Siberian Village

Khabarovsk to Irkutsk is just a short leg of the whole Trans Siberian journey of over 9,000 km from Vladivostok to Moscow. It is taking us 2 nights and 3 whole days. You would think this would be tedious but it's amazing how the time is filled up doing not much at all - chatting, photographing, eating and drinking, hopping off for stops of more than a few minutes. I hardly seem to find any time to read which I normally love doing. The most frustrating thing is our window is so dirty you can't take take decent photos through it. The staff are quite sympathetic but said they it's an old carriage (true) and they don't try to keep the windows clean in winter as water etc just freezers on. We had a go at cleaning it ourselves at one stop but they are right. The grime is so stuck you can't do much about it. So we have just had to get used to it and accept that this is Russia. Still we can see the vast snowy landscape, little villages of old wooden houses and millions of birch trees. Just what you would expect Siberia to look like. We are not sure whether to be disappointed that it is not colder and snowing or be grateful for the (relatively) warm weather and blue skies. At one stop it was -10C and a man said spring has arrived. Snow is still thick on the ground everywhere.

This is not the greatest photography as it was taken through the very dirty window, but is typical of the many little villages we have passed.