Two and a half thousand kilometres: Omsk to Baikal

After a wet day in Omsk, the weather improved and I could have a proper look around with help from Alexandra, a language student studying in Krakow I met on the train from Warsaw. The city doesn't really have sights as such, but it's a big place and has some nice open spaces. I found out later that the Estonian I met who also stopped in Omsk found the weather so grim he went to the cinema. Most films here are dubbed, so he picked something where it didn't matter if you couldn't understand the words - the latest Transformers film!

From there to Irkutsk was 40 hours on the train, the longest stretch with two overnights. It was pretty comfortable and I chatted to a PR manager from Perm on her way to a holiday on a boat at Krasnoyarsk. That sounded like a nice east Siberian city with a river and mountains on all sides, and I was sorry I wasn't stopping there. Next time!

It was a good journey with the landscape gradually becoming hilly and the route more winding. Wooden Siberian houses with brightly painted window frames look like the cottages out of fairy stories.

Arriving in Irkutsk in the morning, I thought this seemed a really pleasant city with tree-lined streets and wooden houses here and there. It's where a lot of intellectual Russian exiles ended up, and does have a cosmopolitan feel with a few reminders that it's not far from Mongolia and the Far East.

I wasn't stopping though so made my way across town via a two-and-a-half hour stop in an internet cafe (slow connection). Waiting for the bus to Listvyanka I met three British lads, two of them medical students, who were staying at the same hostel as me. They were having a whale of a time, but I'm glad I never found myself in the same carriage as them!

Listvyanka is the biggest settlement on Lake Baikal (see Ten Facts about Lake Baikal for population sparcity). It's a traditional village of wood houses, dirt tracks and fenced plots for vegetable growing, with the addition of a waterside strip in fast development with huge gaudy hotels and tourist complexes. Most of the tourism was geared up for Russians with only a few foreigners in town. Having said that, my hostel was invaded the second night by a party of Czechs who had just finished a tour of Baikal.

The hostel was a strange place. It looked like an ordinary house which had been converted into a hostel by amateur DIYers using anything that was lying around at the time. My room (I was enjoying a room to myself, a rare treat) used to be the kitchen. The mattress consisted of two bedding rolls just like the ones you get on the train. Still, everything worked after a fashion and the cool nights were a relief - the first time so far I needed a fleece.

I spent much of the three days there walking along the edge of the lake, taking photos trying to capture its size and strange thick liquidity. I was also indebted to the British students for telling me where the best and cheapest kebabs were to be found!

I made my way up to a viewpoint, where I bumped into a British woman who lives in Beijing (teaching horse riding at the International School). I also visited the Baikal museum where, after making a bit of a fuss about having to pay more as a foreigner then finding the displays were only labelled in Russian, I got my own mini guided tour from an English speaking guide. It's a fascinating place.

Then back to Irkutsk for a few hours to explore some of the monuments, the regional museum, an odd Soviet-style pancake cafe and a very western cafe bar serving club sandwiches. At 9pm the temperature display at the station read 29 degrees, explaining why I'd been feeling a little worn out!

Now on the train heading for the Russian-Mongolian border. Unlike the other trains, this one is full of tourists with English the main language heard. I'm sharing a carriage with three Belgian boys from somewhere near Bruges. It's good to compare notes with fellow travellers. More from Mongolia later!

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