Third and final full day on the train. I can't believe how quickly it's gone... haven't been remotely near getting bored. It's so different from sitting on an inter-city train at home. You can make yourself a drink using the unlimited supply of boiling water from the samovar (see pic), move around, get off at stops and the time passes very pleasantly. Today we go up pretty late and went through Krasnoyarsk, which doesn't really stick in the mind, to be honest. Talked to a nice Spanish chap when we got back on the train... he was going all the way to Vladivostok to meet a Russian friend he'd originally met in Japan a while back.

The rest of the time was spent in the normal way... reading, playing cards, fiddling about with drinks and noodles etc. The two Russian blokes up the corridor from us, who had slobbed around in shorts, spending all the time reading and watching TV, suddenly scrubbed up, put on suits and got off at a tiny place called Reshoty. It looked so incongruous seeing these two smartly dressed characters getting out at a little rural mining/logging town (complete with cows wandering around the streets). Maybe they were the Mafia we've read so much about. Most Russian bars and cafes seem to have a smartly dressed, young-ish bloke lurking about, not drinking, not working, not even trying to blend in. We also went through Nizhneudinsk, which is only memorable (to us) for the fact that it was very cold and that the station building was quite smart and modern in contrast to most of the stations we've been through.

Not much else to report. Went to bed quite early as we were to have an early start, but couldn't sleep as we weren't tired and the train was bumping around more than usual.

After three days of chilled-out laziness, our train journey came to a sudden end. The provodnik knocked on our cabin door at 6:30am to return our tickets and tell us we had an hour before arrival at Irkutsk, and then it was a quick wash, cup of tea and final check of luggage before stumbling bleary eyed into a rain-soaked Irkutsk station. It's not difficult to get from Irkutsk to the lakeside resort of Listvyanka, but given the time of morning and the weather, we were glad to have paid for the overpriced Intourist minibus transfer. Travelling with us was another Englishman, a well-spoken chap from London called Alex. He was doing a slightly different, but broadly similar, route to ours, so we were able to share various tales of our experiences in Russia.

We arrived at the Intourist Baikal Hotel way before the normal checking in time, so headed for the breakfast room in search of coffee while waiting for our rooms to be prepared. Mmm... good coffee, especially considering Russia's reputation for really lousy coffee. However, it wouldn't be a normal day in Russia unless you were treated like a naughty schoolchild by some officious employee, and sure enough, the waitress from hell (arrghhh... another early 80s flashback, too... women with really short cropped straight hair) turned up to demand our breakfast passes. I explained that we'd been permitted to come and get some coffee as we were waiting to check in. She went off to axe someone in the face.

Which makes me think I should compile this...

But all that is irrelevant when, freshly showered and changed out of your train-slob clothes, you wander out of the hotel, down the road and get your first glimpse of...

Lake Baikal is over 400 miles long and is the deepest lake in the world (roughly a mile deep). It contains 20% of the total freshwater on earth and, thanks to the purifying actions of a particular species of sponge, is filled with some of the purest water you're ever likely to find. It also looks mindblowingly stunning, even on a chilly, grey September morning. And when the cloud suddenly lifted around lunchtime to reveal a clear blue sky, the lake looked incredible. Looking across from Listvyanka, we saw an almost endless expanse of calm, glassy water, backed by distant hazy mountains... and this is not a particularly wide part of the lake.

Listvyanka is quite a picturesque little village, built along the lake shore and into a couple of river valleys cutting between the hills. Although tourism is making modest inroads into the village (in the shape of holiday apartments and a number of hideously tasteless "dream homes") most of it retains the look of so many Siberian villages... lots of quaint wooden cottages (dachas, perhaps) with well-tended flowerbeds and vegetable patches. After wandering round the village and sampling our first taste of Omul, the local speciality fish (a bit like a white version of trout) we took advantage of the hot weather and headed up the hill behind our hotel for some fantastic views. The air around the lake has that clear crispness that you also get in the Austrian Alps... every breath feels like it's doing you some good.

Back at the hotel that evening, we ate more fresh Baikal fish and drank lots of excellent (and cheap) vodka. Sleeping wasn't a problem.

Both of us had rather heavy heads after the previous night's over-indulgence, so we made quite a slow start. Wandered into Listvyanka, stopping off en route at the church, which is lovely. Rather surreally, we were overtaken by a bus tour of geriatric Swedish tourists. Hearing "jaha" and "så där ja" in a Russian Orthodox church in Eastern Siberia was quite strange.

Walking back to the town, we met two or three cows wandering up the middle of the road, which was no less surreal, really. They just wander about, oblivious to the traffic.

Lake Baikal is very beautiful and we spent a good portion of the day sitting, looking out at it and reading our books. We also went on a little boat trip, learning from the guide (in between her flirting with some Dutch lads on the boat) about the clarity of the water and how clean it is, due to the sponges that live in it. We also visited the local museum, of which the highlight was seeing some of the wildlife (fish and seals) that lives in the lake.

We finished off our time by the lake by sampling more of its contents in the hotel restaurant, only marred by the fact that we were sitting in the bar alone with just a malfunctioning TV for company (until we moved into the restaurant next door). The bill came to rather more than we expected as the fish was priced by weight, but it was still well worth the price.