Spent the day visiting 'The Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture', it's an open air museum 20km out of Listvyanka which contains a collection of relocated, traditional wooden houses from the 17th - 19th centuries, it gives some insight into the lives of the native peoples and of the first Russian settlers in Siberia. It was a fascinating place set in a beautiful, obviously snow covered, forest by the river. When we returned to town we wondered along the shore looking at lots of ice sculptures, some were for decoration but others formed a helter skelter, slides and similar. The fence and entrance were also by large blocks of ice. It being a Saturday, lots of fun was being had by all, playing in the ice fun fair, going for rides across the ice on a hovercraft and being dragged and spun on large tyres. Our last visit was to the local market, which was a strange mixture - souvenir stalls on one side whilst on the other were two rows of what appeared to be identical stalls, seemingly selling the same unique Lake Baikal fish, the omul - raw, cooked or ready to eat! Steve tried one, of course, and proclaimed it to taste like "weak mackerel".
We were collected at 7pm to catch the 22.15 for Ulaanbattur (or the 17.15 as the departure board displays because all trains run to Moscow time!) One last interesting, and so far unexplained fact. The river Angara runs through Irkutsk to Lake Baikal. It is frozen in Irkutsk and by the museum, and as has been previously mentioned, Lake Bakail is frozen with ice over a metre thick. About the last quarter of a mile before the river joined the lake was open water, with just a few skims of ice here and there!
Sunday
Woke to a completely different landscape, reminded me of the wild west covered in snow. The snow was much thinner, not because it was warmer due to the lack of precipitation. Scrub grass and stunted trees with the occasional wooden dwellings, with wooden picket fences. The train stopped at every station, however small, and was also travelling quite slowly. Our carriage seemed to be the international one containing a bloke who used to go to the same school as me, Queen Mary's Walsall who was taking his 10 year old daughter round the world, some French, Germans, Italians, Portuguese and a guy from Singapore.
We got to the Russian border at Naushki at around 1.30, for some reason we are scheduled to spend 5 hours here! It is certainly not the most interesting of towns with little to see, even the market sold very little. The provodnik said we could go off until 4pm, when we returned at around 3.30 our carriage was nowhere in sight. 10 minutes later it returned, so I got on board whilst Steve chatted to the guy from Singapore. The carriage then continued to be shunted up and down the platform and into the marshalling yards for the next 20 or so minutes until we were shunted onto a different platform, whereupon Steve and some other passengers decided it would be politic for them to rejoin!
We stayed at the station for over 5 hours. At around 5pm a young man came and looked at our passports, then an older official examined them even more carefully, scrutinising our photographs and comparing them with our faces. He then took them off to an office for about an hour. We were visited by at least three customs officials, one asked if we had any currency or anything to declare, one had a dog which sniffed around, especially in Steve's bag and one asked us to step out of the compartment while he did a very brief search with a torch. We then had our passports back.
The three Russian places we spent the most time in are Listvyanka, Moscow and now Naushki!
We then proceeded through the electrified fence marking the border to the first Mongolian town of Zuunhara, where we spent about two and quarter hours. We eventually continued on our journey to Ulaanbattur after about eight and half hours at the border. I found it quite amusing because I'm normally very impatient, but as we were keeping to the published timetable I was prepared for the wait. Steve however, was very frustrated and kept muttering about how if only they got together and planned things it would be so much better for cross border trade!
Monday
We arrived uneventfully in Ulaanbattur(UB) just after six am to be met on the platform by a smiling, friendly 21 year old Mongolian, who called himself Joey. The temperature was minus 30 degrees. After a brief stop at an ATM to withdraw 200,000 togrog, we were driven out to Terelj National Park 75 km from UB, once out of the city the roads weren't great but we were in a Toyota Land Cruiser. The countryside was mostly but not completely covered by a thin layer of snow. Our ger is authentic but erected in the grounds of golf hotel! There is a wood burning stove in the middle puffing out continual smoke which showed us that we were the only visitors! Initially it was chilly inside, I didn't take my coat off, but later it got very warm, the stove had probably only bit lit shortly before our arrival. We had breakfast in the hotel, Steve had Mongolian mutton soup while I had bacon and eggs J. We then went for a walk, I suspect the area would be a bit of a tourist ghetto in the summer as there were about 4 or 5 different ger camps. Most of the locals live in houses but there were at least a couple of families living in gers. We walked along a frozen river where we found a lad of about 11 using an axe to chop off blocks of ice, presumably for water.
Moving on to Mongolia
Saturday
Spent the day visiting 'The Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture', it's an open air museum 20km out of Listvyanka which contains a collection of relocated, traditional wooden houses from the 17th - 19th centuries, it gives some insight into the lives of the native peoples and of the first Russian settlers in Siberia. It was a fascinating place set in a beautiful, obviously snow covered, forest by the river. When we returned to town we wondered along the shore looking at lots of ice sculptures, some were for decoration but others formed a helter skelter, slides and similar. The fence and entrance were also by large blocks of ice. It being a Saturday, lots of fun was being had by all, playing in the ice fun fair, going for rides across the ice on a hovercraft and being dragged and spun on large tyres. Our last visit was to the local market, which was a strange mixture - souvenir stalls on one side whilst on the other were two rows of what appeared to be identical stalls, seemingly selling the same unique Lake Baikal fish, the omul - raw, cooked or ready to eat! Steve tried one, of course, and proclaimed it to taste like "weak mackerel".
We were collected at 7pm to catch the 22.15 for Ulaanbattur (or the 17.15 as the departure board displays because all trains run to Moscow time!) One last interesting, and so far unexplained fact. The river Angara runs through Irkutsk to Lake Baikal. It is frozen in Irkutsk and by the museum, and as has been previously mentioned, Lake Bakail is frozen with ice over a metre thick. About the last quarter of a mile before the river joined the lake was open water, with just a few skims of ice here and there!
Sunday
Woke to a completely different landscape, reminded me of the wild west covered in snow. The snow was much thinner, not because it was warmer due to the lack of precipitation. Scrub grass and stunted trees with the occasional wooden dwellings, with wooden picket fences. The train stopped at every station, however small, and was also travelling quite slowly. Our carriage seemed to be the international one containing a bloke who used to go to the same school as me, Queen Mary's Walsall who was taking his 10 year old daughter round the world, some French, Germans, Italians, Portuguese and a guy from Singapore.
We got to the Russian border at Naushki at around 1.30, for some reason we are scheduled to spend 5 hours here! It is certainly not the most interesting of towns with little to see, even the market sold very little. The provodnik said we could go off until 4pm, when we returned at around 3.30 our carriage was nowhere in sight. 10 minutes later it returned, so I got on board whilst Steve chatted to the guy from Singapore. The carriage then continued to be shunted up and down the platform and into the marshalling yards for the next 20 or so minutes until we were shunted onto a different platform, whereupon Steve and some other passengers decided it would be politic for them to rejoin!
We stayed at the station for over 5 hours. At around 5pm a young man came and looked at our passports, then an older official examined them even more carefully, scrutinising our photographs and comparing them with our faces. He then took them off to an office for about an hour. We were visited by at least three customs officials, one asked if we had any currency or anything to declare, one had a dog which sniffed around, especially in Steve's bag and one asked us to step out of the compartment while he did a very brief search with a torch. We then had our passports back.
The three Russian places we spent the most time in are Listvyanka, Moscow and now Naushki!
We then proceeded through the electrified fence marking the border to the first Mongolian town of Zuunhara, where we spent about two and quarter hours. We eventually continued on our journey to Ulaanbattur after about eight and half hours at the border. I found it quite amusing because I'm normally very impatient, but as we were keeping to the published timetable I was prepared for the wait. Steve however, was very frustrated and kept muttering about how if only they got together and planned things it would be so much better for cross border trade!
Monday
We arrived uneventfully in Ulaanbattur(UB) just after six am to be met on the platform by a smiling, friendly 21 year old Mongolian, who called himself Joey. The temperature was minus 30 degrees. After a brief stop at an ATM to withdraw 200,000 togrog, we were driven out to Terelj National Park 75 km from UB, once out of the city the roads weren't great but we were in a Toyota Land Cruiser. The countryside was mostly but not completely covered by a thin layer of snow. Our ger is authentic but erected in the grounds of golf hotel! There is a wood burning stove in the middle puffing out continual smoke which showed us that we were the only visitors! Initially it was chilly inside, I didn't take my coat off, but later it got very warm, the stove had probably only bit lit shortly before our arrival. We had breakfast in the hotel, Steve had Mongolian mutton soup while I had bacon and eggs J. We then went for a walk, I suspect the area would be a bit of a tourist ghetto in the summer as there were about 4 or 5 different ger camps. Most of the locals live in houses but there were at least a couple of families living in gers. We walked along a frozen river where we found a lad of about 11 using an axe to chop off blocks of ice, presumably for water.