Tomsk-Irkutsk, Russia – 09/15 The Trans-Mongolian Train

(Michelle) The trip from Tomsk to Irkutsk is about 35 hours, I think. It was 2 full nights sleep and one full day. We spent the morning just reading. In the afternoon, we had a couple of cocktails with our neighbors Bill and Liz. We learned a lot about them in that time – they had been living in Belgium working for a while and now they were on their way back to Australia from Belgium the long way. They are getting married when they return.

Irkutsk is our last stop in Russia. We were a little worried because here we had to buy train tickets again. Our next trip is to Mongolia, and since it is international, we couldn’t buy these tickets in Moscow. We were pleasantly surprised that with all the trouble we had buying tickets in St. Petersburg and Moscow, it was quite easy (with a person who spoke English) in Irkutsk.

(TJ) The train ride was more of the same pine and birch trees, small villages. It was interspersed with debilitating episodes where the attendants would lock the toilets to torture you for a few hours. They did let us off the train once along the way so that we could go to a small store near the train station to restock provisions. I though it was funny because you had a 75 foreigners waiting to get food in this small store all very confused. The way they ran the store was rather unhelpful for quick service. 90% of the goods were behind a counter that was on three walls of the store. So you would walk around the three walls with a clerk on the other side of the counter and point to what you wanted. I think that there were 3 clerks in the store so this process took about 45 minutes. Not that we were in a rush or anything I got my salami, cheese and bread, I was happy.