Day 216: Sealing the deal

After breakfast this morning we arranged for a taxi to take us out to the central bus station, where we bought tickets out to Lake Baikal. The next available bus wasn't until 11am – an hour and a half away – so we decided to wander up the street opposite to see what we could see. After a while, we came across a large covered market and spent some time perusing the wares on offer – again, a lot of smoked and dried fish, as well as some interesting-looking soft cheese and plenty of meat. We found a stall selling some nice-looking flatbread and pastries and bought a few things for the bus ride – much to the apparent annoyance of the stall holder, who seemed much more interested in doing her accounts. 

The bus ride was pretty short – just an hour or so – and when we arrived, we went straight into the information office to buy our tickets back on the five o'clock bus. As it was now lunch time, we followed the smell of barbecuing meat to the restaurant next door, where a grill had been set up outside, where skewers of meat were being pleasantly charred. Next to it was a contraption in which a wok-like pan was being heated by a wood-burning stove. Inside was a soup-like mixture containing carrots and chunks of meat, the whole lot being lovingly tended by a woman in a head-scarf. It all looked so good that we went inside and did our best at ordering some. The carrot dish was far from ready, apparently, so we sat outside on the deck in the sun, our ears assaulted by a barrage of aggressive Euro-dance coming from three different nearby sources.

As we waited, we saw the head-scarfed woman pour a bucket of rice into the wok and stir it around, and then, finally our food started to arrive – some really good grilled lamb and pork and then the rice dish – sort of a Middle-eastern paella, with tender chunks of lamb and delicately spiced rice. This was so good that we went back and ordered two more plates at 100 roubles a piece (about £1.30).

Finally satiated, we headed along the lake shore to the museum that Kate had read about last night, which the sweet old lady in the information office had told us was four kilometres away. Along the way, we bumped into two Italian men we had met on the train to Irkutsk. They told us that the museum was closed, but after we had parted from them, we figured out they were talking about a different museum, so we continued on our way, walking into a pretty brisk and chilly breeze. 

When we finally made it to the museum, we paid the entrance fee and wandered around, looking at exhibits detailing the formation of the lake - which is the world's largest (by volume) and deepest (1,642 metres) and contains about a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water - and some stuffed animals and scientific instruments. Eventually, we reached the bit we had been waiting for – an aquarium with a series of tanks containing some of the lake's fauna – various types of fish, including some impressive sturgeon, some bizarre yellow crustaceans, and two of the cutest, fattest seals you'll ever see, which took it in turns swimming through a small hole that separates their two tanks, first lying on their backs, then up and around and through again, this time right side up. 

Then it was back to the bus stop (where we took a quick detour to the lake shore to dip our hands in) and back to Irkutsk, where we bought some ingredients for dinner and then caught a bus back to the hostel.

Day 215: Taxi trouble

We arrived in Irkutsk at around 8am this morning. It was cold and there was a light drizzle falling. Outside the train station it was quite chaotic, with passengers and taxi drivers milling about in a jostling crowd. As we weren't entirely sure how to get to our hostel – although we knew it wasn't far - and the weather was a bit miserable, we decided on the spur of the moment to get a taxi, and I started to negotiate with the next driver to approach us. He didn't appear to speak English but recognised the name of the hostel. When I asked how much, he held up five fingers and a thumb-and-forefinger O and nodded when I said, 'Fifty?'. That sounded about right, so we put our bags in the back of his unmarked car (oh-oh), and hopped aboard. Soon enough, we were outside the hostel and unpacking our bags. But when I pulled out a 50 rouble note and handed it to him he got rather upset. This time, he held up five fingers and a thumb-and-forefinger O and then did the thumb-and-forefinger O again – 500. He tried to close the boot with our bags in the back but we just kept unloading. He then jumped into the car and parked it further up the road and came steaming back at me. By then, I had pulled out an extra 100 to see if that would mollify him. He took the 150 but kept remonstrating with me. I just laughed and said that there was no way in the world that the little drive he had just made was worth 500 roubles (indeed, we caught a taxi to the bus station the next day, a distance far, far in excess of that travelled today and it cost 145 roubles – I think that 50 was actually spot on). Eventually he gave up, stalked back to his car and drove off.

While all this was going on, Kate was checking into the hostel. We were upgraded again – our third upgrade in a row – from two rooms to a large room with four single beds. Kate then went to a little supermarket up the road to buy some ingredients, with which she made us all pancakes for breakfast.

After grabbing a map and some directions from reception we then headed into town. Like most of these big Russian cities, Irkutsk (which has about half a million inhabitants) is situated on a river – in this case the Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei. Before long, we were crossing the river, which was wide and slow-flowing. At the far end of the bridge we found a little place for lunch and then wandered around the various sights, such as they were. We had been pointed towards an area across town where there were supposed to be lots of nice cafes, but when we got there, we found one of those 'new-old' developments – a series of bars, restaurants and cafes that had been built recently in faux-traditional style, a sort of Irkutskland. It didn't look appealing at all, but at the end of the development was a big, shiny new four-storey shopping mall, where we bought some ice creams and had a quiet rest. 

As we hadn't really seen anything that grabbed us during our meanders, we walked to the hostel along the river and had our excess pot noodles and a cucumber and tomato salad for dinner in the kitchen (which has a Playstation, much to the girls' delight).

Day 214: Back on tracks, part 3

We had breakfast this morning in the hostel – some really nice cherry dumplings made by a friend of Kate's. We then went out and bought some supplies for today's train journey and then got a lift with Anton to the station, where we bought some burgers for lunch.

Now, remember I wrote earlier that the lower the train number, the newer and more modern the train? Not true. This was the Number 12 train, but it was an older style like we were on a few days ago. This one had more effective air-conditioning, however, and was more than comfortable enough for us. The tenants who lived in our house while we undertook the European leg of the journey had left behind a big packet of anti-bacterial wipes, which we brought along on this leg mainly because they were there. And because we have them, we've been wiping down the seats and head rests in these older trains (and the toilet seats, too...). In this case they came away distinctly brown, so we gave everything a double wipe.

Our carriage attendant on this train was a cheerful young and very chatty Bashkir, who spoke decent English. When he discovered that we were from England, he asked whereabouts. Although he hadn't heard of Winchester, when we said it was near Southampton he reeled off an impressive list of past and present Saints footballers.

After we had been on the train for a few hours, the attendant came to the compartment with a big bag full off random merchandise (stuffed toys, a pocket watch, USB sticks shaped like trains and so on). He plonked himself on one of the seats and proceeded to pull bits and pieces out and show them to us, presumably so that we could buy them, although when he got to the end of his presentation he made no attempt to actually sell anything to us. He also made no attempt to leave the compartment – staying for ages, chatting away in broken English about football, the seasons, his job...

When he eventually left, the girls did a bit of schoolwork, I read the New Yorker and we watched the scenery go by. We're back into mixed pine and birch, and the little settlements look much the same. The dominant colour out here is definitely brown – dry grass, dead trees, the wood of the houses – with a bit of green and some brighter colours from the fading paint on some of the buildings. The one primary exception to all of this comes from the cemeteries, which are a riot of colour. I'm not sure exactly where it's all coming from – certainly some is from real and plastic flowers left on the graves – but that doesn't early explain the prevalence of lurid fluorescent pinks and oranges.

On this leg, we've also noticed a rise in the amount of litter scattered around the countryside. It appears that the locals haven't really embraced the idea of landfill, and just dump their rubbish wherever it can't be easily seen. The wind then picks it up and disperses it far and wide, much to the detriment of the scenery.

In the afternoon, the train made a lengthy stop at a station and we all got out to stretch our legs and buy some water and sweets. An enormous coal train was parked on the opposite side of the platform and there was quite a lot of spilled coal down around the tracks, which offered me a chance to give the girls an impromptu geology lesson.

Day 213: So that's a stolby

This morning the alarm went off at 4am Moscow time and by 4.40am (9.40am local time) the beds were stripped, our bags were packed and we were stepping off the train in Krasnoyarsk. It was a sunny day but quite cool, with a gusty breeze that brought the temperature down a few degrees. We walked out of the station to the fountain where we had been told we would meet our ride to the hostel. Sure enough, not long after, a young, bearded Russian man greeted us and took us to his car for the short ride to our accommodation for tonight.

The softly spoken Anton and his more ebullient wife Kate had set up the Granada hostel after staying in similar places during their travels in northern Spain. It seems to be doing well, but we got the impression that the business had completely taken over their lives. They kindly upgraded us from two double rooms with an external bathroom in the hostel to a larger room in a different building around the corner with a double, single and sofa bed, and our own bathroom.

Bags deposited and suncream applied, we walked into town and to a bus stop (stopping on the way to pick up some supplies and for a really good coffee at Mark's Cafe - a super cool coffee bar set up inside a small van parked by the side of the road). After a short wait, we hopped aboard the number 37 bus, which took us way, way out of town to the local ski resort. The resort borders Stolby National Park, which is famous for its, yes, stolbies, which are large granite outcrops that rise up and above the mixed pine and birch forest (the rock formations attracted climbers, who developed a new method of cliff climbing called Stolbisty, hence the name). We took the chairlift to the top of the mountain and walked up to a lookout from which you could see a number of stolbies. A path led away from the lookout and down into the forest, so we decided to explore further. The weather had started to close in and before long, it was raining and then snowing. The path was becoming progressively muddier and the weather progressively more miserable so we decided to turn back. By the time we reached the top of the chairlift, however, the sun was out again and we headed over the other side, where we had a good view of another stolby. The slope we walked up here was the baby run for the ski resort, and beside it were numerous little wooden platforms with roofs, seating and simple charcoal grills – clearly the food concessions for the resort. 

We then caught the chairlift back to the bottom and the bus back into town and stopped off for a few pelmeni (dumplings) at another cafeteria restaurant. As we wandered back into town, another bank of black clouds rolled in and as the first drops of rain started to fall, we ducked into a coffee chain outlet to escape what looked like a nasty downpour. Unfortunately, the coffee was horrible and horribly expensive, but by the look of the puddles outside when we re-emerged, it was probably worth it.

Back in our room, we surveyed our options for dinner and chose a place that was fairly close by. However, when we were on our way there, we changed our minds – opting for a trendier place that was about 40 minutes walk away. Unfortunately, however, we hadn't brought the details and were relying on our memory of where it was what it was called. Bad move. We spent I hate to think how long wandering around the streets looking in vain for the restaurant. Kate tried asking a few pedestrians but they just looked at her with frightened eyes and hurried off.

Thankfully, we still had the directions to our original choice, so off we trudged, eventually sitting down sometime after 9pm. The restaurant served traditional Russian/Siberian food - I opted for a venison steak (which I assume was probably reindeer) and Kate had borscht. It was a nice meal, but were all absolutely exhausted by the time we finally made it back to our room.