Ulan Ude and the views

Well we left the hostel early yesterday morning at about 6:15am to catch the No.2 train (Rossiya) to Ulan Ude. At first the views were less than worth our effort to stay up and look out of the window, However 1 hour into the journey we started to see faint glimpses of Lake Baikal! This great lake was impressive with its mist only ruined by the muck on the window of the train, supposidly the best in Russia, I think not though No. 10 hit the spot on comfort and cleanliness. According to Justin the toilets were less than desireable. Well where to start with the views. The most imprssive thing we saw was the ice sheets! They were about 50 meters wide and went on for many Km. The natural beauty of Russia and Siberia in particular is amazing. We saw an Elk running along side the track when comming from Kiev, although our wildlife observations have not been of good of late....Tomorrow morning we leave at 6:58 on train No.364 (the "rough train") for Ulaanbaatar were we shall update our blog with more stories and garnish the page with more photo's for your viewing pleasure.

Mohsin


As always the photos need a bit of explaining. We took the train from Irkutsk on the Circumbaikal railway and saw the remaining ice at the edge of the lake from the cold winter. Of course, we had to sample the Borsch in the restaurant car. Our shabby, but suffice, hotel in Ulan Ude had a stuffed bear in the reception (it definately swayed our decision on where to stay). And then we found pretty much the number 1 reason to visit Ulan Ude - Lenin's giant head (the worlds' biggest). On our last night in the town we witnessed local poverty from our hotel balcony - rather than teenage mutant hero turtles, we saw grown men climbing down holes to live in the sewers. It was definately the cheaper option but we decided to stick to the hotel. And that was how we ended our Russian odyssea (a day early).