Irkutsk
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2007
1
25
26
Trip End
Ongoing
Irkutsk, Russia
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
After eating it for dinner I'd offended everyone in my cabin so I went wandering around the train and discovered that nobody was going to be drinking that night as we got to the mongolian-russian border at 4am. There would be no bogs available from 4am when the train pulls in until after the border opened and we cleared customs...and that wouldn't start until atleast 9am. Also its a common fact that its not a good idea to be dealing with the russian officials pissed. They have no humor.
So ...finally we do clear all of the customs and my first move was to crack open a $2 bottle of Mongolian Vodka that I'd purchased. I passed the afternoon by polishing it off. Early in the evening we made a stop at a platform that had nothing but booze stores on it...bloody brilliant !! I couldn't find any liquour though..which I found strange so I had to resort to loading up with beers instead. I grabbed 8 tall knecks of some dirt cheap beer that actually tasted really good...was like coronas' actually.
I hoped back on the train to find out that my cabin wasn't drinking so I went wandering and found some of the younger guys that were in the tour with the oldies. There was a canadian guy that loved his beer...and of course the irish one who'd passed out the night before. There was also one old guy who was actually having just as much fun as the young ones. He was a Dutch guy from The Hauge (my favourite city in the whole world to eat your lunch in a public urinal !!) and he'd moved to auckland 40 years ago and been there since. He told me all these old tales of the 6oclock drinking laws back in the days and what the pubs used to be like in my old auckland favourite, Vulcan Lane.
When we were hoping on the train I noticed there was 3 people that appeared to have a load of camera gear on them as if they were making some docco or something. I actually saw them the first time hopping on the train in beijing. There was a girl (chrisna) and her boyfriend (Ray) and the camera/soundman (pele). While I was boozing up with the other crowd she came down and introduced herself and managed to get my cabin drinking so I then alternated between the two for a while. It turns out all 3 of them were from thailand...(though none of them look it as they're Dad's were all GI's in vietnam). Apparently Ray is a bit of a celebrity in thailand and has his own TV show and they're doing this trip and documenting it and its going on the telly.
So the short of it is I was drunk again and In the end I was the only one awake still drinking on the train at around 3am...so i was out in the hallway of the train wrecked as cracking up laughing to myself....(some would call that a problem).
So...basically the 2 night train ride seems like a bit of a blur for me...which is good cause the others in my cabin said that they didn't enjoy it too much. The next train ride coming up is a 4 day 3 night affair to moscow which will be the longest leg of the trip.
We finally got to irkustk at 8am in the morning. I was still drunk when I hopped of the train to be honest. We piled into a van and headed probably an hour away to Lake Baikal. If you've never heard about the lake and your interested do some googling about it. Its got some pretty amazing statistics to it as far as surface size.., depth, things that live in it etc. etc.
Anyway, the place that we were staying in was some lakeside village...very depressing run down old place. I nicknamed it Boratville. Anywhere else in the world and some lakeside place like this would be some sort of tourist resort but this place had mud roads and old wooden houses that looked like they were nailed together maybe 200 years ago and would possibly make good firewood if only you could ever get the wood to dry out. It was sort of like news of the fall of the soviet union hadn't quite reached there yet.
Our guide was a bit of a trekking freak. The first thing he did was take us on about a 3 hour treak up some bloody hill which was lovely cept I was trying to keep last nights booze inside me. Once we got to the top the views were bloody good though...could see in all direction snow covered mountains around the lakes. Apparently it gets to minus 30 in Jan and the lake freezes up to 4 meters deep!
After this we were taken for about a 1 hour walk along the lake shore till we got to some pretty basic meuseum all about the lake. The only cool thing about it was out the back there was an aquarium which had all the different fish that can be found in the lake and they had some lake baikal seals which are different to others as its fresh water. We then had a nice 1 hour walk back to the cabins in the pissing rain with cold wind blowing at us across the lake from the snowy mountains.
There wasn't much to do so I was basically lying in the cabin with the ipod when there was a knock at the door from the irish lad. He helped me pass the rest of the afternoon with a few beers...thank god.
That night we basically had a few more beers and watched DVDs'. Not much elese to do ..there is no town or bars or clubs ....just some muddy boratville streets to wander and be chased by stray dogs...which reminds me....I nearly filled my undies when I was walking down this muddy lane when all of a sudden I look up and there is this German Sheppard crossed with Satan barking and running straight for me. I had a steep bank going down on side and another going up on the other...the only option was to run back from where I was coming...so as im sprinting and turning around he's about 10 meters from me when I realise there is a chain...I keep sprinting not knowing when its going to run out...well...luckily the next time I turn...expecting a chunck of my leg to be bitten into he's hit the end of length and choked ...I wish his eyes had popped out. Nearly had a bloody heart attack...he shaved more time off my life than all the drinking has done on this trip.
The next day we were taken to this forrest about half an hours drive away that had all these traditional siberian style houses from the old times scattered throughout it. Was kind of interesting seeing how the cossacks and all the other tribes used to live. The afternoon was free so the guide took John and I for another one of his mad hikes through the bush...luckily it started raining really hard about 2-3km into it so we turned back. I headed to get some more beers in and it was another night with some DVD's.
The next morning we got up and went into Irkustk and did some shopping for the train ride to moscow and did a few laps of the city seeing what there was of it to see.
