The diary of a traveller, entry 9. Part 3 Lake Baikal and Irkutsk

9 November

Ok nights sleep but not the best. Just me and Valentina in the wagon for the time being. Maybe we’ll pick up a few more passengers along the way. Feel a bit sorry for V. as she obviously wants to have more lengthy conversations but I am pretty much out of Russian words already. Could just repeat everything all over again with different intonation. Stopped off for 20mins at a place called Amazar in the Chita Oblast where I bought some Pirozhki stuffed with potatoes – hardly a culinary extravaganza but they filled a hole. I insisted V. have one.

Bright sunlight streaming into our wagon through the window as the snowscapes unravel before us. A day and a half of this to go. The provodnitsa opened the window briefly so I stuck my head out for 15 gorgeously fresh minutes. I’ve just noticed that in all this beautiful Siberian wilderness there isn’t a hint of any animal wildlife as yet. Not even a bird. Then again, in this vast expanse of country what animal would opt to inhabit the area next to a railway track.

Had my first taste of the £3 vodka I bought in Khabarovsk. Pretty undrinkable it has. I can’t see V. helping me to polish it off anytime soon. But I can’t complain as she keeps feeding me from her vast food stocks. Sitting back in the Ресторан Вагон for my second evening on the #7 train. Same seat by the window, same uncomfortable lip on the table which makes reading a book awkward. Surprising lack of patrons. Not even the French guys back for another helping on non-descript fish and potatoes. Just the female staff and the bald goon who appears to have the controlling interest in this enterprise. The short-haired woman by the bar counts the rubles, the Asian looking waitress serves the beer, and he does the crossword. I keep hearing a lot of Russian pop music where the  male vocalists sing with quite a sinister growling tone: I’m having such an experience right now through someone’s mobile phone. Publically inflicting crap music on others would be a harshly punishable offence in my own version of Singapore. Musically it’s not bad, just the singing which is so grating. As if Phil Spector had made a compilation of the most prison’s most notorious inmates doing their own renditions of catchy tunes.