Days 286 to 288 – Sat Aug 15 to Mon Aug 17 – Arshan -> Irkutsk -> Tomsk

On Day 286, we spend a few last hours in Arshan before we say goodbye to our hosts. The bus to Irkutsk is actually a small van (a marshrutka), with assigned seating, like the one we took from Ulan Ude to Arshan. We have, as always, our two big backpacks, our two small backpacks, Pierre's guitar and a grocery bag of snacks for the road. At first, all of this luggage makes our cramped seat in the back right hand corner seem like a terrible idea. I take a stab at getting different seats but the seats, I'm told, are sold out and we'll just have to make due.

However, when the van leaves the first stop it's short of a few people, and by its last stop in town there are still three free seats left. Everyone spreads out a bit and Pierre gets a seat with a bit more leg room while his guitar tucks in nicely next to our seats.

A few hours later the marshrutka drops us off at the Irkutsk train station. Our plan is to stay at one of the "resting rooms" available at the train station since they're the best deal in town and will let us avoid lugging our bags somewhere tonight only to have to bring them back in the morning to catch our train. As always, the prices for the rooms are significantly higher than those listed in our guide book, but we bargain to stay in a room from 9pm to 7am to save a few (hundred) rubles. We have a few hours to wait until we can get our room and we need Internet, so I leave Pierre with the bags and go searching. The Internet club across from the station has no connection when I drop by.

"But you usually do have a connection?" I ask, just to clarify.

"Usually, yes. Right now it's not working."

I'm not clear if this means the whole town's connection is down or not, so I catch a tram into town to try locate a few of the Internet cafes listed in the guide book. I check address after address over the course of the next two hours, but none of the places listed seem to exist anymore. I see no clearly marked hostels, and when I ask passers by about Internet, they think for a moment and then shrug. Hmm, good question. By the time I meet up with Pierre again at the train station, I'm very glad that we didn't bother devoting more than one night to Irkutsk.

We head upstairs to the resting rooms where at 8:59 we see the door to our room open and the previous tenants - a married couple with a small child - exit the room with their luggage to catch their train. The front desk clerk escorts us into a small room with two twin beds in the center and two cribs along one wall. We put our new sheets on the bed and unpack just enough for the night. The ceiling is about 15 feet high, while the room is maybe 12 feet wide. The windows look down onto the track and when we open the windows for air, we can hear the trains pass, and the loudspeakers announce departures and arrivals. When we close the windows, the sounds are blocked out almost entirely, and we sleep soundly.

Our train leaves at 10:06 Irkutsk time - our cabin mates for part of the trip are Pavel and his daughter Katya, just back from a family trip to Moscow ("Very expensive") and St. Petersburg ("Less expensive, but still very expensive") and another woman, whose name we never learn. We have the top bunks and when the train starts we take a moment to make our beds and settle in. The train stops every few hours for 20 to 30 minutes, and we get off to walk around, buy snacks, take pictures, and look at the old steam engines that are set up as monuments.

We eat, sleep, drink hot water and read. The train arrives in Tomsk 30 hours after leaving Irkutsk at 3:35 pm Tomsk time.