September 17, 2019 We depart the hotel at noon and board our private train carriage, departing Krasnoyarsk at 1:30pm and arriving in Irkutsk at 8:28am tomorrow morning. We have nine compartments aboard, and the hours fly swiftly as we congregate in the passageway or gather in various cabins to gossip, play cards and discuss world events. It is amazing how much coverage I am getting with my T-Mobile plan – 4G in every town we pass through and 2G most everywhere else, so I am able to keep up with correspondence and news. (I have not been paid for this commercial message!) We leave the beautiful mountains and transition into rolling hillsides covered with Taiga Forest, generally referred to in North America as Boreal Forest or Snow Forest.
The night passes uneventfully (except for the lurching and clanging of the train as it goes over uneven tracks). This is what sleeping pills were made for! Before we know it, the morning has dawned and we are rolling into Irkutsk.
