Train Ride #2 - Ulaan Baatar to Irkutsk

Originally I had planned on traveling straight from Ulaan Baatar to Moscow. There are several stops in between those two cities where some Rail Road travelers like to stop, but since I was making this part of the journey alone, I didn't really want to stop.

However, in Beijing as well as in Ulaan Baatar, I talked to many other travelers who had stopped in Irkutsk. This is a large town/small city a couple hundred kilometers north of the Mongolian border. What makes it a popular tourist desitnation is the lake which it touches - Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal is significant because it is the deepest lake in the world. It holds more water than the great lakes combined! It is shaped like a banana and was formed by the movement and separation of two tectonic plates. In time it will continue to grow and become the world's next ocean - seperating the continent of Asia.

At any rate - I was interested in visiting Lake Baikal and figured I couldn't get that close without going to see it. So, I scheduled Irkutsk into my itenerary.

This was the first leg of my trip that I traveled alone. I was in a 2nd class car, as before, but this time the only English speaker in my compartment. The three-member family that was with me consisted of a Russian mother, Mongolian (or maybe Mongolian-Russian) father and a boy of about 10 years old. They were sweet though none of us made much attempt at communication. I was still recovering a little bit from my sickness the day before, so I spent much of the ride in my bunk.

Our time at the Mongolian/Russina border was "only" about three to four hours. I thought it seemed really long, but later heard stories of people being held up there (by Russian customs) for nine to ten hours! Apparently Mongolians regularly smuggle goods into Russia, so the customs officials try to check very carefully. In fact, I think some people in my carriage had smuggled in jeans and packaging tape (??) I thought they were selling those things on the train - which I couldn't figure out - because they had a lot of them. However, after talking to other travelers who had similar experiences, I think they were having people throughout the car hold the goods for them to get them past the border (because they couldn't have brought in such a large quantitiy). Interesting, but makes for a long border crossing. I fell asleep in the middle of it and had to be woken up to get my passport back!

Anyway - once we crossed into Russia, the turrain did change from desert/steppe to more woods and hills. Here are a couple of pictures from the train ride after crossing into Russia. The ice is Lake Baikal - which we were beside for about 8 hours!