Wednesday 14th March

Today is finally the day that we are allowed off the train! The night attendant woke us up abruptly at 7:30am for our stop at 9:30.

We packed our bags and got ready to leave, finally!!

It was amazing! Finally fresh air!!! Our new honcho, which is called Costa (short for Costine or something), picked us up and we got in a bus (a private bus!) and had a 1 hour 30 minute drive. It was nice just looking out the window at better scenery!

He told us all the things we could do and if we liked the idea of this, today was going to involve a walk on Lake Baikal, yes I mean on the lake, and then to the lookout point for photos and then to the sauna. This sounded like a great plan! But first shower time!!

I think this has possibly been the best shower I have ever had! The guest house we were staying in was in the hills around Lake Baikal which was extremely dangerous (for me) to walk along!!

We had a long awaited shower which was possibly the best shower I have had!! We met Costas to go for a walk on the lake and to the observatory for a good view! Walking on the lake was really strange, for starters I was terrified it was going to crack and second you couldn't see how deep the water had frozen to. It was thick enough for cars to be driving on so I felt pretty safe! The water had frozen cracks and bubbles in the middle very bizarre! Stu thought it would be a good idea to start ice skating and stacked it; I managed to get photo evidence!

We then walked the steep hill to the observatory for the view. It was pretty hard and I ended up left behind going at a snail's pace! The view was worth it. The lake literally stretched for miles, it is the longest lake by 395 miles, 49 miles wide and also the deepest lake with a max depth of 1,642 meters. It also contains 20% of the world's fresh water. It also has extremely unique creatures including the Baikal seals, which people have no idea how they got there!

We took the scenic route, this was the best part, and the snow literally came up to my knees and was extremely hard to walk through. We all ran down the hill, or more precisely falling down. It was a hilarious 40 minutes; my boots had their own swimming pool created for free!

We walked back to the guest house and I took off my boots and stuck them on the radiator hoping they would be dry in the morning! We all got dressed for the Russian sauna! The Russian saunas are kept at 90 - 100 degrees Celsius. Pretty warm! I think I lost 10 lbs. by sitting in there! Costas then told us we were going to be hit by birch branches, I was worried as the way he described the process it was going to hurt!!

The boys went first and they had to all strip and go in naked. This was hilarious for the girls sitting outside the sauna! Soon it was our turn, luckily we did not had to take our clothes off! I don't know why we were worried because the actual tree hitting was very nice and relaxing! Costas had birch leaves and he put them in hot water before gently hitting our backs to wipe of the dead skin. Costas was exhausted doing this process for all of us so instead Stu did the honors for me!

After our relaxing sauna we got washed and dressed and went into the lounge for a lovely home cooked meal! It was amazing! I was pretty tired, which is surprising since I have spent 5 days doing absolutely nothing on a train, and went to bed!

Thursday 15th March

We woke up and ready for breakfast at 10 am, eggs were on the menu! YUM! Today we were going to do snowmobiling and dog sledging! Exciting!!!

We had free time before we left at 12 for lunch at the pie shop, and I have my new found phrase of 'who ate all the pirogies?' Which means who ate all the pies (pies being in Russian).

We walked to the snowmobiling hire and for 1200 rubles we hired a snowmobile for an hour between Stu and I. Stu drove first, it felt like the first time Stu could legally drive, it was a scary experience! Plus being on the back of snowmobile going over bumps I literally jumped 5 miles in the air!! 30 minutes had passed and it was my go…! Well it is a lot harder than it looks you have to lean the opposite way to the direction you are turning in, which is just confusing! It started off ok and slowly since Beth was in front so I was grateful for that! However I lost concentration and went off roading and nearly hit a tree. Before you all jumped to conclusions it was the tiniest baby tree in the world! The guide had to get me out of the deep snow and I felt very embarrassed! We carried on ok but not for long, I veered off into the deep snow, luckily I managed to recover and get back on track!! We drove to the dog sledging to swap over! It was well worth the money! I did have a thought while driving the snowmobiling which was, am I covered in my insurance?! (I have since checked and I am covered!)

It was dog sledging time! We could either stand up and 'steer' or sit down and enjoy it. I chose to sit down as I would be able to take pictures! Stu chose to stand up and in doing so, crashed into a tree himself! As soon as I sat down in the sledge the dogs were rearing to go and literally raced of the start line. We did a big circuit and I sat back and enjoyed the ride, as much as I could on a metal frame! The dogs looked like they enjoyed this a lot more than I did! Brenton told us how his guide told him to stop, which he did but failed to keep his foot on the break when he stop and the dogs kept on running which made him fall off the back of the sledge. This story still makes me laughing writing about it!!

After we all had finished we walked back to the guest house, Costas stayed behind waiting for the others to finish their snowmobiling! We had an enjoyable walk back which involved us pushing each other in the snow and throwing snow balls at each other! We saw the snowmobiles pull up, minus two passengers. We all started commenting what happened and who had died. Apparently Sam crashed into a tree and broke the snowmobile and she was then banned from driving it! Oops!

We walked back to the guest house to get washed and dressed ready for dinner at the local kebabie. This is an upmarket kebab shop not like the ones back in the UK. They cook the kebab on the BBQ outside and it was served with onions and we brought a rice to share. It was properly the best kebab you would ever get! We walked back to the hostel and we all chilled out in the lounge before hitting the hay!

Friday 16th March

Today is our last day in Baikal, we took the opportunity to go snowboarding for a grand total of…. $25!!! It was a very tiny slope compared to Canada but it was good fun. Stu managed to get better as well so all is good! But it wasn't a bad price for four hours of boarding! It was pretty cold and snowing hard, plus as I didn't have proper ski pants on I got very wet and cold quickly!

We went back to the guesthouse to shower and change before driving to Irkutsk to board our next train. We grabbed some dinner in the form of Papa Jones pizza, but a more up market one than the UK. My pizza wasn't very nice and made me feel ill. We boarded the Mongolian train to Ulaanbaatar. I was very sad leaving Baikal, I had really enjoyed my time here and our honcho was amazing. We all settled down for the night ready for our two night journey to Mongolia.

Saturday 17th March

I honestly can't remember anything of significance on our journey to Ulaanbaatar. I was really being to hate trains; we also shared the cabin with Breton who had an awful habit of snoring, possibly nearly as bad as mum's, which is saying something!

We had to cross two borders, the Russian side, which took nearly 6 painful hours. This could have been cut down to 4 hours due to the fact that for the first two hours nothing happened and we got off in a one horse town of nothingness. This time will never be gained back. The border checks were more brutal than the arrival checks. Sniffer dogs came on border all the seats had to be lifted up; pictures were taken of our bags etc. We had to keep sitting up and walk out of our cabin at least a thousand times! One girl, not on our tour, had her bags searched as the dog picked up the scent of the malaria tablets and the customs officers did not understand what this was for. Lost in translation moment. Oh balls…! We and Stu have 190 tablets each but not as many as Kirsty and Neil who had 900 odds tablets! Luckily customers were too in grossed in racking out the poor Finnish girls bag to come into our cabin. After this painful process, we were off to the Mongolian border crossing. This side took nearly 3 hours, a little bit quicker, but still involved the same process as the Russian border!

We finally crossed the border! HOORAY!!! We went off to bed as we had to be up at 6:10 am for when our train arrived.

Overall view on Lake Baikal:

I fell in love with Baikal! It was the perfect winter wonderland. This was the one part of my trip I was really looking forward to due to the activities on offer. It didn't disappoint. Our honcho made it better than it would have been on our own. I would love to return during the summer and do everything on offer here as well. For anyone planning on doing this trip, this is stop is highly recommended!!

Total miles travelled from UK: 7112

Transport taken:

Trains = 13

Hours ahead of UK:

+9

Our Photos: