Omulëvka

After four days barely sleeping on a train, I awoke from what felt like the best sleep of my life for a delicious buffet breakfast at our hotel.

It was time to get ready for our next destination - Mongolia, so after packing our bags and after using the hotel internet which was only available in the lobby, we took off for a quick tour around the city of Irkutsk before our train departed at 9pm. While sitting alone in the hotel lobby for Jamie to finish putting on his makeup, I was approached by a young Russian male traveller. The conversation started innocently enough but started getting a bit more interesting when he asked me in his best English whether I was travelling on my own or with a "friend" and getting closer and closer to me in the process. When Jamie finally arrived, I was quite thankful. We found out he was doing essentially the same trip as us, but trying to hitchhike the majority of the way. We became instagram friends to follow each others journeys and hopefully nothing else.

When we finally did leave the hotel, we decided to follow the green line, a line marked out around the city showing off all its wares and mainly consisted of churches, parks and monuments. There were a few beautiful spots, but they were few and far between in a city which is largely industrialised, and hasn't had a coat of paint since the early 20th century .

Eventually we gave up on natural beauty and headed for the shops. I had done some reading about Russian jewellery and was determined to leave with a precious gem. This resulted in me dragging Jamie into a jewellery shop and trying on what seemed like 1,000s of pieces before I settled on a blue topaz ring. I left one happy girl and Jamie was just happy to leave, and we continued our shopping experience by checking out the local markets and souvenir shops on the hunt for a babhuska doll.

Late afternoon, it was time for coffee before we headed to the supermarket to pick up some supplies for our two night train trip to Ulan Bator. As there is no restaurant car abroad this train we of course needed to keep hangry at bay so typically brought enough food to keep us feed for a week, even Teemu (Tems) got some honey to keep him going after feeling a bit neglected over the last few days.

After dinner at a "local" Italian restaurant and a few Aperol spritz's later, we made our way back to our hotel to pick up our bags before walking the 20 minute trek to the train station. On our short journey, Jamie managed to find 10 rubles which he picked up for "good luck" and we made another Russian Friend on a bike on a bridge who proceeded to have a conversation with us in Russian even though we couldn't speak a word of it. Before we came to Russia, my mum told me that Moscow and St Petersberg were recently rated the most unfriendly cities in the world but during our entire journey we have experienced the contrary. In fact, people were more unfriendly on my recent trips to Majorca and Madrid than they have been in Russia. They may have resting bitch face but I can assure you that they do know how to smile. Only those acting in official capacities for the police or train service, have been rude and/or miserable, consistently.

We said our goodbyes the best we could to our Russian bridge friend and 5 minutes later we were at the station ready to board our new train. We jumped onboard, and found some of our travellers from our previous journey were also in the same carriage as us again. Our new cabinmate is from Uzbekistan and doesn't speak any English but we had a few laughs over me trying to get up to my bunk and how messily I made my bed compared to his (which was perfect). On first impressions this train is a bit better than the one we had from Moscow, with a larger toilet and fold out seats in the hallway to watch the scenery, but the beds were harder and the pillows were in the form of a thin bean bag. For someone who normally sleeps with two pillows, this was going to be tough. The train was still as hot as a bloody sauna, so dressing for -6 degrees was quickly followed by dressing for 30 degrees. After a quick catch up of our time in Irkutsk with our friends from our earlier journey, it was time to make up our beds and get as much shut eye as possible with a train horn tooting every 20 minutes. Luckily I got me some Grey's Anatomy to keep me company tonight.Read more