Day 10: Siberia

This morning (at 03.47 Moscow-time, which is 07.47 local-time as we are now Moscow+4), I was rudely awoken by an odd sensation; chill. Despite my fluffy fleecy pyjamas bottoms and my wool-blanket-in-a-duvet-cover-thing, I was chilled. I lay around for a little while willing my brain to ignore it, but finally gave in and put a thermal long sleeve top on; by which time, I was too awake to go back to sleep. So I did what any decent wife would do; I climbed into the upper bunk and stuck my ghostly cold feet ("ghosties" we call them) onto John's warm legs! Oh, how he shrieked.

And still I was greeted with the usual, "Good morning, wife."

As we travel deeper into Siberia, the temperature variation between day and night becomes more noticeable; although the midday temperature is not exactly high - maybe 11oC? Or colder when the sun hides behind the vast volume of clouds.

The chill I felt this morning was ground frost. From our carriage, it looked as though just after the dew had settled, the temperature must have plummeted causing the dew to freeze. 

Apart from that, the scenery has remained mostly unchanged. More of the same taiga (Russian word meaning "thick forest") consisting mainly of aspen, pine and larch. Houses range from beautiful, idyllic wooden-clad constructions with colourfully painted shutters and corrugated iron as their roofs (mainly in little villages and outskirts of towns) to concrete jungles of high-rise apartments in the cities (yes, Siberian cities, they actually exist!)

We are now just over 4000km from Moscow and have another 1000km till we reach Lake Baikal and Slyudyanka. Clickty-clack clickty-clack clickty-clack..