Sarah & Richard's Travels

We had a 50 hour train ride to Irkutsk which actually wasn't as long as it sounds, it was only really the last 4 hours or so that seemed to drag on. It's kind of good having nothing to do because I caught up on postcards, my travel diary and started and finished a whole book in that time!

Again we were in Kupe, as it was just a wee bit too long to spend 50 hours in Platskartny (the hostpital type carriage) and this time there were only 3 of us for most of the journey. Again we were lucky with our 'Kupe mate' as it was a Russian student who spoke a reasonable amount of English - yay! She was quite interesting to talk to - she was studying art history in St Petersburg and was going all the way to Irkutsk to visit her grandmother for the first time! She couldn't wait to see Lake Baikal and seemed to be looking forward to it. She wanted to go to Parid and Amsterdam to see all the artists work in the museums and she was very proud to be a student. Its funny because at home if you're a student it seems normal, but here there seems to be a very high status associated with being a student and going to university and think of all the people at home who go to university and drop out or just go because they're not really sure what else to do. Anyway here the university places are free for the best students and then the lower ranked ones have to pay fees which soud quite similar in price to Europe / NZ / Oz, though I'm sure with the wages some of them earn, they must seem exorbitant.

The landscape on this train ride was quite similar to what we had already seen, though towards the end it got a bit more marshy and swampy. It was a lot of birch and forests and more grassland as well, though again not a lot of farms. We seemed to go through a lot more small villages in this part of teh journey and there are a lot more wooden houses now with shutters and window decoration. You can see as you go by this area is a lot poorer than the western part of Russia. There were a few more farmers in the field here and women helping them pile the hay high and turn the grass so it dries for the hay - it's all very manual labour none of these big tractors and huge machines like in the west.

So eventually arrived in Irkustk and took a taxi to the hostel as it was late and we didn't really know where it was. This was the nicest hostel we've stayed at so far. We spent the next day just having a wander as we are all churched out and that's about all there is to see in Irkutsk unless you go down to Listvanskaya by lake Baikal, but where were off to Olkhon Island so didn't bother.

We took a look at the central markets, but when we got there the police had cordoned it all off and it was closed! I'm not sure why, but at the moment Russia is cracking down on illegal immigrants and a lot of them are working at markets, so it was possibly a crackdown. We kept wandering around and about 15 mins later they repoened. There were a lot of cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and radishes on all the stalls as well as summer berries which they all collect from the forests. It seems to be quite a simple diet as this is pretty much all there is. We got some raspberries to eat and even if they didn't look the best, they were the best tasting raspberries that I've had in years!!!! So sweet and delicious!

We walked along the river to the train staion as we had to book our ticket to Ulan Baatar before we left for Olkhon Island, but they were all fully booked until 8th August!!!!!! We needed to be in UB by 8th August as it was the start of our tour and the train would have got there on the 9th, so not possible, so we were a bit stuck after that. We went to an agency to see if they had any blocks of tickets, but the best they could do was the 8th again or 3rd August, which seemed way too early. Anyway, we put a deposit on that ticket, but later found out we could take the bus from Ulan Ude to UB from some people in the hostel as they were doing the same thing. We knew it was possible, but weren't really sure who did it where to get the tickets etc. Anyway, the guys at the hostel gave us the name of an agent in Ulan Ude who managed to get two bus tickets for us for 5th August which is awesome. It's a bit earlier than we were originally going to arrive, but we'd kind of seen eveything that we'd wanted to in Russia and UB is way cheaper too!

We were a bit naughty that night and had dinner at 'The London Pub'!! ooops. We were heading to Olkhon Island, so thought we should have some 'normal' food before we went in case it was rubbish! lol

So that was Irkustk and we got the minibus to Olkhon Island the next day.

View some pictures from Irkutsk here http://picasaweb.google.com/rico.bakker/IrkutskOlkhonIslandUlanUde?feat=directlink