Asia, sideways and inwards

Since we last messaged you, we've spent 56 hours on trains (over 3 journeys), and also 14 hours on buses, and loads extra on lovely regional transport. But, we now find ourselves here, in Irkutsk, besides the worlds largest freshwater lake, at a timezone 8 hours in front of the UK!

Our time in Perm, with Guzal and Max, was amazing and easy. After the Banya experience, we went to the Opera for both of our first times, and found that we acually knew a song in it! The Opera was called Rigoletto, (Lauren does a terrific version of thу 'famous song' that goes something like 'lalala poop today, lalala poop tomorrow'). We also went to visit the 'magnificent' Kungur ice caves, which turned out to be an hour walk through a bunch of dark, damp places, in the cold, after a 2 hour bus ride to get there. Pretty crap really.

But, moving on, we crossed the famous Urals (which are no more than hills really) into Asia! It would have been more exciting if we'd have been able to see the continent marker, but we were asleep. We had a night then in Novosibirsk, where we partied with super chilled Katya and her housemates. The next day we went up to Tomsk, ONLY 5 hours away by bus (pretty much next door for Russia), where we were stayed with Nikita and his wife Marina for a couple of days. Tomsk was really pretty, not at all hindered by the first big snowfall of our trip. We dutifully made our first snowman, maybe a whole 12 inches high, and spent the days playing in the snow amongst Russians who were pissed off the snow has arrived. It got to about -10 while we were there, and it looked like it was gonna get really cold, but that threat thankfully didnt materialize. Lauren was given a secret present from Marina (which turned out to be jewellry she had made) for her birthday before we left.

We went back to Novosibirsk, where L got a spontaneous haircut while socializing in Katyas kitchen. She even got a long awaited dreadlocks, and is defo going for that traveler style!

Next stop was Krasnoyarsk, where we stayed for a couple of nights in an old soviet hotel (the cheapest thing we could find) to give us some lone time for L's birthday (we'll put a pic up of the 'party'!). The hotel was a bit like a prison, and the beds probably were exactly the same ones used when Communism fell in the country. We chilled out a bit here, and had some amazing stolovaya (russian canteen) meals, before climbing a mountain at a nearby ski resort. The weather was warming, and the snow was so slushy walking up, definitely not the weather for L's new fur birthday hat. The views at the top were amazing though, and we ventured onto a risky icy ridge to get some pretty amazing views.

We moved on then to Irkutsk. the train journey here was a load more interesting, playing games and drinking vodka with a couple of young russian soldiers who spoke no english. Communicating with them did the usual trick of having half our train carriage gather to listen, and we found some people who spoke english, and amongst them even some current world champion aerobic gymnasts!

We're now at Arsenay's place, and we're headed off to Baikal's biggest island tomorrow, Olkon, for some time 'at one with nature' for a few days, where we will hopefully be staying in something away from the traditional smog of Russian cities. We leave Russia in a week, and hopefully our Mongolian visa will be ready before we go...

Missing you all loads!

H+L

xxxxx

written by  harripix on November 17, 2010 from Irkutsk, Russia
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
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