Ulan Ude

This was probably the stop we were least looking forward to as it was 3 nights in a place with very little to do and the hostel sounded pretty nasty. Things didn't start well, we arrived at about 6 and after failing to find a tram stop we decided to walk. The instructions seemed simple enough; turn left at an obelisk then turn right 500 meters later.... so obviously it took us 2 hours 3 strangers and a taxi (who had to phone 2 people) to find it! Turns out the Russian idea of a street is quite different to ours...

The next day we decided to visit a nearby Buddhist monastery, apparently the centre of Buddhism in Russia. The place was quite impressive, 35km out in the middle of nowhere, with chanting audible from quite a way off. We had a walk around the outside spinning prayer wheels, went into a temple and general felt out of place. The plan had been to spend the night at the monastery but it wasn't possible as it seemed to be some sort of special occasion and there were a lot of people around. We returned to the city and visited the other major attraction of the area... the worlds largest head of Lenin. The day was recovered by a meal at Happyland, our cheapest in Russia accompanied by beer for only £1.20 a pint.

The second day in the city we spent visiting the natural history museum. We had seen posters advertising a special Gobi desert dinosaur exhibit so for less than £3 it seemed like a good deal. When we got in there it turned out the special exhibit was just some dinosaur bones stolen from Mongolia and put up in front of an old exhibition covered with black sheets. There were also a few other rooms with exhibits that literally hadn't been updated since either of us were born. Taking photos was not allowed but some stealthy moves meant that I got a few.

The next morning we set off for our train, again determined not to cut it fine. We got to the station with plenty of time (enough time for Pete to realise he had already lost the gloves he bought in Irkutsk) but still ended up boarding with only 5 minutes to go. It turned out the board was broken and wasn't updating with platform numbers and the train we had spent about half an hour staring at in platform 1 was ours. Oh well; to Mongolia.