Irkutsk, Siberia, Russian Federation
I didn’t sleep too well yet at the same time it feels I’ve had a good rest. My body clock is all over as when I check the time now on the train we are 3 hours ahead of Moscow. The slow but consistent change of time zones over the past week or so is taking its toll combined with chatting to friends at home later and later as my trip round the globe progresses. I woke at 9:20am Moscow time but 12:20pm local time….just in time for my services to be delivered. The exact same services I received yesterday, bread, broth and buttered chicken but it’s good and welcomed.
The last major town we just stopped at saw a significant change with the passengers on board. Many got off and many got on at this point. I’m not sure where that was but I hope I manage to spot my stop in Irkutsk purely based on the time I expect to get there. I’m sure the surly guard lady will help me out if need be. I now have two new Russian comrades in my cabin and they are characters to say the least. Yuri and Igor (you could not make these names up if you tried!) are far from what I have met on the train so far and the contrast in people between those that got in Moscow is easy to see. They are both friends and colleagues and also have three other friends further down the train who have now all congregated in my cabin to drink ‘Wodka’ and make merry. I don’t remember the names of the others but one speaks a tiny bit of English and I’ve established they all work together anywhere across Siberia. One in particular is very friendly and keeps shaking my hand and hugging me. He sports gold plated teeth so compared to my comrade from last night with silver teeth I feel I have moved up the social ladder in Russian friends as a result. He looks a bit like Jaws from James Bond but is friendly enough and we settle down to a few drinks and very broken conversation.
Gold teeth is apparently a train driver and also seems to be a budding part time alcoholic as do the rest by the amount of Wodka they are consuming at lunch time and it’s not long before the cabin turns into Wodka and party central. I have several drinks thrust in front of me and happily oblige the first few but make sure I keep my wits about me and skip the odd round as Igor is desperate to find out how many ‘Red Dollars’ I possess in order to fund the next bottle! I’ve also established that one is a Man Utd fan whose brother is a kick boxer somewhere in Thailand….the universal language of football and kick boxing T-Shirts reigns supreme in this part of the world so I get by the best I can. They are friendly enough though, if not over friendly and Igor’s persistence with my Red Dollars is knocked back and held in line by his other mates as we while away a few hours drinking and laughing, most likely at my expense. I share round the few cans I brought with me which goes down well and we drink until the bottle is empty, as is done in Russia.
At this point ‘Gold teeth’ decides to show me many photos and videos on his phone of his wife, his daughter, his cat, the train he drives and it appears that the memory card on his phone is much larger than I had hoped for so the next hour is spent laughing along to the Russian stories I do not understand driven by his massive gold toothed belly laughs.
It’s a bit more like I was expecting from this train journey but I keep my wits about me and decline the drinks as and when required to stay sober enough and to ensure Igor does not get access to my ‘Red Dollars’ He is very persistent with this but I plead language barrier innocence. On a side note Igor also looks a bit like a Russian Richard Dreyfuss so I question if I am on some sort of celebrity Russian look a-like train as opposed the Trans-Siberian.
The landscape around is a never ending blur of silver birch trees, small wooded settlements with smoky snow covered chimneys and frozen ponds and lakes. I wonder if the settlements came first or the railway line and I suspect a combination of both as I have seen a lot more small villages and hamlets than I expected along the way so far, too numerous to count anymore.
It’s now Wednesday and I am starting to appreciate the full scale of the Trans-Siberian. It’s vast, Russia is vast. It’s thousands of kilometers and I have hardly scratched the surface despite the three time zones I have moved through. Russia in its entirety spans 9 time zones…..that’s over a third of the globe and I know I have so much more to traverse before I get off on Friday at Irkutsk. This train journey in itself is a voyage like no other I have experienced before and certainly not one to forget.
Sat in the restaurant car I’ve just seen one very inebriated passenger getting a little too familiar with one of the ladies working here and felt a little helpless in trying to save her due to the language barrier and knowledge of how things work around these parts, trust me no matter what your morals are you don’t want to get involved in this stuff. That said these women are not like those in St Petersburg and Moscow who all look like models. These are hardy women are from the country and can look after themselves so I keep tabs on what’s happening from afar in case it gets out of hand. Put it this way I wouldn’t like to wrestle one of these women if my life depended on it. Eventually the guy leaves and calm is restored.
Steve and Jackie arrive again and I pick their brains as to where they have traveled to and what they have enjoyed so far on their travels in the past. I like Steve and Jackie they are nice. They are both much more seasoned travelers than myself. Tibet, Peru, Ethiopia, Nepal, New Zealand, they are a fountain of knowledge and it only serves to excite me more and think of other places I could get to on this trip.
