Trans Mongolian: Day 5

Irkutsk – Sükhbaatar 

382 miles approx
 

 
Lake Baikal, ‘The Pearl of Siberia’ is 636km long, 60km wide and was formed by rifting tectonic plates. 8km of the rift is filled with sediment and it is still getting deeper as the plates separate. It will eventually become the Earth’s fifth ocean, splitting the Asian continent. It is currently the world’s deepest lake: 1637m. As such, it contains nearly 1/5th of the world’s fresh, unfrozen water – more than North America’s five great lakes combined. Unfortunately due to the early hour and the snow, the lake was pretty much invisible so I borrowed someone else's photo to give you an idea of what I would have seen, had it been August.

What the lake looks like in summer

My view of the lake,early morning

 

The day passed quietly as the whole carriage seems to have developed collective inertia.  Good opportunity for photographing through the increasingly dirty windows. This part of the journey was, for me, the most beautiful. The landscapes were truly awesome and this is probably the closest I've ever got to feeling religious! The sheer size and the beauty was breathtaking, and it went on and on and on, all day. It's beyond belief and photographs, particularly ones taken from a moving train and taken through a mucky windows, can never do it even a fraction of the justice it deserves.

Siberian roads are clear. No gritters required here. There's a lesson in here somewhere...

Most pointless fence ever? #1

 

The evening was taken up by leaving Russia behind, in spectacular fashion, and entering Mongolia. Border control on the Russian side Naushki, took around four hours, complete with sniffer dogs, military torch-lit room searches and form-filling. Ten minutes across the border at Sükhbaatar, the process was repeated by softly spoken, well-mannered, beautifully attired Mongolian military personnel. It only took an hour and a half this side of the border. I had no problems with my passport this time, as I’d planned ahead, had a shower and put some makeup on in an attempt to look a little more like my 26 year old self and less like a 34 year old, bleary-eyed, dishevelled train-dweller. Worked a treat!

Sub-note: I’d randomly chosen a film on my laptop to watch whilst waiting at border control, and it was ‘The Way Back’. Weirdly it was about Polish prisoners who escaped from a Gulag camp near Lake Baikal, and walked across Siberia to the Trans-Siberian line and eventually the Mongolian border. It was an odd feeling to be watching a film, set in such a specifically remote part of the world, whilst having followed almost the exact same route that day! Now if only something similarly spooky could happen with a Brad film…