Best Eastern Sun Hotel Irkutsk

... birds are labelled in English. And the Nerpa seals are truly delightful!
Apparently the lake freezes in winter to a depth of up to 2 meters or more and they create an ice road across it. Some of you may have seen the TV programmes about the
Canadian ice road truckers.
Fortunately, we only have a smattering of snow as we leave.



Shirley & John



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... a few minutes to stretch our legs and buy goods (food) from the Babushkas (not too sure of the spelling)!!

Altogether a very enlightening and different experience - with some very pleasant and some not so pleasant Russian passengers along side us.

The hotel - we had a room to ourselves - BLISS - we were later told that we had been given this privilege because we are OLD!! So there are some advantages of being old!!! Irkutsk is a very busy city ...

... sprightly at 71, en-route to China to seek herbal treatment to help her recover from cancer and, as a retired English teacher, delighted to practise her language skills;
A foursome of student football fans, thinking nothing of a 3-day-each-way train trip to cheer on their home team, playing away. With their smattering of English they asked if I like punk music (not since the 70s), if I liked Rambo films (not ever) and which was ...

... It remined us of a Swiss village. Most of the houses were made from wood and the window frames painted in bright colours.
Although at the far end for the village in the port area was the inevitable drab grey appartment block.

The view across the lake was awesome with the mountains on the other side. Lake Baikal is the oldest, deepest and biggest fresh water lake in the world

Russia does have a big drink problem from early morning and throughout the day you ...

... sleep (or attempt to). Then got to Irkutsk. Mostly just packed and cleaned and go ready for the train ride tomorrow. It's at 6:39am so gotta be up hella early. The hostel is the usual bit of craziness with Oksana trying to weave her magic and make trains and other destination reservations magically happen. I just crashed early, or attempted to with people still moving about til midnight.

... Russia only for it to be fought over by the expanionist players of later centuries. When the mongols and their off shoots the Tartars were finally defeated St Basil's in Russia was built to celebrate this feat. Subsequent Tzars set up the penal camp system in the C16 as a way of holding and developing the region nominally inhabited by numerous non-russian tribes. The infrastructure was there already ...

There was plenty of entertainment on board our train from Mongolia to Siberia, curtesy of the Mongolian 'smugglers' who try to get various goods through the Russian border in secret. Before the train had even left the floors were up, screwdrivers out and every inch of the train was being scanned and used for hiding places. We got asked several ...

... him the name of the hotel we wanted. He eventually understood, and after making a couple of phone calls I think he found one that sounded suitable. He took us to the Hotel Europa (5 stars, no less) and we were able to speak to their reception staff, and at last, use the internet. We noted the location of a number of Irkutsk hostels, and presenting a cabbie with an address, neatly written in his native Cyrillic, took our 3rd and final taxi of the day ...

Great wall…dragonflies…toboggan&# 8230;night market…sampling scorpions…Vulcan bar…vodka…forbidden city…dinner at the lake…drinks by the lake…train to UB…border crossing…party on the platform…party on the train…bogie changing…party on the train till the passports came back ...

... itself is immense. There are no words in the English language that can do it justice. It is the world's oldest lake and one of the largest, measuring some 400 miles long, and 20-40 miles wide. It holds an estimated 20,000 cubic kilometres of water, which is 20% of the Earth's entire freshwater supply. If we ran out of drinking water tomorrow, Baikal could supply the entire world with water for the next 40 years. With an average temperature of only around 7 ...