Siberia

We're now in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, but before we get to that I realise that despite talking about toilets, multiple fallings over and breakages, I haven't really actually at all described where we've been over the last week. So, brace yourselves for three quick posts, illustrated with pretty pictures, about the lands across which we have recently traversed.

After leaving Yekaterinburg, we made our way by train across Siberia to Irkustk, where we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Having finally seen it, I can confirm that Siberia is big. Very big. And cold. And pretty empty. But - around the train line at least - not necessarily as empty as you might believe; on the three day journey we passed industrial, smoggy cities, tiny villages with traditional wooden buildings, lots of cargo trains transporting coal and gas, miles and miles of forest, and a 500km area near Novosibirsk called the Baraba Swamp, which looked about as welcoming as the name suggests. But - until near Irkustk at least - not hills, for Siberia is flat as can be.

I'll avoid rambling on too much, as the pictures hopefully speak for themselves, but suffice to say that the whole scale of Siberia is epic and majestic, and it's the sort of place that you can happily spend all day gazing at of the train window. It is hostile, certainly, and seeing it one can understand why it is the land of exile par excellence; even excluding the terrors of the gulags, the miles and miles of frozen nothingness extending as far as the eye can see would itself induce despair; unless granted a pardon and allowed to return, exiles would have little hope of ever making it home.

Perhaps because it is just so far away from anywhere and everywhere, Siberia also seems the sort of place where the magical could quite easily happen without too much disruption to the rest of the world; I would not have been too suprised to have seen ice bears come thundering across the plain, the stars turn into flying troikas, or some many-limbed, steamy monster emerge from the smoke and ice of the Yenisey River. Such imaginings are what three days on a train does to you.

Anyway, I'm very glad that I got the opportunity to come here and see it at its wintry and majestic best, and here are some (slightly blurry) pictures:










(This last one was taken through the window of the unheated area between each two carriages. These were freezing and the windows made very pretty ice patterns.)