Our Mind Blowing Trans-Siberian Rail Journey Autumn 2019 - Route 2 ( Ulan Bator to Ulan Ude)

 

Statue of World biggest Lenin's Head at the City Square, Ulan-Ude

After a few restful and 'in-touch' with nature stay at the Gokhi-Terejl National Park, we are looking forward and eager to continue our Trans Siberian Journey. We arrived at  Ulaanbataar Train Station at around 11.30am, almost 4 hours early for our train to Ulan-Ude, so we walked around the train Station to look for food-stalls to replenish our provisions for our train ride of about 14.4 hours, we will arrive at Ulan-Ude early next morning about 6.20am. 

You guys might be wondering by now, what have we prepared for our train journey? 

Yes! we brought along; 50 sachets of Campbell soups in assorted flavors, instant sachets of coffee, tea & Milo. 20 sticks of mixed nuts/ fruits energy bars. We planned at every stops, we will replenish or add in with fresh breads, fruits and local pastries, ok almost forgot local Beers too.

Our train arrived on time! took a nice selfie with our pretty Mongolian 'Train Stewardess' before boarding.

Our 1st Class Train ticket

Our 1st class cabin and carriage's toilet

This was an over-night train ride, we arrived at Ulan-Ude at 6.20 am, it was still very dark outside, so we hung around the station's toilet to brush teeth and etc.etc till daylight. We took a taxi to our hotel @ Residence of Comfort Hotel, was too early to check into our room, we decided to look for breakfast at the city center. Our hotel's front desk staff was so helpful, during our process of checking-in, I mentioned we needed to go back to the train station to purchase our ticket from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk and she offered to purchase on-line for us!! Kudos! to: Residence of Comfort Hotel We stored our backpacks with the front-desk and walked over to the City Square which was 10 mins walk from the back to our Hotel.

Yes correct, we only bought 3 sets of train tickets before travelling ie.

1) Beijing to Ulan-Bator; (tickets sold out within one day) Thanks to my brother CK who got it for us.

2) Ulan-Bator to Ulan Ude ( I had gotten a local ticket-agency to purchase for us on COD one month before travelling...do not want to take the risk of 'sold-out' and upset our schedule)

3) Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg (as the journey was long about 3 days & 2 nights, this particular train fitted my schedule was selling-out, so I bought it on-line, also a month ago.

For the rest of the routes, we planned to get them impromptu when we reach our destiny before the next. We stayed at Ulan-Ude for only one night, the next night @ 10.13pm, we will be travelling to Irkutsk.

 

One of my many reasons visiting Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, was to take a look at the world’s biggest Lenin Head and the Datsan of Rinpoche Bagsha a Tibetan Buddhist Temple. The whole structure’s height of Lenin Head is about 14 meter and weight about 42 tons. Was build to commemorate Lenin’s 100 year old birthday in November 1971.

After breakfast at a fast restaurant in front of the Head of Lenin Monument across the street, we hung around the square. We saw bus-loads of either Mongolian or Chinese tourists alighting at the square.

The pedestrianised street Ulitsa Sobornaya  

 

Surprise! surprise!... I could never believed it, did not actually imagine Ulan-Ude was such a modern and beautiful city! Even the people here were beautiful too!! Ok believe it.... they are literary beautiful like a cross breed between Oriental and Russian....eg. tall long-legged, blond hair female with oriental facial features but very high nose bridge!!...all young female here looks like supermodel to me!

Along the pedestrian street, there are a lot of interesting buildings some with wooden-lace and stone carvings architecture reflecting their Buryatia and Siberian heritage. We even found a shopping mall for our dinner later the evening called the Galaxy! 

Toward the end of the street stands the Odigitrievsky Cathedral (Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk) - Orthodox Church Diocese of the Buryat, was the first stone building in the city and is a Siberian baroque architectural monument. The cathedral is considered unique because it is built in a zone of high seismic activity in the heart of the city on the banks of the River Uda River where it flows into the Selenga. 

 

After a very goodnight sleep in an actual bed and a very hearty breakfast, btw the room came with breakfast too, we checked out of our room by mid-day. With our backpacks stored with the front office and made arrangement to hire a taxi to visit the monastery.

 

Dasan of Rinpoche Bagsha

 

" The term use Datsan is ad for monasteries in Mongolia and Buryatia. Rinpoche literally means “precious one,” and is used to express respect to reincarnated, respected, learned, and accomplished lamas and Dharma teachers. Bagsha is a Buryat word for teacher."  Extract from: Buddhism in Buryatia

 We spend the whole afternoon at the Monastery, by late afternoon we were back at our hotel, rested for a while at the lobby to charge our phones. By evening, we went out again to Galaxy shopping mall for dinner plus replenishing our foods for our train journey of 9.5 hours to Irkutsk. After dinner we came back to the hotel to use their toilet and prepare ourselves for the next leg of our journey. 

By 8.30pm we are at the Ulan-Ude train station, our train to Irkutsk departing at 10.13pm and arriving at 9.20am. 

Look out for my next blog on Route 3: Irkutsk & Lake Baikal