So we are now well rested after our marathon train journey and can now give you an update from our latest destination: Irkutsk - Capital of Siberia!

The train wiped us out for a full 24 hours with the time difference and lack of sleep in general, so we have really slowed the pace over the last two days to get ourselves back into the swing of things.

Just as well really - Irkutsk isn't quite up to the standard of Moscow and St Petersburg when it comes to sights to see.

Yesterday, we went to buy our train tickets to Ulan Bator in Mongolia, but through our strict instructions in our, now fluent, Russian, we managed to book the train to Ulan Ude instead. In fairness to us, the piece of paper we had written for us with our ticket requirements (OK, so I lied about the fluent Russian) had everything in great detail written on it - except the destination. Brilliant.

Either way, we now had tickets for only a fraction of our journey and no way of arguing a refund/exchange. Thankfully, we moved hostels and the receptionist informed us of a hotel that had a ticket office with a little lady that spoke English! Needless to say, we hot-footed down there and through frantic explanations of what we needed she managed to get our refund (with only a R50 admin fee) and put it towards our new ticket on a new train with better seats!

She is our favourite person in Irkutsk.

We also managed to book our tour to Lake Baikal (the reason we stopped in Irkutsk), and are now looking forward to leaving for Olkhon Island tomorrow morning for three days.

With the next leg of the journey sorted and not much to really see we decided to start work on planning. We have sorted our trip to Mongolia now, including a mammoth 7 day tour around the whole country staying in gers/yurts with random Mongolian families. Not sure what to think about it as we don't know too much apart from below:

GOBI TRIP (6 nights & 7 days)

Day 1. Leave for Erdenedalay village. Overnight stay with a nomadic family.

Day 2. Drive to Bayanzag, where dinosaurs' egg and fossil were found.

Overnight stay with a nomadic family. Camel riding is available.

Day 3. Drive to Sand Dunes. Overnight stay with a nomadic family.

Camel riding is available.

Day 4. Visit to Ice Valley - Yolun am.

Where there are many wild animals and birds. It is a spectacular narrow gorge.

A good adventurous and rough road.

Continue to drive to Dalanzadgad town, Omnogobi aimag.

Overnight stay with a local family. Market, shower

and electricity is available.

Day 5. Drive to Tsagaan Suvarga (White mountain).

Overnight stay with a nomadic family.

Day 6. Drive to Baga gazrun chuluu - National Park, Dundgobi aimag.

Overnight stay with a nomadic family.

Day 7. Drive back to UB.

We have also sorted our train to China with the hostel in Mongolia (we hope) and we should be leaving Mongolia on 30th September and waking up in October in Beijing!

Well, thats Irkutsk really. I've padded all this out considering all we have really done is walk around and organised things.

We did find a statue of Yuri Gargarin in a park. Not sure why because he isn't from here, but thats the most interesting thing we have seen. Sarah and Laura decided to moonwalk - not like Michael Jackson.

Hope you're all well - hopefully we'll have an interesting entry to add after our trip to Olkhon!