We departed UB on the 1.50pm train on Friday 31 October. The railway station was pretty busy, with young people hanging around for no apparent reason, and many locals boarding the train with an array of bizaare things, such as jeans, handbags, net curtains (to trade en route) and a roll of corrugated iron. As we had a first class cabin again, it was only us in there. The scenery was nothing spectacular; the suburbs of UB, then the open plains. We hit the border about 11pm and the Mongolian curtoms were very efficient, followed by about half an hour moving through no man's land before Russia. The Russian immigration were polite and asked us to leave our compartment while they had a quick look around for stowaways or contraband I suppose. Off with our passports, to return them an hour or three later. With the border crossing and noise/movement of the train carriages being shunted around, we didn't get enough sleep.
Awoke about 8am as the train stopped in Ulan Ude for half an hour, and our first sight of Russia. I spied ugly factories and pretty golden Orthodox churches from the window. The scenery was better than in Mongolia I thought, as we passed lots of wooden houses, rivers, bridges and forests before approaching Lake Baikal. There was snow on the stony beaches and snow-capped mountains in the distance, and the water looked very cold. We followed the lake for a good hour or two before heading back inland for a brief stop at Slyudyanka where all the jeans, handbags and net curtains came out to be traded on the platform.
We arrived into Irkutsk about 4pm local time and made our way through the packed station to our hostel.
