Journey to Irkutsk

Thursday 03/08

We took our train, on schedule as always, at 1am. We quickly fell asleep.

Today is a full day in the train, with our usual programme while traveling by train: a bit of study for the kids, a bit of eating (not the best part of the train rides), lots of reading, a bit of quarrels (between Ludivine and Jules)… We still haven’t tried the showers in the trains.

I started reading a second book: ‘L’usage du Monde’ by Nicolas Bouvier. Another book to (try) to unplug (“lâcher prise”, one of my mottos for this world tour). I was not overly convinced by the book by Tesson that I’ve just read. While the concept is nice, I feel so far away from his philosophy of travel. Maybe it will come with time; we still have more than a year of travel… Same with the book by Bouvier but I’ll try to persevere. Isabelle is enjoying much more her ‘Anna Karenina’ that she reads on her new Kindle. And Ludivine loves all the books she bought at Filigranes before leaving; she has already finished them all! It’s more difficult to get Florence and (especially) Jules read a book. Their iPad/iPhone’s (games, YouTube channels…) are always more attractive. If you have great recommendations for books for a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, please don’t hesitate to send them to us. Thanks!

During our 27-hour journey, we hardly went out of the train: 20’ in Krasnoyarsk to find some food for the lunch (bread, tomatoes, carrots, tuna + some fruit) & another 10’ elsewhere to stretch our legs.

The diner provided as part of our ticket was not great.

We tried to sleep early since we have an early arrival (6am) in Irkutsk but it was again 11pm before we fell asleep.

Overall, this 27-hour trip was ok. It is the 2nd longest train journey of our whole Trans-Mongolian trip (the longest one, 28 hours, is still to come: Ulaanbaatar – Beijing, at the end of the month).

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