushki around 1400hrs, where - after surprisingly being our Mongolian visas pre-stamped despite still being in Russian territory - we sat stationary for 5 entire hours, as the entire train - minus two carriages on the through service into Mongolia - was broken up, shunted around by Russian locomotives, and reassembled into a service back to Ulan-Ude, leaving 3 hours later.
Most of us took the opportunity to stretch our legs, and locate the local kiosk (no enterprising babushkas here on the border) and attempt to spend the last of our Russian rubles. When in fact we were ushered back on the train, we went through the rigamarole of having our baggage searched by Russian customs and passports collected yet again, before another hour later we were deemed acceptable to leave Russian territory, had our passports given back to us (with exit stamps on everyone's Russian visas), and finally roll onwards, about 40min into Mongolian territory (and saluted by Mongolian border guards standing outside watchposts as the train rolled by) into Sukhbaatar, northern Mongolia's major town.....where we halted for yet another two hours, going again through baggage checks, customs, immigration and the usual, thankfully not as protracted as the Russian version we had recently endured. We were also given a sad introduction into Mongolian culture, all the train having witnessed a drunken Mongolian man engage in a violent domestic against his partner on the station platform, with police only getting involved when he started damaging property in his rage. By this time the sun was setting, and we started rolling onwards (after the usual enterprising money-changers had offered to convert our remaining rubles into a new currency, the Mongolioan togrog) and eventually arrived in the country's capital, Ulan Baatar, at around 0600hrs the next morning.
Our first day in Ulaan Baatar wasn't exactly the most memorable: the temperature was bitterly cold (about 6deg, considering were used to about 20deg until now), it was already raining (and wpould continue to do so for the rest of the day) and we were all more-or-less sleep-deprived, having being jolted out of a fitful sleep an hour before we arrived (however it did give me an interesting sunrise-view of an approaching Ulaan Baatar by rail out of the train window). We were checked into a hotel (our second one for the entire trip! and I was lucky enough to be given one of the two only singles.....hooray privacy!) so we were given about 3hrs nap (hot water wasn't turned on, argh) and some time to sort ourselves out, and get officially introduced to our new Mongolian tour guide and our coach driver (Tim and Odi, respectively). We were given a driving tour of central Ulaan Baatar (umbrellas and rain-coats prepared) - visiting the city's central square complete with governmental building boasting a large bronzed statue of a seated Genghis Khan, and a statue to the leader of Mongolian independence (in 1921) Sukh, with another visit to the Mongolian history museum around the corner, and then a fascinating visit to the major Buddhist "Temple of Great Joy" complex, complete with a 60m statue of Buddha himself inside. We had lunch and were introduced properly to Mongolian cuisine (meat, lots of meat, dumplings, noodles and not really much else), and then had to endure an hour's worth of bad Mongolian roads to visit an impressive silver statue of Genghis Khan on a horse (so big, in fact, there was a museum within the statue base), and the panoramic view from the top of the horse's head - 3 floors up - was marvellous.
The next four days we spent a considerable distance from the capital: 400kms west into the central Mongolian plains, out into the steppe and pseudo-desert, along badly deteriorating roads (so bad we went off-road for a good jaunt of our distance to avoid the terrible road conditions, impressive considering the age and prior condition of the coach we were on), to stay in tourist ger camps: a collection of traditional gers (Mongolian tents, able to accommodate entire families, but in our cases, four Western tourists and an enclosed fireplace for night-time warmth), with a seperate building for toilets and showers, and a central building for dining; we were fed quite well during our time out of the capital. We based at the Hoyot Zagar camp on Sunday night, out near Bayargobi, then moved to just outside Kharkhorbin on Monday, after first having a chance for horse-riding Sunday afternoon, and a walk into the nearby sand-dunes (despite no regional desert) and camel-riding Monday morning.
Monday night was Laura's birthday, so having already been acquainted to Mongolian vodka, the entire group celebrated Monday night by more or less clearing out the entire camp's stock of beer (and a couple extra bottles of vodka) and more or less got rather drunk, celebrating around an (admittedly small) bonfire in the adjacent fields and then moving into the camp itself later, feeling it intensely Tuesday morning when most of us were hung-over (one or two of us puking through the night into the morning); thankfully Tuesday was already put aside as a free-day. Wednesday was the long trip back into Ulaan Baatar on Mongolia's bad (and at times non-existent) roads, stopping off at a local lake in the morning and at the Mongolian version of a road-side services to rest the driver some time later, but mostly it was a painful 10hr drive, most of us trying to sleep through the turbulent ride as the bus nearly shook itself to death getting into Ulaan Baatar, and then having to compete with the heedless and cut-throat driving habits of everyone else once into the city proper: smaller cars cutting off larger vehicles, sudden lane swerving, driving for stretches on the opposite side of the road, and the absolute refusal to give way or use headlights (despite the city streets having no street illumination!). Having left the ger camp in Kharkhorin just after 9030hrs (and with the occasional break), we crawled rather battered back into the capital just before 2100hrs, returning to the same hotel we were at 4 days ago, desperate for a hot shower and a seat that didn't move!
It was another early departure Thursday morning: up and out by 0630hrs and ferried back to Ulaan Baatar's main railway station by our tour guide and driver for another goodbye, boarding the Mongolian Railways service, doing the usual 10-backpacker shuffle across compartments, and rolling onwards for the last rail segment of our trip at 0715hrs. Most of us elected to nap for an extra hour or two before the usual train activities (pot noodles, tea, card games) reappeared, but I mostly focussed my attention on the window as we rolled through southern Mongolia and the "Little" Gobi desert before we reached the Chinese border around 1900hrs. After waiting 2 hours getting stamped out of Mongolia and getting our baggage checked, then being brutally shunted around for 45min into the bogie-changing shed and then 1.5hrs jacked up into the air to change from Mongolia's 1600mm gauge to China's standard 1435mm gauge (more or less the opposite arrangement of my crossing the Polish-Belarusian border nearly 4 weeks ago), wasted another 1.5hrs going through the same immigration and customs rigmarole on Chinese territory, we finally crossed the international border (under a red marble arch, at that) and pulled into Erlian in northern China for an hour just after midnight. By this stage we were all just glad to get our passports back (new stamps!) and once the train started trundling off again just before 0200hrs Friday morning, everyone was just happy to drift off to sleep.
This morning we finally arrived into the Chinese capital. I woke up 2.5hrs beforehand and watched as the landscape changed, mountains were crossed (or tunnelled under), at least 6 powerplants were passed (at least 2 apparently abandoned) and the western suburbs of Beijing slowly drew us in. We arrived at Beijing's main railway station 5min late at 1145hrs today.
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The day in Vladimir started rather overcast and gray, and it ended up raining on and off for the rest of the day, dampening our visit to the old ecclesiastical capital of the Russian Orthodox church before it moved eventually to Moscow in the 13th century. However it left behind a legacy of lovely - and quite old and venerated - churches in its trail through history, some of which we visited. Eventually returning to our hostel for one last shower, we were driven later further south through Vladimir to a small village called Murom that happened to be on the Ural Railway line, spanning Moscow and Yekaterinburg through Kazan. Our train arrived right on time at 0200hrs, where we said goodbye to our local guide (Dasha) and sorted ourselves into the allocated bunks for the overnight trip to Kazan.
As there were ten of us, and compartments only held four bunks, the male Swiss (Mattias) and I got the two overflows, sharing another compartment with two other Russians who were already asleep at this hour After eventually sorting ourselves away and making our bed, any possible sleep was completely ruined by the incredibly loud snoring by both of our acquaintances: by the time we finally pulled into Kazan station into the arms of our next local guide (Ayrat), we both had barely 4 hours' sleep under our belts.
Kazan turned out to be quite a pretty place: as the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan within the Russian Federation, it had invested its federal stipend and local funding very wisely in renovating the core buildings in its centre. Kazan was also in the middle of Muslim Russia, the first time we had been in a predominantly non-Orthodox city since we arrived in the country. This was quite telling by the fact there was the beautifully-rebuilt Kul Sharif mosque - instead of the usual cathedral, although there was one nearby - in the centre of the city's kremlin. Kazan was one of the last cities Ivan IV the Terrible (at the time still the Grand Prince of Moscovy) had conquered, before eventually crowning himself the first Russian Tsar in the mid-17th century), so the town had a impressive history.
Aryat stored our luggage in the company's local office, took us for breakfast, and spent the rest of the day walking across and exploring the city, while the weather initially held off (nice and sunny in the morning, then gray and miserable in the afternoon) and made exploring the city far more engaging. We visited the Kul Sharif mosque and Annunciation cathedral (built not long after Ivan IV crowned himself Tsar), explored the city kremlin and used its elevated position to look over the river Kazanka, visited the Millennium Park and the Soviet History Museum (a hands-on look into Communist history, complete with the ability to dress up in clothes of the era), before the rain put a dampener on things. By this time, the fatigue had hit be badly, and the lack of decent sleep the night before was catching up, so it was only with some extra effort I was able to acknowledge visiting the Federal Tatarstan University (where Comrade Lenin studied in his youth, apparently), before dinner at a Turkish restaurant (complete with sheesha pipes revived me temporarily). After a stop by a neighbouring hostel to use their showering facilities - as it would be the last time in a while we would get a chance at a proper wash - we took one last tour of the city on a mini-bus to see Kazan by night (its kremlin and mosque lit up beautifully from across the river), a stop at a large supermarket for a major shop, before we were dropped off back at Kazan's main station, said goodbye to Ayran, and clambered back on the train at 0200hrs local time, heading eastwards again.
We were now onto the core part of our Trans-Siberian Railway journey: three days on the train between Kazan and our next stop in Irkutsk, 5,000km and 5 timezones away.
Over the next three days, we settled rather well into life onboard a train: getting to know the provodnik (our carriage's male attendant), who looked after the carriage's cleanliness and the samovar (hot-water urn, guaranteed to dispense hot water any time of the day or night), and signalling how long the next stop would be for (he spoke no English, but we could communicate fine enough after a while). Mattias and I were paired up again in the overflow compartment, but this time with two younger and more considerate Russian carriage travellers - Yura and Rafil, both young males, both Tatar and from Kazan, heading to Ulan Ude, so they'd be with us our entire journey - so my patchwork Russian got a workout, but they spoke a smattering of English, so it was an even trade. As is customary on Russian trains, everyone shared everything, so there were equal portions of bread, soft drink, pot noodles and nuts/crisps from the Western tourists, and kasha, beer, vodka and cucumbers, and Russian ginger cakes from the locals.
We got used very quickly to the sensation of a constantly-moving train: the constant slow swaying, tilting around sharp corners, and sudden braking all made usually mundane actions more carefully considered (like using the toilet, walking down the narrow passageways, and simply eating a meal). I had already adjusted to overnight rail travel earlier in my days backpacking across Europe, but I had never stayed three entire days on a train before, so even I need to make adjustments to get used used to things. The carriages - mostly Soviet make and updated in the last decade to approach modern standards - were dated but comfortable, housing four sleepers on fold-in bunk sleepers able to accommodate even someone of my length decently (as long as I didn't adopt the foetal position while sleeping, as I'd easily fall off the bench bed). As we occasionally walked the train to get to the restaurant car, we shuffled through plaskart or 3rd-class carriages, which were simply open compartments with the occasional curtain for privacy in an impressive attempt in controlled chaos, so despite some of the things we had to put up with (thankfully no snoring compartment acquaintances!), we were all thankful we weren't travelling plaskart.
As people got on and off over the next three days, compartments would free up or become claimed again, so we fanned out and contracted back to our home compartments as necessary, some of us liking the solitude for reading or watching downloaded TV, others for card games (yes, someone brought a deck of Uno cards!), talking, and the home compartments for sleeping, with occasionally the restaurant car hosting long-lasting card games and the occasional meal. We also very quickly got used to a train diet: with constant hot water but little else outside the restaurant car and Russian donations, I stuck mostly to tea (having bought two varieties in the Netherlands specifically) and pot noodles, while others branched out into instant mashed potatoes, and some even brought dehydrated camping meals. There were also the occasional times where, after pulling into platforms with some time to spare (usually 30-45min), enterprising babushkas would sell anything from Russian souvenirs, to hot food (pilmeni, vareniki, burek, pierogi) and salted fish, with kiosks selling a wide range of snack-foods, pot noodles, ice-creams, drinks and alcohol. Sometimes the train would stop for an extended period (about an hour to an hour and a half) and the more curious of us would do a quick walk into the town itself (I did this in Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk), coming back with other food (shashlik, kebab/shwarma, and one of the Swiss even found a Subway sandwich franchise) for the day's meal.
The train stuck to Moscow time for the entire trip, for ease of reference and timetabling: this meant as we trundled further eastwards and we crossed more and more timezones, the train became an odd example of a temporal anomaly, as the sun appeared to set earlier and earlier out the windows and rise earlier and earlier in the mornings. The railway stations too also kept to Moscow time, despite being in completely difference timezones themselves, so we started to need to reference which temporal frame we were basing our time on (as it was easier, we just stuck to Moscow time until we got off the train, as both the train and the stations we stopped at used the same). By the time we arrived at Irkutsk, our gateway city to Lake Baikal, we were five hours behind local time, and it required a bit of effort to snap back to the proper timezone.
We ended up arriving at Irkutsk railway station around 0400hrs local time, to be met on the platform by our next local guide, Ksenia, who did rather well getting a bunch of half-awake Western tourists and their backpacks onto a waiting mini-bus - with a brief stop in the city centre to grab our passport details for Russian visa registration - before we had another hour's journey eastwards to the small village of Listvyanka, on the south-western shores of Lake Baikal, arriving at a private hostel around 0530hrs, where most of us headed straight into a bed that didn't vibrate or otherwise move, sleeping for another 4hrs or so until a late breakfast at 1100hrs that morning. As we slowly started adjusting back to a sensible timezone, we took a walk that afternoon along the pebble beaches along the freezing waters of Lake Baikal, the world's largest deposit of fresh water, stretching 60km in a lazy crescent on the surface but well over 8km deep; we later visited the Lake Baikal museum which gave us precisely these details, along with a interesting history of tectonic plate movement that formed the lake over millions of years. There was an option to go quad-biking (which I passed on, having done it plenty of times in the past, and already keeping an eye on my Russian budget) and instead sat on the pebble beaches, filling in the hour chatting with the local Russian guide.
The next day was a fairly decent walk up into the mountainsides along the lake, including a ride up a chairlift to a breath-taking view of the south-western bend of Lake Baikal from about 75m up, followed by a boat-ride across the south-western tip for a walk along the tracks of the old Circumbaikal Railway, previously the route of the Trans-Siberian as it hugged the shores closely (but later bypassed, taking a more direct route from Irkutsk). Some of us were mad enough to take a swim in the icy waters (well, I waded in up to my knees, and it was barely a minute before my feet went numb!) before taking the boat back to Listvyanka for another banya experience, and a late night around a bonfire drinking beer.
Wednesday was another late departure, driving another hour back to Irkutsk for a day-visit discovering attractions (churches, the local parliament, a Lenin's Coffeeshop), another major shop (for another train-ride), and a bad moment for me as I nearly threw my back out on an uneven stretch of footpath and had to walk gingerly on a handful of painkillers for the rest of the afternoon. After dinner in a pub, we were ferried back to the station, said our goodbyes to Ksenia, and departed Irkutsk at 2200hrs local time.
It was a shame we had to depart Irkutsk at night: we ended up missing some spectacular panoramas of the southern shores of Lake Baikal on account of darkness as we slowly trundled eastwards. We also decided to ignore the train's Moscow time and star to re-reckon time locally, as the next (but final) time change would come at the Mongolian border otherwise. We fell back to life on a Russian sleeper train unsurprisingly quickly, spending the day playing cardgames again in the restaurant carriage, with Mattias and myself in the overflow compartment again (but with no one else! We had so much space and no one else to ruin our sleep!), living on tea, beer and pot noodles, until we arrived again early in the morning in Ulan-Ude at 0500hrs, stumbling off the train into the arms of yet another local guide Sveta, loading onto another mini-bus and ferried to a hotel (whoa, hotel rooms! Upgrade! Mattias and I were lucky enough to get our own single rooms, the first time I had some privacy since before I arrived in Moscow), and slept for another 4hrs before another city visit.
Ulan-Ude wasn't a big city, and it wasn't overflowing with attractions (except maybe the world's biggest Lenin head, staring proudly across the city's central square), so after spending a pleasant rest-of-the-morning visiting said statue and the surrounding buildings and churches, we took the rest of the day off, myself needing it in particular as I was still recovering from back issues, so I was happy to indulge in a long, hot shower, get caught up with things online, and catch up on some more sleep.
Friday had us on a special leg of our journey: it was only 13km east of Ulan-Ude the train diverted from the main Trans-Siberian railway (continuing east onwards to the Russian Far East and eventually Vladivostok) onto the Trans-Mongolian railway (continuing now south directly to the Mongolian border 5hrs away). We had officially begun our Trans-Mongolian service proper.
We adapted rather quickly back to life on the train: with an overnight trip into Mongolia ahead, we had already done the supermarket run before boarding, and so after a quick nap once rolling onwards (the service started at 0700hrs local time, we were ignoring Moscow time the train itself was running on again), the usual cups of hot tea, bread and plastic pots of hot noodles started appearing. The ride was rather uneventful until we reached the Russian bordertown of Naushki around 1400hrs, where - after surprisingly being our Mongolian visas pre-stamped despite still being in Russian territory - we sat stationary for 5 entire hours, as the entire train - minus two carriages on the through service into Mongolia - was broken up, shunted around by Russian locomotives, and reassembled into a service back to Ulan-Ude, leaving 3 hours later.
Most of us took the opportunity to stretch our legs, and locate the local kiosk (no enterprising babushkas here on the border) and attempt to spend the last of our Russian rubles. When in fact we were ushered back on the train, we went through the rigamarole of having our baggage searched by Russian customs and passports collected yet again, before another hour later we were deemed acceptable to leave Russian territory, had our passports given back to us (with exit stamps on everyone's Russian visas), and finally roll onwards, about 40min into Mongolian territory (and saluted by Mongolian border guards standing outside watchposts as the train rolled by) into Sukhbaatar, northern Mongolia's major town.....where we halted for yet another two hours, going again through baggage checks, customs, immigration and the usual, thankfully not as protracted as the Russian version we had recently endured. We were also given a sad introduction into Mongolian culture, all the train having witnessed a drunken Mongolian man engage in a violent domestic against his partner on the station platform, with police only getting involved when he started damaging property in his rage. By this time the sun was setting, and we started rolling onwards (after the usual enterprising money-changers had offered to convert our remaining rubles into a new currency, the Mongolioan togrog) and eventually arrived in the country's capital, Ulan Baatar, at around 0600hrs the next morning.
Our first day in Ulaan Baatar wasn't exactly the most memorable: the temperature was bitterly cold (about 6deg, considering were used to about 20deg until now), it was already raining (and wpould continue to do so for the rest of the day) and we were all more-or-less sleep-deprived, having being jolted out of a fitful sleep an hour before we arrived (however it did give me an interesting sunrise-view of an approaching Ulaan Baatar by rail out of the train window). We were checked into a hotel (our second one for the entire trip! and I was lucky enough to be given one of the two only singles.....hooray privacy!) so we were given about 3hrs nap (hot water wasn't turned on, argh) and some time to sort ourselves out, and get officially introduced to our new Mongolian tour guide and our coach driver (Tim and Odi, respectively). We were given a driving tour of central Ulaan Baatar (umbrellas and rain-coats prepared) - visiting the city's central square complete with governmental building boasting a large bronzed statue of a seated Genghis Khan, and a statue to the leader of Mongolian independence (in 1921) Sukh, with another visit to the Mongolian history museum around the corner, and then a fascinating visit to the major Buddhist "Temple of Great Joy" complex, complete with a 60m statue of Buddha himself inside. We had lunch and were introduced properly to Mongolian cuisine (meat, lots of meat, dumplings, noodles and not really much else), and then had to endure an hour's worth of bad Mongolian roads to visit an impressive silver statue of Genghis Khan on a horse (so big, in fact, there was a museum within the statue base), and the panoramic view from the top of the horse's head - 3 floors up - was marvellous.
The next four days we spent a considerable distance from the capital: 400kms west into the central Mongolian plains, out into the steppe and pseudo-desert, along badly deteriorating roads (so bad we went off-road for a good jaunt of our distance to avoid the terrible road conditions, impressive considering the age and prior condition of the coach we were on), to stay in tourist ger camps: a collection of traditional gers (Mongolian tents, able to accommodate entire families, but in our cases, four Western tourists and an enclosed fireplace for night-time warmth), with a seperate building for toilets and showers, and a central building for dining; we were fed quite well during our time out of the capital. We based at the Hoyot Zagar camp on Sunday night, out near Bayargobi, then moved to just outside Kharkhorbin on Monday, after first having a chance for horse-riding Sunday afternoon, and a walk into the nearby sand-dunes (despite no regional desert) and camel-riding Monday morning.
Monday night was Laura's birthday, so having already been acquainted to Mongolian vodka, the entire group celebrated Monday night by more or less clearing out the entire camp's stock of beer (and a couple extra bottles of vodka) and more or less got rather drunk, celebrating around an (admittedly small) bonfire in the adjacent fields and then moving into the camp itself later, feeling it intensely Tuesday morning when most of us were hung-over (one or two of us puking through the night into the morning); thankfully Tuesday was already put aside as a free-day. Wednesday was the long trip back into Ulaan Baatar on Mongolia's bad (and at times non-existent) roads, stopping off at a local lake in the morning and at the Mongolian version of a road-side services to rest the driver some time later, but mostly it was a painful 10hr drive, most of us trying to sleep through the turbulent ride as the bus nearly shook itself to death getting into Ulaan Baatar, and then having to compete with the heedless and cut-throat driving habits of everyone else once into the city proper: smaller cars cutting off larger vehicles, sudden lane swerving, driving for stretches on the opposite side of the road, and the absolute refusal to give way or use headlights (despite the city streets having no street illumination!). Having left the ger camp in Kharkhorin just after 9030hrs (and with the occasional break), we crawled rather battered back into the capital just before 2100hrs, returning to the same hotel we were at 4 days ago, desperate for a hot shower and a seat that didn't move!
It was another early departure Thursday morning: up and out by 0630hrs and ferried back to Ulaan Baatar's main railway station by our tour guide and driver for another goodbye, boarding the Mongolian Railways service, doing the usual 10-backpacker shuffle across compartments, and rolling onwards for the last rail segment of our trip at 0715hrs. Most of us elected to nap for an extra hour or two before the usual train activities (pot noodles, tea, card games) reappeared, but I mostly focussed my attention on the window as we rolled through southern Mongolia and the "Little" Gobi desert before we reached the Chinese border around 1900hrs. After waiting 2 hours getting stamped out of Mongolia and getting our baggage checked, then being brutally shunted around for 45min into the bogie-changing shed and then 1.5hrs jacked up into the air to change from Mongolia's 1600mm gauge to China's standard 1435mm gauge (more or less the opposite arrangement of my crossing the Polish-Belarusian border nearly 4 weeks ago), wasted another 1.5hrs going through the same immigration and customs rigmarole on Chinese territory, we finally crossed the international border (under a red marble arch, at that) and pulled into Erlian in northern China for an hour just after midnight. By this stage we were all just glad to get our passports back (new stamps!) and once the train started trundling off again just before 0200hrs Friday morning, everyone was just happy to drift off to sleep.
This morning we finally arrived into the Chinese capital. I woke up 2.5hrs beforehand and watched as the landscape changed, mountains were crossed (or tunnelled under), at least 6 powerplants were passed (at least 2 apparently abandoned) and the western suburbs of Beijing slowly drew us in. We arrived at Beijing's main railway station 5min late at 1145hrs today.
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