Beauty, borders and buglary

Saturday didn't start for me until about midday when I woke to find Lake Baikal outside my window.Having had three days of trees and snow to llok at this was a welcome change! It's huge - and was completely frozen over. According to my book it holds roughly 20% of the world's freshwater supplies - although my book was written in 2003 so I've no idea if that is still a true fact! Our train followed the lake edge for a good few hours before moving into what looked like Alpine scenery. All beautiful and all the complete opposite of the rest of what became a rather unerving day. We had to cross both the Russian exit and the Mongolian entry borders. There is nothing quite as sobering as being stranded on a train in the middle of absolutely nowhere whilst a scary looking offical wanders off with your passport for two hours. I lie, in fact there is. Having your room searched (twice), custom's documents questioned and, in Ben's case, money stolen by the Mongolian official is up there too.