From Moscow to Lake Baikal

Hello all,

We are on day 5 in Beijing and greatly enjoying being in one place for awhile. We spent the day yesterday haggling at the Pearl Market for fun cheap electronics - Eric bought some mini ipod speakers - and some new clothes. Today it's been raining all day, so we are enjoying some down time to relax, read and catch up on email and internet stuff.

The train trip through Russia was quite an adventure and a once in a lifetime experience. Let me begin in Moscow...

We boarded the train late in the evening for our 4 night, 3 day journey through Siberia to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. We were welcomed (well, maybe just casually greeted) onto our carriage by our two attendants - Irina and Tatyana. Every long distance train has two attendants per carriage...their role is to take care of the carriage by cleaning the corridors and bathrooms, making sure the hot water at the end of the carriage is working, keeping track of passengers at the different stops to get everyone back on the train and so on. For most our train journeys, we had female attendants with the exception of the train from Mongolia to China when we had two males. Luckily, for our longest journey, Irina and Tatyana turned out to be the friendliest and most pleasant. (To read more about VodkaTrain tours go to: http://www.vodkatrain.com/)

On night one of our Trans-Siberian crossing, it was one of our travel mate's birthdays (Fred), so we had to celebrate Russian style (i.e., with plenty of vodka). The partying went well into the night...it's amazing how many people you can fit into a tiny compartment if you want to, I think we managed all 14 of us at one point. Needless to say, our first morning on the train was spent sleeping in - until the afternoon. But hey, not much else to do on the train so we were quite happy to catch up on sleep with many sleep ins and numerous daytime naps.

Aside from sleeping, our days were spent reading, journaling, playing cards, exploring the other train carriages and the dining car (which was too expensive for our taste), and eating countless cup-o-noodles and soups. They provide boiling hot water in each carriage so it's safe to have hot drinks and hot water meals. I managed to scald myself only once when the train jolted as I was filling my soup...Eric, Ester and Fran helped me nurse my wounds with a cold beer can and cucumber slices. Luckily, not long term damage.

Every several hours or so, in between all this very exciting activity, we made a 15-20 minute stop at a local station. Sometimes we were in the middle of nowhere, other times at city stops. Regardless, at each stop there were a number of small stands, carts or "Babushkas" selling bottled water, soda, chips, sweets, cucumbers and tomatoes (the most common vege), fresh berries and, when we were lucky, cooked local treats and meals (chicken, ground beef, potatoes, meat pies, pancakes with cheese, dumplings and more). It was fun to haggle and try the local flavors. Needless to say, we did not starve on this journey...in fact, quite the opposite.

As far as scenery, Siberia is not nearly as desolate as the name would indicate. I don't know why, but we were expecting a lot of "nothingness"- maybe desert, bleak grasslands or something of the like. We were wrong. In the summer, Siberia is quite lush and green. There are stretching grasslands, but they are not bleak. There are sometimes mountains in the distance, and at times we passed by rivers and small lakes. Birch trees are dotted all along the way and occasionally we passed through dense forests. It was actually a very beautiful landscape. The population along the route was minimal and infrequent. An occasional village or town and maybe two or three sizable cities. However, we were often surprised how we would be in what we thought was the middle of nowhere and there would be some random person moseying on their way near the tracks, or posted up on a tree stump eating something for lunch as they watched the train pass by.

All in all, our mammoth train journey was very pleasant. It was almost a forced vacation where you didn't have to feel guilty about sleeping, eating and just hanging out. There were no sights to see and no work to be done. And we had the very pleasant company of our 12 travel mates, which made it nice to socialize and play games. Don't get me wrong, when we arrived at Irkutsk on the morning of day 4, we were ready to de-train and were welcomed by our next "honcho" guide, Kostya.

After we re-filled our wallets in Irkutsk, we were immediately put on a bus and driven through the countryside/forest for an hour to the shores of Lake Baikal where we spent the next few days. This is the world's deepest lake and holds something like 1/5 of the world's fresh, unfrozen water - more than North America's five Great Lakes combined. It is a beautiful place and so clear that during the day you can see meters and meters down below. Our accommodation was in a really nice chalet-style place about a 10-minute walk from the shore. During our time here, we went on two lovely hikes to view-points to take in the scenery, ventured out on a boat trip, sunbathed on the shore (Eric braved the freezing water and took a short - very short - swim), and did a bit of shopping.

The highlight of our time here, however, was the Russian banya - or sauna. Kostya arranged for us to have this must-try experience in our hotel's sauna. Everyone had to strip down and wrap themselves in a sheet. Then we all piled into the little wooded sauna heated by hot rocks (it was 110 degrees Celsius at its hottest) for about 10 minutes. During round two, Kostya splashed the rocks with water to up the steam and the heat. For round three, he took us in individually and had us lay down on the wooded bench and then whipped us (not too hard) on both sides with birch branches. It sounds painful, I know, but it actually felt (and smelled) really nice once you got over the initially sting of it. It's Russian tradition and something they typically do at least once a week throughout the year. The entire experience with all the ins-and-outs of the sauna, the whipping, the sweating and the cold water splash at the end took about 2 hours. It was heaven.

On our last day, we ventured back to Irkutsk for several hours for Internet, a walk around and some food before we boarded our next train that would take us to Mongolia...and the border crossing...