Go east young man!
After a couple of days by Lake Baikal which although nice were rather let down by the weather, I'm now in Irkutsk, which is the nearest city to the lake the railhead for the Trans-Siberian. It's a brief stop here then tomorrow morning just before 8am I'll be off again this time on the longest journey of all to Khabarovsk. For some reason I'd written down the wrong arrival time and had until this morning though I was arriving at 8am 2 days after departure, but it turns out it's 8.20pm, but what's 12 hours in the grand scheme of things, eh?
The last train journey was quite enjoyable as I shared the compartment with a couple of University professors, one of whom spoke good English, so for the first time in what seems like forever I was actually able to have a conversation with someone! I've not missed the chat all that much though. It's allowed me to relax and thing about where I'm going to next, what I'm doing (and perhaps also why the hell I'm doing it, lol!) The next train though is the mighty train number 2, so regardless of the company in the compartment it should be as well presented as any train that Russia can offer. I've not visited the restaurant cars in the trains I've taken so far but given the length of this journey I think I'll see what it has to offer this time, as otherwise I will be supremely sick of Russian supernoodles by the time I get to the far end!
I took some decent photos of Lake Baikal I reckon for what little time the weather was cooperative, however this PC I'm on in the internet cafe doesn't want to let me upload anything, so it'll have to wait until next time for that. I didn't do a great deal by the lake after the first day; the weather was cool and inclement, so I just visited one or two local places and otherwise caught up on some sleep and bummed around the hotel. It was fine though as I'm really feeling I need to catch up with some rest at the moment!
That's all for now. I'm going to head out shortly to explore that Irkutsk has to offer. There was an exhibition of Faberge eggs on but it finished two days ago. Curses! Hopefully I'll have more luck as my journey continues.
The last train journey was quite enjoyable as I shared the compartment with a couple of University professors, one of whom spoke good English, so for the first time in what seems like forever I was actually able to have a conversation with someone! I've not missed the chat all that much though. It's allowed me to relax and thing about where I'm going to next, what I'm doing (and perhaps also why the hell I'm doing it, lol!) The next train though is the mighty train number 2, so regardless of the company in the compartment it should be as well presented as any train that Russia can offer. I've not visited the restaurant cars in the trains I've taken so far but given the length of this journey I think I'll see what it has to offer this time, as otherwise I will be supremely sick of Russian supernoodles by the time I get to the far end!
I took some decent photos of Lake Baikal I reckon for what little time the weather was cooperative, however this PC I'm on in the internet cafe doesn't want to let me upload anything, so it'll have to wait until next time for that. I didn't do a great deal by the lake after the first day; the weather was cool and inclement, so I just visited one or two local places and otherwise caught up on some sleep and bummed around the hotel. It was fine though as I'm really feeling I need to catch up with some rest at the moment!
That's all for now. I'm going to head out shortly to explore that Irkutsk has to offer. There was an exhibition of Faberge eggs on but it finished two days ago. Curses! Hopefully I'll have more luck as my journey continues.
posted by Daniel at 4:58 am
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