Krasnoyarsk

We caught a train at just after 1 in the morning, heading for Krasnoyarsk another place no one has ever heard of and yet has a population of about 1 million! When it got light we found ourselves in completely baron and dead looking countryside (where the background photo was taken). We made another Russian friend on this train and though she spoke no more English than the murderer attempting to talk to her was much more comfortable! Pete's great luck struck again as we made Russian pot noodles for lunch. We got them back to the compartment and before he could take a bite he tipped the entire pot across the table, his bed and his (white!) jogging bottoms.

There are no hostels in Krasnoyarsk so we stayed with a Russian family in their flat. Their place was right on the edge of the city in a crappy apartment block surround by crappy apartment blocks. After a scary ride in the smallest lift I have ever been in to the top floor we discovered that the inside was actually nothing like the outside and had been recently renovated. We went for a look around the city and met our first English person since Moscow; Charlotte, a girl 6 weeks into her year abroad for a language degree. We arranged to try and meet the next day for a night out at a DJ competition, a bit difficult when we have no phone and access to the internet only in internet café's.

On the second day we went to the Stolby nature reserve, located around some massive granite rock formations. On the bus journey there a local woman (rocking Nelly-style grills) asked us if we were going to the nature reserve and helpfully told us when to get off. As we were trying to work out where we had to walk (the bus stops 7km from the rock formations) she grabbed two Russian students and told them to help us! So we had a couple of tour guides for the day! At the top of one of the rocks it snowed really intensely and we both ended up with frozen hair for the rest of the day. The weather did clear eventually and we found some amazing views after climbing to the top of some scarily icy rocks. We went around quite a lot of the different formations and must have walked over 25km by the time we got back to the bus stop. We even had a snowball fight with some Russia school children and got the in trouble with their teacher! 

When we got back in the evening we had a quick change and went straight back out to meet the English girls. The night involved plenty of vodka and actually some very good DJ'ing. However the night took an unpleasant turn when we went to leave as Pete discovered he could not find his passport! He managed to get back in the club and searched for a good half hour to no avail. When he finally returned we were pretty stressed as this would probably spell the end of the trip! I put my hands in my pockets and found something there that I didn't expect... the passport had been in my pocket all along! Neither of us have any idea when, why or how I ended up with Pete's passport but we were glad to have found it!


Overnight it snowed quite heavily and in the morning our hungover bus ride to the train station was taking forever and we quickly realised we weren't going to make it. We jumped out at the next stop and managed to get a taxi that got us there with 5 minutes to spare! So we have nearly missed 2 out of 3 trains so far, both whilst hungover... I'm starting to see a pattern.