The Siberian countryside

June 19, Wednesday. We are spending two days mostly on the train as we travel south to Mongolia. They keep us busy with lectures, language classes, and food, but there is also plenty of time to watch the countryside change as it unspools outside our window. We have passed through the dense taiga forests of Russia's Far East, which will probably continue as we cross Siberia. After we turned slightly south toward Mongolia, we passed through a region of grassy undulating hills, a terrain I have never seen until now. Alas, we were in the dining car without a camera, and this terrain has not repeated itself again. Lightly forested hills with lots of open grassland are most common through much of the region we are passing through now. 

Meanwhile, housing styles have also changed. Originally we saw mostly modern materials being used, but as we move further west, more and more houses are constructed in the old wooden style.  Not much decoration, little color, some with enormous woodpiles already preparing for the long harsh winter ahead. As we move further south, we see more embellishment on the houses in both trim work and paint. Plain wood still dominates, but pastel blues, pinks, lavender, even the occasional burst of yellow or orange enlivens the view.     

Many of these pictures were taken from a moving train, so pardon the blurs.  This is a fairly typical wooden house.

Another house with a gigantic wood pile

This is a cemetery, with the customary blue iron fences surrounding the individual plots

More wood to be chopped for winter

Blue shutters and painted trim

Further north, the color came from the flowers we saw growing everywhere. Swathes of yellow and white dominated but sometimes we saw large stands of beautiful purple iris, and orange or yellow day lilies all growing wild.  Along with the lively bright greens of the deciduous forest and the darker fir trees, the short Russian summer in this part of the world is lovely thanks to the wildflowers that brighten the scene.

This field of wildflowers is only a hint at what we have seen.
White, yellow, purple, orange.  Summer is brief but beautiful here.