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Knocking at our compartment door when unanswered for several minutes until Alio and I simultaneously sat up and attended to another of many interruptions since we’d gone to sleep. It was Gorchia from a couple of doors down, excitedly pulling us to the windows where Earth’s largest fresh-water lake was metres away from the window. We spent most of the morning staring at it & taking pictures. The lake stretched for miles of track with scores of passengers pressed up against the windows looking for the perfect shot and the SLR crowd, represented mostly by the northern Europeans on our carriage, muscling in on the open windows so as not to have to shoot through a muddy window.

The lake was a perfect deep blue set against the paler clear sky. When the train got close enough to the shore you could see the bottom of the lake-bed through the clear waters. Later we past the Kamar daban mountains. Sitting together in these last few hours observing the intensely beautiful scenery fall behind us and knowing that the next stop would be whre we’d say goodbye.

Gala, Alio and I were silent and reflective between Gorchia’s frequent calls for Alio to join him for a cigarette. Gala told me her “holiday very good!” I asked what she would do at Baikal – miming swimming, fishing etc. No, she said, they’d take a tour bus, and I was reminded of how much the trains are a part of ordinary Russians’ lives. Here was couple who’d taken at least 5 days from their home in Bryansk, west of Moscow to go on holiday via train, and would need a further 5 to get back. Whether or not the lack of cheap air travel within Russia plays a big part of that, the culture of slow travel seems ingrained in the Russian psyche. I don’t know what Gala and Alio thought of my solo travels, or indeed of the influx of young westerners filling their trains for elaborate and costly adventures, but their friendliness and hospitality will be what I remember most about the train, aside from Alio’s moustache. Gala asked me if life in England was difficult, but I could nod in amiable agreement. Life in England is not difficult. In England, thankfully, the few not the many struggle. As could be attested by the 20 or so westerners, myself included, playing explorer on her train. When I returned the question, she said yes and looked out the window. I looked with her and replied, but beautiful? Yes she said, it was beautiful.

I stepped onto the platform and photos were taken by each of us, I hugged Gala tightly goodbye and she said “luuise: good travels, and, good education” something she’d been practising all morning. I said yes but had no Russian to explain and as I got back on the train I was filled with sadness leaving more people behind. I rested through the afternoon until Naushki, the border town between Russia and Mognolia. The train stopped for hours and the long drawn out goodbye to Russia pushed from late afternoon into darkfall.

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