I have just heard a great news: Mongolian government had ceased the visa requirement for all the EU citizens for a test period: from 25th of June up until the end of the year. This means that I have one country less to deal with the entry bureaucracy and a bit € less to spend on that.

Awesome.

As for the trip, I have recently moved from the pre-preparations to the preparations level. What it means? I booked my off days at work and finally set the edge dates of the trip.
We leave Monday, 8th of September, the comeback date is Saturday, 4th of October.

Last two days were a nightmare. I spent them on trying to buy the tickets. Since there were absolutely no problems with the plane ones, the train passes – I would rather say the payment process for them, as the rzd.ru site and booking process was surprisingly non problematic – was a one big pine in the arse. Standard credit or debit cards didn’t work. I found out that a 3D Secured one could do it, but the “could” word was the most significant one here.
So, at the end my achievement was to have ONE ticket purchased, from Moscow to Novosibirsk. Plus two days spent and 4 different cards used. Lovely.

The route has also slightly changed. Unfortunately, we will not be able to use the hydrofoil. The RAKETA, that travels from Severobaikalsk to Irkutsk works only until the end of August. It sucks a bit, as the trip will become a bit more ordinary: we will go directly to Irkutsk by a train, then we go to Olchon island, then we’ll take the Krugo-Baikal line and afterwards go towards Mongolia. We will miss the BAM (Baikal-Amur line).
The new map below.