M-whY

I left the room to go se the toilet, then immediately doubled back for my camera. We were passing Lake Baikal, often referred to as the Pearl of Siberia, on the train's right hand side. The nickname is well earned; Beneath the superficial beauty, it has depth (1637m) no other lake in the world can match. It holds one-fifth of the world's freshwater supply (more than the five Great Lakes combined), and the water is remarkably clear. So clear that in winter, the surface ice can be 10m thick and still transparent. Created by the movement of tectonic plates 20 million years ago (by comparison, most lakes on earth have an age of only 30,000 years), it's predicted to one day be the world's next ocean.

But in the meantime, something else was moving (my bowels), and I headed down the hall to use the toilet. All morning, we skirted around the lake's edges. Quaint wooden houses backed by picturesque mountains... maybe it wasn't so bad to be banished to Siberia. At around noon, we made our first daylight stop at the town of Sliudianka.

Well, I say 'around noon' because that's what my watch still read. In reality, I had no idea what local time was. The timetable I had listed everything in Moscow time, so according to it, Sliudianka came at 7:00am, and Irkustsk(map) at 9:30am.

Like myself, a man in the hall was taking pictures out the window. I know it's a bit presuming, but I figure anyone with a camera is a tourist, and every tourist must understand some english.

"Do you know what time it is?"

Eduardo was Chilean, but I had guessed right: English was a language he was also fluent in. His watch was in sync with mine, that is, still on Ulaan Baatar/Beijing time, but he noted that all train stations technically ran on Moscow time.

"Is it a four hour or five hour difference?" he asked, bringing the winter months vs summer months complication into play. Eventually, I'd find the answer in my handbook (it's five during winter) and set my watch accordingly, but that just made everything weird.

Because now sunset came at 12:30pm. Forget what the clocks said, I concluded. If the sky shows evening, it's gotta be dinnertime. Saving my instant noodles for another day, I wandered down to the dining car. The menu had translations, the waitress spoke english; I ordered a serving of meat and potatoes for 180 roubles. (US$1 = 27 roubles.) Posted on the restaurant door were opening hours plus a message suggesting passengers turn back time one hour per day.

Using this makeshift solution, sundown came at 4:30pm. A little less disturbing to the mind, even if it wasn't exactly local time. I saw Zima in the faintest of light, trees flying by soon became concealed by darkness. Back in my cabin, the Mongolian woman and I still weren't on speaking terms, so with nothing better to do, I scribbled in my notebook for a couple hours and went to bed. By my watch, yes, it was still early, but my internal clock said it was time for bed.

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