It was a short train journey around Lake Baikal from the western shore to the eastern shore, to a place called Ulan Ude. I had now travelled over 10,000km by train since leaving home.
Ulan Ude is the capital of the Buryatia Republic region of Eastern Siberia. Buryats are a native ethnic group, similar to Mongolians and are traditionally Buddhist.
There is not much to see in Ulan Ude, and its highlight is the great big statue of Lenin's head in the main square.
I was at a lovely homestay hosted by Andrei and Svetlana, and their two children, Yasha (21) and Masha (19).
The family has done lots to develop ecotourism in the region and has been working in tourism for 18 years. They were very friendly and welcoming - definitely the most homely place I had stayed at since leaving home. The house was fantastic too, built from scratch 4 years ago.
Andrei and Svetlana were also my guides. Andrei drove me to the small Atsagatsky Buddhist temple outside the city, which Andrei is helping to renovate and develop with the head lama. The head lama is a cool guy who wanted to take me in as a pupil - I look Buddhist apparently especially with my lack of hair!
We then went to a Buryat village for a traditional lunch - green tea with milk as a welcome, and then some noodle soup and 'poozy' (meat dumplings). I finally felt I was in Asia.
After lunch, I tried on a traditional Buryat costume and we played some traditional games with sheep's ankle bones (I wasn't very good), and had a go at some archery (much better, although I was out of luck).
I learnt lots about Andrei's vision for tourism in the region. His main project is to build the Great Baikal Trail, a network of 570km of trail around the Lake. You can visit www.greatbaikaltrail.ru for more information. He is very determined to make it work and seems to have the right people and skills, but can always use the help of willing volunteers.
Yasha and Masha get very involved in the projects too. Yasha manages the hostel that is adjacent to the family house and Masha was on a project by the Lake at the time, so I didn't meet her.
Eli was also staying with the family. She is a student from Glasgow who is spending a few weeks in the area helping out on various ecotourism projects.
Yasha knew I was keen on playing football (for the first time since I injured my ankle back in November of last year), so we went and joined a game at the local university dust field.
That night there was a big storm and lots of lightning; don't think I've seen anything like it before - I actually thought the windows might cave in.
The next morning, I met an Aussie couple from just south of Sydney: Rob and Janet. Svetlana took the three of us to the Ivologinsk Datsan, containing many Buddhist temples and schools, and housing for the lamas ands pupils. It's the centre of Buddhism in Russia, and was visited by the Dalai Lama in 1991.
We then visited an 'Old Believers' village. Old Believers are people who stuck to the old Russian Orthodox beliefs and traditions after the reformation, and were exiled in Siberia a couple of hundred of years ago. There is a population of about 250,000 of them there now.
On our return to the house, Yasha took an interest in the music on my iPod, but thanks to Apple, I was unable to transfer any of my music to his PC. I did however get some local Buryat music in return, most of which is played with the fiddle.
That night, we had a fantastic meal coked by Svetlana. Meat dumplings, grilled fish, pickled cucumbers, and great sponge cake (which I had almost all of). We were sitting by the dining table for hours chatting, although Svetlana would run ff every now and then to attend to her beautiful (although high maintenance) garden.
It was now time to say goodbye to Russia.
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