Ulan-Ude ("OOH-lan ooh-DAY") is the capital of the Buryatia Republic region in Eastern Siberia. There is not much to see in Ulan-Ude city centre - the highlight is the world's largest statue of the head of Lenin. However, there are lots of interesting places to visit nearby. I was staying with a lovely couple, Andrey and Svetlana, and their two children Yasha (20) and Masha (18). They were so welcoming and Svetlana made great food. Andrey and Svetlana were also...

Listvyanka is a small village, about an hour from from the city of Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia. It's on the shore of Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. It's great to be out in the countryside for a while I'm in a 'home stay' with a Russian lady named Olga who's feeding us well (though she did give us dumplings stuffed with mashed potato one day, which was strange). She's been taking in tourists for ten years and has lots of trinkets from prev...

It was two full days on the train from Yekaterinburg to my next stop, Irkutsk. I met some weird and wonderful (well, more weird than wonderful) Russians along the way... In my carriage there was an old fat windbag who complained and argued loudly and inexhaustibly. I think she was disappointed when she realised that her moaning was wasted on me because I couldn't understand it. There was also a guy that spoke a little English and was delighted at the chance to ...

After a 28-hour train journey from Moscow I arrived in Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in Russia, just past the border between Europe and Asia. The landscape along the route is dominated by hundreds of miles of trees, occasionally interrupted by villages that mainly consist of small wooden houses with corrugated iron roofs - most of them look like they hadn't been fixed up for the best part of a century though I saw some with satellite dishes attached whic...

Train from St P to Moscow at 2am. The carriage attendant (provodnitsa) was a scary lady wearing bright orange nail varnish and lipstick; she kept shouting at an Australian family even though they obviously couldn't understand what she was saying. From what I could gather she was just trying to find their cabin number... When we arrived in Moscow there were snowflakes in the air! I had a tour of the sights straight away but I'd had hardly any sleep and it was bit...