Vodka, njet Voda!

In 2011 from May to June it was time to do the ultimate trip - Transsiberian train-ride from Finland to China via Russia and Mongolia. Our plan also included an extra twist - four days in North Korea (DPRK). This was no trip for beginners, so all six of us were mentally prepared for things to go sideways.

The first train leg took us from Helsinki (Finland) to Moscow (Russia) with the legendary Tolstoi-train. Somehow we managed to get some Russian guys to buy us a bottle of vodka. Drinking vodka was a good idea, because communicating with Russian people tends to be lot easier with vodka.

In Moscow we did some mandatory, but boring, sightseeing.   

The colour of the day in Moscow was pink.   

At the Moscow-river near Kremlin we bought round-trip tickets to a riverboat, but apparently we couldn't understand any russian and so the boat took us only one-way to somewhere. Nevertheless the sights were nice.    

Moscow had some military police patrolling the streets and they'd came out of the closet big time.

From Moscow the journey continued to Krasnoyarsk. This time the duration on tracks was astonishing three nights and days. During the journey, we met two nice gentlemen from Denmark, Jens and Borreliosis-Peter. To bond with the danish father-son duo we first had to spoil their chances with two French ladies making conversation with them in their cabin.     

The restaurant cabin divided the train into two sections. It was quite stupid to get stuck on the other side of the train after the restaurant cabin closed and your sleeping cabin was on the other side of the train.

Along the tracks were numerous stations where one could spot unique Russian females.

At some random station in Siberia the guys had about 5 seconds time to pose on the tracks before a train came.

The most important thing at the stops was to get some liquid dinner, Baltika-beer.

Sometimes, when there was nothing to see or do on the train, these guys thought it would be amusing to mimic the mating call of a moose in the middle of the night. 

When we arrived in Krasnoyarsk we got to sleep in a flat arranged by our local contacts. The guys were more than pleased with their sleeping arrangements. It could've been worse.

The kitchen-contractor of our flat had forgotten to put screws on in the kitchen's middle shelf, but as you can see the screws were pointless. Although, I wonder how much weight you could put on that shelf. This minor detail was nothing compared to the fact, that there was no central heating in the city at that time. We took the ultimate challenge and showered ourselves in the ice-cold shower, which had it's water delivered straight from the Arctic Ocean.

In Krasnoyarsk we met a lovely couple, Maxim and Natalia. We spent an evening at some nice hills looking down on the mighty river Yenisey.

In this picture some cool guys are smoking genuine mahorka at Krasnoyarsk.

Maxim turned out to be a total maniac and one night he lured us into a deathly trap. He told us to climb a fucking steep cliff with no safety equipment. Unfortunately the cliff was too steep to climb and we had to go down the same way we came. We were hoping for a helicopter rescue, but we were in Siberia, so we had to defy death by climbing down the wall of death.      
     

The next train leg was from Krasnoyark to Irkutsk. We took a risk and bought the cheapest tickets from the 3rd class, with all the common people. The risk was worth it, because it made us drink again (a lot). In the restaurant cabin we met a debt collector from the infamous Russian mafia. We had a nice conversation with Dimitriy by pointing words from a dictionary.

During the epic train leg we also met few other interesting people. One of them was Nasty, a Russian teenager with pyjamas and a whole lot of vodka in her system. 

 

Nasty's mom Cool Cat was also lot's of fun.

 In the next morning a miracle happened and we woke up at the right station - Irkutsk.

After the train ride we found a van and started a death rally towards the spiritual peace of land in the middle of lake Baikal called Olkhon Island. 

Olkhon was a paradise on earth, but it had a dirty secret hidden in the woods. 

Pertti was a cold-blooded travel coordinator from Finland, that we met during one of our most disoriented moments in Irkutsk. Without Pertti and Pertti's slovenian mistress Susku we would've never made it to Olkhon from Irkutsk. For that we had to endure Pertti's jokes and stories the whole time we were on Olkhon.

There is a logical explanation for this one. It looks like two dwarfs with wet clothes were lying here, but actually two drunken travellers pissed these figures. Who would've guessed?

Russian banja-experience was a weird one. Sauna was hot as hell and for extra price they offered sauna-broom, which was made from a pine-tree and which we bought of course. After banja we had some painful burn-marks on our ass and pine-tree-needles stuck to our testicles. Sensuel experience to say the least.

A trip to Baikal is worth nothing without swimming naked in it.

One of the most disturbing episodes on Olkhon was, when we witnessed two drunken comrades trying to land their boat into Baikal. They ended up landing their truck into the water also.

Marshutka - a Russian supertruck. You could literally lit the Marshutka on fire and drive it down from a cliff and it could still do it's job as an off-road vehicle. We took a days ride with Marshutka to the island's north coast and for some reason stopped to eat pine-tree needles.

Khuznir was a village in Olkhon of about 1.200 people and a few electric lights. While searching a night club from the village we found a couple of local mongolian gang-bangers. We had interesting discussions with them, mainly about fighting with people and shooting them.

To sum up the Russian experience, I have to say that in order to visit Russia you must be ready to face near death experiences, impossible language barrier, crazy unlogical behaviour from locals and some serious vodka-drinking. In other words, Russia is a perfect country to travel!