Irkutsk is another huge city and is the stepping off point for a visit to Lake Baikal. The city itself, from memory, was pleasant enough with lots of impressive buildings both old and new and of course the occasional statue - it would not be Russia otherwise. In Irkutsk the temperature was hot with the thermometer hitting the 30°c mark as I recall and this lulled us into a false sense of security as we headed to Lake Baikal by shared mini bus. Lake Baikal is pretty big and what you get to see is just a small part of the 400 mile long, 50 mile wide expanse of water. The lake itself holds 20% of all freshwater on the planet and with a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft) Baikal is the world's deepest lake too. Given that the lake freezes over during the winter there is also a lot of chill that eminates from the water - we really needed a coat as it was that cold despite the sunny weather. The lake also has its own unique fish, the Omul, which is normally eaten after being smoked - there was of course time to sample the local delicacy before heading back to the city. Not content with travelling half way across the world by train it was nice to visit The Children's Railway in Irkutsk because we could always do with more rail travel on this trip. This narrow guage affair, operated by children under adult supervision, was the way to recruit budding employees of the future. It was great to see them operating the signalling, driving the train, being the guard and doing all the customer service activities too. With our next journey by rail just a short hop compared to some of our other trips we were soon ready to travel to Ulan-Ude on Train 362 (a high numbers train so we were warned). It was just a overnight trip on this service and it was not the most pleasant but at least we had somewhere new to look forward to when we alighted the following morning.