Ulan-Ude: All day

Ksenya and our driver Serg, meet us 8am to begin a busy day.
The task today is to check out local pkaces of cultural importance in this predominantly buddhist, Buryat society.
Buryatia, The Buryat Autonomous Republic, with a population of one million are warm, hospitibal and distinctly Asiatic.
Agela is our first host who teaches The Ankle Bone Shooting game and Horse Racing using the knuckle bone of sheep. I think we used the same in the game of 'knuckles' when we were kids.
Next stop is to the township of Old Believers.
A Christian sect exiled to Russia in the 15th Century for not adoptimg new practices in the Orthodox Church and marched 5000 kms east to exile and to establish communities in the then Siberian wastelands.
They entertain us with food, song and dancing and of course we participate. Olga's father fought in the Great Patriotic War but was exiled in 1947 for a bresch of discipline (kindness rather) and not released from the gulag until Stalin dies.
Yet there is a photo of Stalin in their home; though its treated as a museum piece rather than anything else.
A final look at Ulan-Ude and the largest statue of Lennon in Russia and its onto the Trans Siberiam railway.Read more