On the train again

All day on the train. It was horribly hot. There were no windows to open in the compartment which we shared with another couple. Although there were 2 windows in the corridor, the sour provinistsa insisted we kept them shut. She kept pointing to the ceiling where the non-functioning air-con was. It was an on-going battle that kept us amused, with passengers opening the windows then after a few minutes she’d appear and gleefully shut them. Eventually she locked them, but Mr C had the meter key we’d been advised to bring for locking the compartment, and that also worked on the window. The stuffy heat was very uncomfortable so we took to standing in the place two carriages joined where there was a gap down to the rails. At one point we joined Alex, our young Russian guide, and Mark in the dining car for a beer. Alex explained a lot about the awful situation in Russia in the 1990s, and his experiences. The train feels like it is going very slowly. We went by a huge cemetery, a huge prison. And many small villages with extremely poor dilapidated houses, dirt roads and many other abandoned shacks. Small white flowers grew under the trees along the tracks. We crossed large rivers, and in the Tarter province saw minarets instead of the church domes.