Hello all,

After the 4 days on the train and feeling rather dirty we have arrived in Irkutsk, it was 6am and freezing cold. We where met by our guide and taken to Lake Biakal which is around an hour away. It was a really pretty drive looks a lot like I imagine Canada too.
As we drove past the Lake we could see it was nearly all frozen, which is mind boggling when you know that it is the same size as Belgium or nearly the same size as Switzerland!

We arrived at our chalet which was up the road from the Lake, it has spectacular views and it all made completely out of wood it's very cute. We had a nice cup of tea and then a little snooze as it is pretty hard to sleep on the train especially when everybody else snores like there's no tomorrow!!

The town is one road long (5km) we started at the fish market and walked all the way to the other end which has a ski resort (Lynds you would have liked it the snow was good and it was deserted!) we went up to the ski lift to look at the view from the top of the mountain - check the pictures. (To say it was cold is an understatement it's still -12'C; my fingers stopped bending in my thermal gloves! And there are bears in the hills, which I did not know eekk!)

We had some fish called Omul which is a white salmon only caught in the Lake, it was very nice. We had some vodka that cost 80p a shot it was awful, bit like nail varnish remover!

We have a better internet connection today but now we have a virus on the memory stick! So we will keep trying to upload more photos.

Also, thanks Becky for keeping us up to date with Daisy - it's good to know she doesn't miss us and is not of her food!

Take care all
Christina and Herman.