​The Transsiberian: crossing Siberia

Before planning this journey, I hardly knew anything about the region of Siberia, except for the fact that the winters there get extremely cold. My memories after spending ten days of exploring this part of Russia, shaped a very new and surprising image of Siberia. Let me count down the four highlights of my personal Siberian experience!

1 – The encounters

An important part of the travel experience consists of who you travel with. I had some interesting encounters before arriving in Siberia, mainly with Russians, but I also spent a lot of time on my own. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind spending time alone! This trip would be really hard if I did. But I noticed that the more I am on my own, the more my emotions get neutralized, as if my brain is trying to be energy-efficient. Spending time with other people, however, gives me new energy. And in Siberia, I got to hang out with a lot of nice people.

I especially spent a lot of time with two nice and very entertaining American girls whom I met in the hostel in Krasnoyarsk.

(The place was called Hovel Hostel. “Why this name?” the girls asked the receptionist. It appeared to be a randomly chosen name. “What does ‘hovel’ mean?” I asked. “In English, that’s a word used for a worn-down place… My mom was actually worried of me staying there.”)

Their itinerary over the next ten days looked a lot like mine, we stayed at the same hostels, with one or two days difference here and there. So we started hanging out, sharing food (strong base for a new friendship!), watch sunsets together… We parted ways several times, only to get reunited every time in a new place. Lots of fun!

Just before I met the Americans, I had spent the day hiking in beautiful Stolby Nature Reserve near Krasnoyarsk with a sweet Russian girl. She recently had been living in Belgium for a year! Surprisingly, the reason for that was to learn Dutch (unsurprisingly, she didn’t get much practice after that). I had met her in Novosibirsk. When she heard of my Stolby plans, she was happy to join in, since she lives in Krasnoyarsk and the reserve is one of her favourite places to go to. So I had the luxury to be picked up by car just in front of my hostel by her and a friend. He displayed the typical Russian driving skills to get us there, the adventure had started already!

There were moments when I thought I was going to be lonely, but every time I feared this would happen, I would meet somebody new just right then.

For example, I went and had dinner with a young French guy in Irkutsk who had been making his way from France on a motorcycle, I kid you not. Where I would spend time in Russian train stations, he would be discovering what the automobile repair shops in Russia would look like.

And when I arrived in Ulan Ude, everything clicked together.

On this part of the Transsiberian journey, everybody is travelling to the same places. After spending the day with a sweet German couple, I went back to my hostel and found myself surrounded by a bunch of familiar faces! People I had met in Irkutsk, on Olkhon Island… They all showed up again in Ulan Ude.

Having a laugh taking goofy pictures with the giant Lenin head

I spent the evening with another lovely German couple, who had been couchsurfing their way along the Transsiberian. They invited me to join them on a meeting with a Russian guy living in Ulan Ude, who first took us to a trendy rooftop bar, and followed it up by showing us a local beer pub, where they would tap the beer into plastic bottles (why??). We laughed the night away with one of those typical, yet entertaining foreigners-to-foreigners conversations about life goals and home country cliches.

2 – The nature

After thousands of kilometres of similar landscapes, the view from the train window started to look different, especially when we arrived in the mountainous region of Krasnoyarsk.

But the magnificent nature only really opened up to me once I had stepped off the train.

Stolby Nature Reserve is a wonderful place for hiking. My legs might not have been super thankful after those 16 km, but my eyes definitely were. Enormous geological rock formations (“stolby”) showed up between the trees, while we were making our way through the wood. When we climbed them, we were rewarded with a magnificent panoramic view over the mountain forest.

Geological rock formations (“stolby”) between the trees

Siberian chipmunk

Panoramic view over the nature reserve

Baikal Lake was even more spectacular. Not only for the facts – it contains a fifth of all the freshwater in the world and is slowly turning into the world’s next ocean as the tectonic plates drift apart. But when I was standing at the northern top of sandy and rocky Olkhon Island, my eyes got lost in the vastest amount of blue I have ever seen. The water reflecting the blue skies is so clear that it is even turquoise near the shores. When we thought it wouldn’t get much better than that, we came across a bunch of seals, sunbathing on the rocks beneath the cliffs.

Northern point of Olkhon Island

“Nerpa’s” (Baikal seals)

View on the lake from Khuzir, in the middle of Olkhon island

Sacred place on Olkhon Island

Village of Khuzir: vintage cars, sandy streets, wooden houses

3 – The weather

My association of Siberia with cold is far away now. As soon as I arrived, my chilly days in Russia were over. With temperatures going up to 30°C and more, I could finally stop wearing my jacket and long jeans. In Ulan Ude, we even had 37°C, which is apparently very exceptional for this city…

4 – The smaller cities

Not all Siberian cities are worth sightseeing – I told you about the unofficial capital Novosibirsk, but Krasnoyarsk falls into the same category: many Soviet era buildings, few sights. Their railway stations are nice though! At least, these colourful and majestic buildings are doing a good job of giving Transsiberian travellers, like me, a good first impression of the city…

Ready to take the train at Novosibirsk railway station

Anyhow, the smaller cities were different. I told you about university town Tomsk, but I was also seduced by Irkutsk with its eclectic architecture and by laid-back Ulan Ude, near the Mongolian border.

Irkutsk is by far the most popular stop along the Transsiberian. I can understand why. Sometimes it made me think of a European city, but then I would come across another one of the many beautiful, typical wooden houses, reminding me that I was still in Siberia. I did the green line, which is not an organic version of a popular drug, but a city walking tour. Similar to the red line in Yekaterinburg, painted on the sidewalk, it takes you along the most noteworthy places in town while you barely have to use a map. Amazing idea, it might be worth recycling elsewhere… (I’m sure my colleagues at the tourism promotion office in Belgium are reading me, hehe.)

Raising of the Cross church

Typical Siberian wooden house

Sunset over the Irkut/Aranga river

Local cat

At first sight, Ulan Ude looked like another small Russian city. But then I noticed that half of the population has Mongolian roots. Moreover, there are two Buddhist temples nearby, also not your typical Russian sight. On Sunday morning, I witnessed a religious service in the most beautiful one of the two, Ivolginsk Datsan. That definitely was one of the strangest experiences during my trip so far…