Ok, so this blog is 3 weeks overdue but i'll try to remember as much as possible.

We left Ulanbaatar at 7.45pm, destination Russia. We had a very quiet night on the train, myself and Sean (an guy from Cork who we were sharing the train cabin with along with Mel, an English girl) had a few beers and watched a film on my ipod while Trish and Mel slept. At 7am we awoke to find that we had arrived at the Mongolian/Russian border. And so the long wait started and it would be 3pm (Russian time) before we were on our way again. This long stop wouldn't have been so bad apart from the fact that when the train is stationary all the toilets are closed! Very uncomfortable indeed. We said our goodbyes to Sean and Mel (who at this stage were getting rather drunk with an Australian group who were on the same carriage as us) and got off at Ulan Ude around 9.30pm. We were delivered to our prearranged home stay, a small 2 bedroom apartment in the centre of town, had our dinner (which consisted of more bloody dumplings) and retired to our bed.

Ulan Ude, the capital of the Buryat Republic (the region of Russia we were now in) is the centre of Buddhism in Russia. The local Buryats are very similar in appearance to the Mongolians with which they share alot of traditions and customs. Due to the large number of military bases in the area Ulan Ude was off-limits to foreigners until the thaw in East-West relations. During our whole stay there (2 nights) we didn't see any other western tourist which was nice.

After a very comfortable nights we were driven to Alsayatski Datsan, a buddhist temple which houses a waxwork of the Dali Lama. While there we visited the local village, were brought into the local Buryat school to see the village museum and had lunch with a local woman in her house (of course more dumplings were had). We got back to Ulan Ude around 3pm and went wandering around the city. The main item of interest to us in Ulan Ude was the Giant Lenin Head, the world's biggest bronze head. By this stage it was cold, very cold, and so we just went back to the homestay.

Next day we were driven to Ivolginski Datsan, the centre of Buddhism in Russian. As we walked around the temple it started to snow, our first snow in Siberia, very cool. We left the temple and we driven high into the hills, where the snow was getting heavier and heavier, to an Old Believers village. Old Believers are a group who split from the Russian Orthodox in the 17th century. They follow all the older beliefs and texts and are quite different to modern Orthodox believers. We visited the local museum which was the personal collection of the village priest, a lovely man who took great pride in his museum. It was freezing but the museum was amazing, we were able to hold and look through 300-500 year old church documents, ancient farming tools (very similar to tools used in Ireland) and household items. We gave our own contribution to his collection, a Hong Kong dollar bill to add to his money collection. We left the town and the rising snow and got back to Ulan Ude, eat our dinner (thankfully not dumplings), and were on the train at 9.40pm. We even had the cabin (designed for 4 people) to ourselves for the entire 8 hour journey which was brillant. Next stop Irkutsk and Lake Baikal.