Three Trains

From Lonely Planet On the Road, April 2002.

Russia. Kilometre 5477.

We shared the train cabin with a Russian woman, Liuda, and her coquettish 4-year-old daughter, who were on their way from Vladivostok to Kyrgyzstan. They were going on their fourth day on the train. At Irkutsk they would change trains and then spend another four days going south through Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan. They travelled for free, since Liuda worked for the railroad in Vladivostok.

We had gotten on the train in the morning, and the little girl was eating Ramen noodles for breakfast. Now it was lunchtime, and she stared at a second bowl of noodles as if it were her worst enemy. I imagined she had been eating Ramen noodles for four days.

The pair was going to visit Liuda's Kyrgyz husband. 'I could never live there,' she confided in me. 'It's hot like the desert and my mother-in-law is bossy.' She talked to me like an old friend. Liuda was overweight and weary looking. I was surprised to learn she was 30, the same age as I.

The train rolled on through the Selenga river valley, speeding past village after village of quaint cottages with painted shutters and overflowing gardens. On either side of the river, pine and birch covered hills stretched forever.

Suddenly, the northern side of the train opened up to reveal the huge expanse of Lake Baikal, vast and blue. In the distance, sharp, rocky cliffs marked the other side of this 'Pearl of Siberia'. Up and down the train, passengers had their faces pressed up against the window to catch that first glimpse of the lake that takes your breath away.

When the train stopped in Mysovaya, Liuda bought a salty dried fish, omul, from the babushkas on the platform. Even Ramen noodles would be more appealing, I thought, than this scaly, dead fish with empty eyeholes. But when Liuda cut the fish open and removed its bones, her daughter enthusiastically picked pieces of fish, scraped them out of the skin with her fingers and ate them up.