77 hours, 5185 km to Irkutsk

An update comes 4 days after leaving Moscow on a train that had me riding the rails with drunk Russian men, fighting (drinking of course) mongolian men, and just 5 other ‘expats’ at the opposite end of the train. I’ve made it to Irkutsk, and although I say this at the risk of overexagerating, alive.

The trip began with a quick realization that the 3 Russian mates I was going to share my cabin with did not speak a word of English. I struggled and stumbled on trying to make my Polish sound like Russian and we eventually took it to the restaurant car for drinks. The biggest, the strongest, silent, yet commando like Sasha stuck to his bed never showing any interst in drinking, the other two, would sleep all day after downing beer after beer midway down the train where the cheesy restaurant car rattled along.

About 80 % of the train was occupied by Mongolians who were just doing business as usual transporting products ranging from cheap whipped cream in a can to fur coats to ladies underwear strung out on mini manicans. These people were probably the most intersting, but hardest to make friends with, until later into the trip when they started warming to me.

There were the drinkers in the bunch too, one of whom insisted on arm wrestling everyone in the restaurant car one night and coming on to one of two australian girls on the train. I have pics of all this, will be oploading later.

On the second day the Mongolians began to fight, at least that’s when I first heard about it. Not pretty, we figured it was a combination of cabin fever and business troubles. On the last day I thought I was gonna get it. An English mate claims he almost got thrown off the train by a ‘joking’ drunk Mongolian guy, I did see some blood on the lip of Dave.

From Irkutsk the story will continue.