Ulan-Ude, Russia

With our irregular sleeping habits I had very little faith we could wake up and catch our 7 am train. I spent the entirety of the night catching up on Facebook and reading one of the many books crammed into our packs.



With a short walk to the other end of the city, we arrived at the train station eager to purchase our ticket. Ticket counter to ticket counter we were rejected as the train we planned on boarding did not seem to exist. With one helpful security officer we managed to find the lady who could help us. She however felt that her 20 minute break was something that could not wait. Anxious to make our train we waited until finally, tickets in hand, we were once again aboard the trans Siberian railway.



For the short 8 hour journey we were blessed with the best seats we had all trip, typical to our luck, thinking back to our terrible seats on the 87 hour ride, and quickly made friends with our bunk mates. They were very curious about us, where we were from, how much my car cost, what my parents do, and other seemingly odd yet simply curious questions. In the US we could have had this conversation in about 15 minutes however, with the heavy language barrier this lasted hours on end. The train ride was beautiful with mountains and rivers occasionally popping up. The best part was the train stayed on the shores of the bottom half of lake Baikal where we had spend our last week.





In Ulan-Ude we said our good byes to the newly made friends and began the search for the hostel in a new city. Our hostel was found with out fail (a rare occurrence) and we checked in. For dinner we found a cafeteria style diner making ordering simple as you only had to point at what you want and hold up fingers to show how many you want. Rest assured we managed to screw it up making a big scene with far to many people than necessary trying to help us order our food. With belly's filled we explored around our hostel before returning for the night, excited to see in more depth in the morning.






-living the dream!