Tomsk was a really nice place to visit........and we had our first sighting of snow. It lasted about 20 minutes and didn't settle! So on par with English snow at the moment. We walked alot around Tomsk as it was very pretty, in particular one of the parks with memorials to WW2 and looks out over the river Tom.

From there we caught another train (something like 30 hours on this one) to Irkutsk. Stayed there for a few nights, though there is not actually that much of interest there, although it was really nice to walk around the river, and there was a park that you could see out over the whole city from. I also found a massive Chinese market where you could pretty much buy your life at........it was really crazy but fun!!

Irkutsk is a very popular stop along the trans-siberian as everyone stops there to then go to Lake Baikal. This is exactly what we did, and so we went to Listvyanka, which is the closest point on the lake to Irkutsk, so only an hours bus ride away. Had a really lovely lovely time by the lake, where we stayed with a little old Russian lady called Olga who looked after us so well. She made us really good breakfast and dinners (with loads of veg from her garden and fish from the lake!) and wouldn't ever let us leave without ridiculous amounts of clothes on even though it got pretty hot there. There isn't really anything to do at the lake other than go walking, so this is pretty much all we did. It was really pretty and remote so nice to get away from the cities. There were also massive fish markets where they smoked loads of fresh fish.........they were so nice and very cheap also.

On Wednesday we left Listvyanka to go back to Irkutsk, where we then got a short, 8 hour, night train to Ulan Ude. Arriving there at 6:30 we made a mad dash over to catch a bus to Ulaanbaatar. Unfortunately the bus was full, and as our Russian visas finished that day we had to leave, so we caught a minibus to a town near the border of Russia, where we then got a taxi to the border. We then had to get in some ladies car to cross the border as you cannot do this on foot. Customs and border control took just over an hour to get just 5 people through, and was very long winded and slow. But we were then dropped off immediately the other side of the border, where we then got a taxi to Darkan, and then another one to Ulaanbaatar. It was a pretty crazy, epic journey, and got us to Ulaanbaatar at 8:30 last night. From the border it was about 400km and cost us only about 10 pounds each! However we nearly crashed into a horse, 3 pigs, 1 herd of cows, 2 goats, an oncoming truck, the ditch, some Mongolian people and a few moe stray cows!

The whole journey was through the middle of nowhere, with nothing but vast quantities of space to look at (the picture shown with this pretty much sums it up). But as soon as we reached the edge of Ulaanbaatar we were immediately in grid lock and didn't move for about 20 minutes. Although alot of drivers try to short cut and bypass traffic by driving off the road and around it, or even just up the wrong side of the road. There seems to be no rules to driving here!

We are now in a very nice hostel for the weekend, before I am going off to stay in ger's for a few weeks, and Tom is yet planless. The weather is now getting very cold though today is looking bright and sunny from looking out the window. Oh and we have now gone back an hour so I'm now only 7 hours ahead of England.

Lots of love to all.xxxxxx