Thorsten and Suzi 11/05/06

Hello from both of us from deepest darkest Siberia. We had a great time in Ekaterinburg last week, including a visit to the Europe Asia border and the Romanov graves. We even braved the hairdressers AND came out looking more respectable than when we went in, despite not speaking a word of Russian and neither of our hairdressers speaking a word of English. We assume "stop, stop" in an agonised voice is a universal language!

We are now in Irkutsk, having spent the last 3 days in a Siberian log cabin in Listvyanka, a small village on the shore of Lake Baikal, about 65 km away from Irkutsk. The home-stay was amazing, 3 enormous meals a day, comfy beds and enjoying a traditional Russian banya every evening. This is basically a smaller log-cabin in the garden that is intended as a wash-house-cum-shower-cum-sauna. It is heated by a wood stove for an hour, then you enter, sweat for about 10 mins, then wash yourself off, with shop and shampoo just like a normal shower, with a big basin of warm water. It's really fun and we haven't been that clean for a long time!

Lake Baikal itself is incredible, its absolutely enormous, accounting for 20% of the world's freshwater and is also the deepest lake in the world, at almost 1700m deep. The majority of the lake was still frozen over but we did go for a paddle to gain our supposed extra year of life. It's actually quite warm at the moment, about 20 degrees, but it snowed whilst we were walking around Listvyanka, which was amazing for May! There is still ice on the ground but, considering it goes down to about minus 40 in January, were pleased to be here now and not then (particularly as our log cabin had an outside loo!).

We've now travelled just over 5000km on the Trans-Siberian from Moscow. The longest stretch was from Ekaterinburg to Irkutsk, a journey of 51 hours, including 2 nights on the train (and a 4am departure!!). It's easier to sleep on the train that either of us imagined, although after more than 2 days with pretty much the same scenery since we officially crossed the "border" into Siberia, it was nice to stop and have a break! We leave tonight to Ulan Ude (only 11 hours!) to spend 2 nights with a family ad then cross the border to Mongolia. Can't wait!