So I think you will all be pleased to hear that the European flash-packing has certainly stopped, and we've gone from Swan Lake to swampy…shower-less for 4 nights on the Trans-Mongolian railway, 5 nights in the Gobi desert, sleeping on yurt floors with nomadic Mongolia families…yes it has most definitely sunk in now!

We are now in Beijing so I am a bit behind with my blog updates - as Simon keeps pointing out - but our blog address is not accessible on every internet connection (I think the Chinese authorities might be worried as to what I may write, as I know the blog must have a massive audience currently) so bear with us a bit as I try and catch up...

We left St Petersburg - on another overnight train - for Moscow, arriving the next morning to sweltering 30°C heat, with 12 hours to explore…most of this was spent wandering around Red Square, the Kremlin, and surrounding highlights (eg former KGB headquarters for Simon, Bolshoi Theatre for Vicky, and some of the city's incredibly decorative metro stops for us both).

That same evening we boarded another train - there is a theme here - but this was different, this was THE train: the first leg of the Trans-Mongolian Railway trip which would take us across Asia through Russia, Mongolia and then leave us in Beijing, 8900+ and 2 weeks later. Despite the two 'warm up' overnight train trips we had taken, we didn't really know what would lie ahead, but after all the walking and sight-seeing of the first week, spending 4 days straight on the train (the first leg of our journey) was actually very appealing, and we left behind the heat of Moscow, Siberia-bound.

The first few days actually passed very quickly: back in the UK the thought of spending 4 days essentially living on a train seemed such an alien - and not to mention claustrophobic - idea but you soon get in to the swing of it, and the days form their own easy routine as you while away the hours reading/snoozing in your cabin, staring out the window at the changing scenery, chatting to fellow passengers, and jumping on/off at the various stops along the way where you get an average of 15 minutes every few hours to stretch your legs, buy some unidentifiable foodstuffs from platform vendors, and generally breathe in some fresh air. In fact, the experience, as Simon summed up, was "the closest I have ever been to being in prison" - possibly due to the confined spaces, 15 minute breaks of freedom, etc - although a certain part might be attributed to the carriage attendants, the 'provodnistas', who are mostly female and rule their carriages with a rod of iron - keep them sweet, and you are fine, but piss them off and you know you would have a very different experience: their job is to basically manage their designated carriage, keep it spic and span, make sure everyone behaves themselves, wakes people up before their stop if it's the middle of the night etc. They are not known for their welcoming hospitality, and we had heard stories of particularly harsh ones who charged for using the hot water tap, kept the toilets locked for mysteriously long periods of time, and generally made the journey as difficult as they wanted. We seemed to do ok with ours though, and by the end of the 4 days their sometimes brash manner (wrenching your bunk sheets out from underneath you before you've had a chance to get up) took on its own charm. As one Russian guy we met said, Russian service is 'specific', which seems as good as word for it as any.

We were in 2nd class, and our particular carriage those first 4 days was filled with mostly Russians, and the same went for the travel companions Simon and I shared our 4-berth cabin with….who, despite communication being limited to a few hellos and smiles, were very friendly. We felt slightly 3rd class though when we explored down the train, past the dining car, and saw some of the posher carriages with mini armchairs, electric fans, and smiling Chinese staff….this was made even more apparent when we tried to make use of the dining car. This is where I had thought we would spend most of our time, drinking vodka with Russian travellers and playing (or in my case learning) chess. The reality is that the dining cart is ridiculously expensive so none of the locals use it and everyone brings their own food and drink supplies, which at least makes for a convivial atmosphere between cabins as you pop to your 'neighbours' for drinks or swap food. The first 24 hours though we were desperate to sit in the dining car, as despite leaving Moscow at almost 10pm at night, the train was unbelievably hot and stuffy still from the day's heat, and sitting in your cabin was like sitting in a sauna, so the dining car provided some wonderful, air-conditioned respite. To get in to the dining car though you had to get by the burly, Russian dining car attendant, who would barrel towards you as soon as you entered, gruffly shouting "WHAT YOU WANT?" - with wild hair, sausage-fingered gesticulations and bursting-out-of-shirt anger that you should dare step in to the dining cart, from our end of the train, when it became very obvious that "service" was reserved for the Scandinavian tour group who dominated the other end of the train, who had paid for meals to be included. The ensuing exchange was like something out of a Fawlty Towers episode ('Gourmet Night'?) as we asked if we could sit down for a drink and he replied in broken English: "You can't sit there, the tourists sit there"….obviously we were not tourist enough?

The next day our own cabins had cooled down to the extent that we could actually sit in them, and not have to take on Basil again, during our stint on that train. The rest of that first leg passed without incident, with just the one night of heavy vodka 'sampling' with Australian Sally and James - our fellow Russian travellers seemingly not bowing to stereotype so we did it for them - and generally more snoozing/daydreaming/snacking/exploring local stops at breakneck speed for fear of not making it back to the train in time and be left somewhere in the middle of Russia….but loving the changing landscape and the absolute leisure of such a trip!

On day 5 we made our first stop, in Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia (now considerably cooler) for a 3-day stop over by Lake Baikal, a beautiful lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains, with some impressive stats: it is the world's deepest lake (1.6km-ish), holding nearly 1/5 of the globe's unfrozen fresh water, and home to around 60,000 nerpa seals. We stayed in Listvyanka, a little village on the side of the lake, which consisted of one main road skirting the shoreline, and a few valleys running inland to the forests behind, with wooden guesthouses for visitors - as this spot is known as the 'Baikal Riviera'….which we can imagine is a more apt description during the two months of the year it has a summer - we were there just off season, with the lake having been totally frozen over just two weeks before, and you could tell the area was not quite 'open for business' yet - comically there were three Tourist Information offices within 400m of eachother, and all attempts to get any information at all about boat trips, walking trails, even a local map were similarly futile…we felt like everyone was still in a post-hibernation snooze. Despite this, it was a lovely spot to chill out, walk in the forest (no bears luckily despite them being rumoured to be around), wrap up warm to sit on the pebble beach when the sun was out, and eat the local delicacies (smoked fish from the lake).

We stayed in a little guesthouse run by a very friendly couple who we randomly communicated with in German - not exactly our strongest language - as they spoke no English. We had a rather dramatic night one night, when we were woken up about 2am by a lot of commotion outside the guesthouse and on the street below our balcony - we ignored it at first thinking it was local kids mucking around on a Saturday night, but the shouts acquired a different sort of urgency, and when we looked outside and stepped on to the balcony we saw that the house opposite us was totally ablaze - various locals were running around with garden hoses doing what they could to douse the flames. Luckily after a while three fire engines (of sorts) turned up, but not before we decided to leave our room as the position of it meant it was precariously close to the flames, and this became even more apparent the next day when we saw that the heat had melted off some of the paintwork on the outside wall of our room! Having seen a couple of burnt down houses, it seemed this was maybe a common problem in Listvyanka, and we were just relieved that no-one was hurt, and it was quite a scary/surreal experience - we felt very sorry though for the family who we saw picking through the charred remains the next day.

On that note, I will leave you there, and hope to upload the next post about the remaining leg of the railway journey sooner than this last one! Love from us both to you all Xx