Trans-Siberian Railway, Part 2

The trip from Ulaan Baatar to Irkutsk was the shortest leg on our Trans-Siberian itinerary, so we thought it would wind up being pretty uneventful. Luckily we wound up being pretty wrong on that count.

First off, we had to deal with the epic bureaucratic train wreck (metaphorically speaking) that is the Russian border crossing. We didn't have to do much other than hand over our passports, but somehow the whole ordeal took ELEVEN HOURS, which would have been only mildly inconvenient except for the fact that the bathrooms on the train are locked during all border crossings. Eeh. We did eventually find a small pay toilet near the station which, at the time, rivalled the Taj Mahal for sheer beauty.

Eleven hours sitting still in a train compartment might have been pretty boring, were it not for the spectacle playing out in our car. Four of us (of the six doing the Vodkatrain trip) were in one compartment, and the other two were sharing a compartment with a woman who turned out to be a Mongolian smuggler. "Ooh," you're thinking, "a smuggler! She must have been trafficking all sorts of dangerous and exotic things across the border." Nope. She was smuggling salami and underpants. To evade the customs officers, she cleverly stuffed several large salami sausages behind the curtains, and hid one or two in the pillows of our fellow travellers. As for the underpants, she strapped them to her shins with packing tape and covered them with some conveniently baggy pants. The perfect crime!

Once the customs officers were convinced of her lumpy-legged innocence, she quickly gathered her wares and headed off the train, only to stop 10 metres from the platform and set up shop, selling underpants and cured meat to the hungry population of Naushki.

We finally crossed into Russia, and passed through a town called Ulan Ude at around 10pm, stopping for 45 minutes. One of our travel companions had a guidebook that informed us that Ulan Ude is home to the world's largest statue of Vladimir Lenin's head. How could we pass that up? The map in the guidebook made it look like we had plenty of time to get there and back in 45 minutes. Here is a word of caution: never ever trust maps in guidebooks. They are universally awful. We finally found the head (verdict: yep, it's big!), but only had enough time to make it back to the train if we ran the entire way. Mal and two others decided to turn back a bit early and delegate photo-taking responsibility to the more foolish among us (me being one of them). After a mad dash back to the platform, we all made it safely back on board with a few minutes to spare.

We got to Irkutsk and took off immediatley for Listvyanka, a small town on the shore of Lake Baikal, the world's biggest lake (by volume). Mal and I got made fun of for always making sure people tacked on the "by volume" part, because clearly the biggest lake by area (Lake Superior) is the proper "world's biggest lake". It was pretty awesome regardless, and we got to eat some freshly smoked omul (a fish that only exists in Lake Baikal) right on the shore. Delicious.

Internet time's up, more stories from Moscow!