Not exactly 'Russian' home
on Mel and Steve in Nepal (Nepal), 02/May/2010 13:30, 34 days ago
Greetings once again loyal readers,Having left Nepal over a month ago, we are both taking the opportunity for final adventures on the way home. After touring through China, as covered in the last blog, we parted company in Beijing (sniff!). Mel has gone to spend some quality aunty time with her new nephew in LA and I have continued on the trains, in the reverse route to the one we took over 2 years ago, across Siberia and Europe.The first leg of my journey was from Beijing to Irkutsk (in Siberian Russia). Unlike on the way to Nepal, I didn't go through Mongolia but instead took the slightly longer route through Manchuria. Despite this, the length of time spent at official border crossings seemed significantly longer. Having been woken at 3.00AM when we arrived at the Chinese border, we didn't clear Russian immigration (20KM further on) until 5.30 PM. Still, this did give me the chance to chat with other train travellers since I had quickly discovered that not only did I have my cabin to myself, I had the entire carriage to myself (well except for the 2 boredprovotnitsas- carriage attendants). The time at the Russian side of the border was also filled up by the comedy routine of us all keep spilling out onto the platform every 30 minutes when the train pulled up, only to have to all go back in again when the train returned, once more, to the maintenance sheds. This was all, presumably, because the train needs to be lifted, one carriage at a time, to have the wheels changed (Russia being a different gauge to China).Despite being spring, Siberia is still very cold in April. Here is a shot of one of the small stations that we passed through (I didn't get off but it looked 'all white'):After 3 days on the train, I was ready to get off and do some exploring. Luckily, I had decided to break the journey at Irkutsk. This Siberian city is close to the world's largest freshwater lake (Baikal) but is also an attractive town in its own right. Although it has been enlarged and modernised, everywhere, the old-style, Siberian wooden houses can still be seen:As well as these, there are some lovely examples of Orthodox Christian churches, such as this one:The orthodox religion has seen a dramatic revival since the fall of the Soviet Union and the tourist potential of the various churches, cathedrals and convents has helped them to be well maintained and restored.As well as exploring the town, I set off by bus to visit the 'must see' Lake Baikal. This lake is narrow but very long (100s of Kilometres) and the world's deepest (about 2 kms). It was still frozen so no chance to see the rare Nerpa freshwater seals or to look down into the famously clear waters. On the other hand, the ice formations were very impressive in places:I also managed to sample some of the local speciality fare. SmokedOmul (nativefish)which seemed all the tastier having been bought direct from a Russianbabushka:After a few days in Irkutsk, it was back on thetrain for another 3 day voyage to Moscow. I needed to stay here for 4 days to get a Belorussia visa (required for the next leg of the journey) and so made the most of this fascinating city. Like Irkutsk, the old buildings and churches still stand impressively, such as the Kremlin and St. Basil's cathedral in Red-square:They nowadays have to compete with more recent but equally grand structures that show-case the power and wealth of soviet and post-soviet Russia. For example, this rocket was parked up to remind us that the Soviet Union was, in the 1950s and 60s, the world's leading space-faring nation:Having obtained my Belorussian visa, I felt quite pleased with myself for having booked my train tickets weeks previously and thus avoided the chaos and confusion of all the travellers stranded in Russia by the icelandic volcano. I then caught my next train to Berlin, via Belarus and Poland (24 hours). I stayed a day in Berlin, where my visit coincided with glorious weather, before boarding another train, which whisked me back to London (via Koln and Brussels).And so, 5 weeks and more than 21,000 KM after leaving Nepal, I stepped off the last train to a familiar site:And so end our adventures in (and around) Nepal. Mel is due back into the UK on 12th May and we'll no doubt be making plans for another adventure sometime in the future. For now, we'll need to settle back into British life, catch up with the news (I hear that there's some sort of election going on) and work out what things have changed in the last 2 and a bit years.We've enjoyed our time overseas and have learned a good deal from it. Memories of the places, people and situations that we've encountered will stay with us far into the future.Thank you for reading this blog and for the lovely E-mails that many of you have sent us. We'll no doubt be seeing most of you, in person, sometime soon. Mel may post again to show you photos of California but this is Steve signing off. Goodbye.