A crazy and really lucky journey! (Part 1)

Seriously, I cannot believe that I am in Russia right now. The experience I must say has not been a pleasant one so far. Nonetheless, I am glad that we finally made it to the home stay in Ust’-Barguzin. That is after some countless hours of consistent travelling.

Let’s just start from the beginning. My worst nightmare came true when our flight from Beijing to Irkutsk got delayed. The ETD was originally 2.35am and ETA at 6.05am local time. The delay was due to bad fog which greatly reduced visibility in Irkutsk and therefore make for unsafe flying. It was very important for us to reach Irkutsk as soon as we can, for we had a train to catch at 10.21am to Ulan Ude. Furthermore, those tickets were already purchased! So, what was originally announced as a 1 hour delay turned out to be a whopping 2.5 hours in the end! Landing in Irkutsk at 9am, I thought there was still hope for us to catch our train. Little did I expect the custom procedures in the Irkutsk airport to be so horrible! To begin with, this little airport of Irkutsk is extremely rundown. Furthermore, the airport facilities seem designed to cater to only one plane load of passengers at any one time; only 4 counters for immigration and one single conveyer belt!!!!! Clearing customs at the immigration counter was also another bad experience. With only 4 counters, the locals actually have no dedicated lanes for them, and so have to be in the same queue with the foreigners. And apparently, foreigners take extremely long to clear the customs, and so guess what?! The locals simply just do not give a damn about queuing and forcibly cut into our queue! Arghz!

Then, the final thing that hit me real hard and made me lose much of my morale was the language barrier. I honestly did not expect the English literacy of the locals to be so bad! Probably like only 1 in every 100000 of the locals can speak English! Having to waste even more time so as to get some information from the locals with Russian which I barely know much, I got real irritated with the people, and also with myself.

Finally, after knowing that in Russia, you only need to declare if you have baggage weight greater than 50kg, or carry more than US$1500, Nic and I walked out of the airport first. Coz Berns and Huiwen were still inside waiting for their baggage and the plan was for both Nic and I to find out how to get the train tickets. It was only then did I realize that Berns, Huiwen and Ying didn’t have rubles with them! Haha. So in the end, we had to wait for them outside the airport, while agreeing with some taxi guy who will provide us with 2 taxis to get to the train station at 500 rubles each. That’s 1000 rubles altogether, 200 each, about 10 sgd, for a distance of only 4km! Come to think of it now, it sure does feel like a rip off. Oh wells.

When we reached the train station, it was already 10.50am. At that point in time, I was very sure that the train had most definitely left without us. Going to a random counter, I passed the e-tickets which I had bought online, in exchange for the genuine Russian train tickets; hoping that something good will come out of it. Seeing that the lady in the counter chuckled slightly when she saw the e-tickets, it confirmed my fears knowing that we had missed the train. Funny thing was that she continued to print the tickets for us, only to tell us in the end that the train was gone! With the Russian phrasebook, we then tried to ask tickets for the next train available. Thankfully, there was one at 9.50pm, with 5 3rd class beds available for us!!! I was so grateful for that, as Russian trains get fully booked real quickly and therefore quite impossible to get tickets for trains that depart on the same day as they were purchased! Furthermore, the lady was extremely patient with us, trying to tell us that she had helped us cancelled our pre-booked tickets, giving a refund of 300 rubles each. So come to think about it, the losses were not that great! Lol. However, getting an overnight train also meant that we couldn’t have much views while along the trans-siberian railway. The accommodation which I had booked in Ulan Ude had to be given up as well. Furthermore, arriving only at 6.15am, and then having to rush to the bus station to catch a bus to Ust’-Barguzin at 7.30am, meant no time for us to visit Ulan Ude at all! It was quite a waste indeed! :(