Early start this morning and out onto the city tour, we'd all under estimated how cold it was going to be so about half way through I asked to be taken back to the hotel so we could get jackets. It was about thirty degrees yesterday and now today it was about five, last week it had been minus ten.

We visited all the usual things on the city tour, plus the old train grave yard parked off to the side of the railway lines, that we had passed on the way in that some of the clients had asked about. There were some really cool engines in there including a grey and red one with Joseph Stalin on the front. Most of the engines were steam powered and really big, there was one green engine whose red wheels stood taller than I did.

When the city tour was over, the clients had free time and I had a meeting to go to at 2pm, it was a bit early so I walked down to Peace Avenue with John, Denise and Mike and hung out in a restaurant with them until it was time for me to go. I was meeting with Bernard from the Happy Camel, who is Tucan's new local operator for Mongolia, for debriefing. I met with Bernard for about an hour and told him that I was happy with his company and raised a few concerns and then went and had Indian food for lunch, last decent meal for a while I thought to myself.

I went back to the hotel and hung out around there for about an hour before it was time to go to the station to get the train to Irkutsk. The bus collected us dropped us at the station, there was already a train there, but it wasn't ours. Unfortunately, I found this out after I had herded all the passengers towards carriage one at the front of the train. There were no boards lit up, so I had no idea what was happening. Luckily, for me it got a bit dark and they put the boards on and I could see that ours was the next train, though not before traipsing all over the station looking for information and playing a joke on the passengers saying our train had be cancelled…priceless.

We boarded the train and got settled, me as usual in with the locals, this time two young girls studying at university in Irkutsk, a dramatic improvement on the last bunk mates, two obviously sick Chinamen. I hung out another cabin, with Dane, Maria, Nat and Andrea until it was time to go to bed, glad I wouldn't need to sleep on their floor this time.