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.... continued.
The Russian border crossing started with a very young soldier asking to see our passports, which he did, and then passed back to us. We were then visited by 2 more officers; one of whom took my passport, and one took Todd’s. We were asked to remove our glasses to check if we matched our visa and passport photos and then there was much scanning of the visa page and our main page. They each had a scanning machine to check the validity of both. They moved on to Ben’s and John’s, and then checked John’s passport very carefully, looking at a number of the stamps under a magnifying glass. Then the third person, who asked us to stand up and show that there was no one hiding with our luggage under the seat. When you thought that it was safe to fall asleep (this was after 1:30am) yet another soldier came on board, all dressed in her camouflage and boots and ordered us to leave the room while she got up on some rungs and checked our roof cavity; as Todd and I commented, she would have been scary if she hadn’t been so small and cute! And then, just when you thought it was ok to sleep, they brought the dog in to check as well. The upshot was that we all slept fairly late (again, sleep provided by Bose noise cancelling earplugs!) and decided to check out our Russian dining car about 9am. Not only did they make a fairly decent coffee, the price wasn’t too expensive and you could pay by roubles or credit card. While we were there we got our first glimpse of Lake Baykal. It is like the Grand Canyon, it’s too big to take in all at once.
We spent the majority of the morning either reading, dozing, talking or simply looking at the scene of the lake and taking photos. If is serene and magical. The country changes around it, with us starting in a river valley and leaving the lake in a sea of birch trees. There are the occasional towns located around the shore with both new and decaying buildings sporting the landscape. New locomotives and rusting carriages, half completed concrete shells and magnificent wooden dachas. And, as Ben stated, we’ve just come from Mongolia, with a solid 4G mobile network spanning the country and we arrive in Russia to be stuck with 3G when you can get a signal!
However, we pulled I. To Irkutsk (the Paris of the East) to be met by our guide who not only spoke extremely good English, but also mentioned that tomorrow might be a bit “nippy”. He asked if we needed anything; cash, chemist, snacks before heading out to Listyanka and we agreed we needed cash. The ATM at the railway station automatically chose English as the language and then asked if we wanted our money in large bills or different. Maybe our banks could learn something here. We left Irkutsk, driving past a hydro electric power station, IN the city, forming a recreational lake behind it. The drive to Listyanka taking about an hour, we were all relieved when we were able to have a shower, however this one had a hand held shower head, one fixed overhead and little nozzles about waist height to help massage you. Quite interesting. We walked down into Listyanka for dinner, and went to Berg House which were very accommodating for us. After a litre of beer, and a very enjoyable dinner, we came back for an early evening.
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Craig Tell todd more fb posts baz was getting worried