So. I scored myself a cabin of my own again, check this out....
Gold. Pretty swish, hey? "On my own again" proved to be a false assumption, the Mongolians didn't quite play it that way. The door was opened on average every 15 minutes, blank faces peering in at me and disappearing, touts trying to sell me lumber support belts, a kid deciding it would be a good place to hang out and the stewardess' were giving me an unnatural amount of attention. Their attention, I later realised, was them sizing me up as a decoy for smuggling goods through customs into Russia. Which they did. And the penny only dropped for me on this front once we were well over the border. Which was almost touch and go for me- getting over the border that is.
My faultless planning was not so faultless and half way through the night as I filled out the required paperwork for the crossing, I realised that I would be trying to enter the country 2 days before my visa kicked in..... and one thing clearly articulated in the bible for travelling the transmongolian is that you don't give the Russian border officials any reason to hassle you. Oops.
I thought about what I would do if they decided to turf me out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, I thought about explanations and excuses, hell - I even thought about bribing but instead resolved to go with my default in such situations- look dumb and innocent. The official with a big hat came back to my cabin and told me that my documents said '7' whilst it was in fact the 5th and using his thumb and forefinger demonstrated that "we have a lee-tle problem" (think Russian accent) before disappearing with my passport. During this exchange I affected a suitable expression and hoped for the best.
An hour and a half later a soldier fronted up at my door with a stern expression - and handed me my passport.
I didn't open my mouth throughout the whole process! Dumb and innocent - I stand by it. This is the third time I've used it with border officials, with a 100% success rate.
Siberia. In the form of a town called Irktusk. After the sun exposure on the Mongolian steppes, the grey skies and cool temperatures were welcome, even if they did add an air of grimness to my first taste of Russia.
Irkutsk was celebrating its 349th birthday the day after I arrived and I was told the the streets would be "filled with people". I headed out to see how Irktusk partied and found the remnants of a parade.... hare krishnas and a float advertising a local nightclub - doosh doosh DJ and barely clad young ladies dancing erotically.
It seemed that Irkutsk didn't have a population big enough to fill the streets. The streets are wide and empty, the buildings bedraggled yet imposing, collectively giving off a wild west, frontier town vibe. There was something really familiar about it and Glasgow came to mind. It took me awhile to figure this implausible parallel out - ex merchant city, seen better days of grandeur and prosperity, people doing it tough and the same hard ass looks on the faces of the men.
Apparently next year they will restore some of the beautiful old wooden buildings dotted throughout the city. I became fascinated by these buildings, mostly the signs of life in the windows of the seemingly uninhabited structures.
