At 5am we were rudely awaken by the carriage attendant as we had to be off the train at 6am in MONGOLIA!! It's hard to believe we are in Mongolia - normally you only change countries after a flight (or that's how it feels to me)! We were met at the station by our new honcho - Odka - explained to us as 'Like Vodka but without the V' (did she know about our vodka exploits on the Russian train we mused??) and then got dropped off at the hotel for a couple of hour's...

The temperature when we arrived in Irkutsk was a balmy -13, we were greeted by Costa, walked through the station and got into a waiting minibus with destination Listvyanka on the banks of Lake Baikal. A journey of some 90 minutes leading to many of the group making up lost sleep by having a snooze on the way. As we arrived we could see the lake - it's amazing to think that such a big lake (636 km long, 70 odd km wide and a mile deep) could be frozen solid! Appar...