Trains through Siberia.

Siberia is big. This should be obvious. But the body and the mind don't really understand how big until they travel through it. Slowly.
I have been using my nerdy train handbook and the nerdy calculation table for working out just how slowly. And for the last five hours we haven't gone much over 60km. I could drive to Novosibirsk faster. Except I probably couldn't because Russian driving is special and particular.
The aim appears to be to wait till one can't see if there is on-coming traffic, especially if this also happens to be a blind corner or the brow of a hill or both. Then one speeds up till the front of the van is virtually on the bumper of the car being passed. Next, a deft manoeuvre out into what is hopefully open road and a roar of speed. The most exciting part is not re-entering the correct lane until the last possible moment. One must achieve re-entry at the point where a fiery death is almost inevitable in a head-on with a truck.
Now I don't mind living a little dangerously, but I will leave the driving to the experts.
Trains, albeit slow ones, it is.
Siberia is tundra and taiga. Wide open spaces then birch forest so tight it's like the trees are hugging - a monumental group hug for hundreds of square kilometres.
And it is unbelievably lovely. As the sun sinks, long shadows stretch out between the birch, hills roll gently away, the long summer grass sways and the endless sky blushes slightly.
But there's an awful lot of it.
Siberia has long been where Russia has sent it's exiles or where they have sent themselves. It's a land for people who don't want to be disturbed or who are too disturbing to have near.
Little villages fringe the railway line...wooden houses that don't look like they have changed much in the last century : each with a garden overflowing now it's summer with vegetables and flowers.
Russians appear to love flowers. There is a flower shop in almost every apartment complex I have passed. Given in parts of Siberia the ground doesn't unfreeze till July and is frozen again by November, I guess I can see why a bit of bright life might feel a necessity.
The sky is clear over Siberia tonight. There's a sliver of a moon and the only other light is the occasional headlight from a long distance truck on the Irkutsk to Moscow highway. I don't think I mind too much that we are rolling along at 50 km.