Back in Irkutsk we collect our visas from the Mongolian Embassy and set off on the 700km ride to the border. We wind our way through heavily wooded hillsides heading towards the south-western tip of Lake Baikal. There are very occasional glimpses of the lake but mostly its views of taiga covered hills disappearing off into the distance. There are more birch trees, with their gleaming white bark, than we have seen before. And quite a few “drunken trees” too – where the top of the tree is arched over gracefully and is almost touching the ground. They occur when the permafrost melts/shifts so we are going to see far more of them when we eventually head north towards Magadan. Eventually we leave the hills behind and drop down to the lake shore at Kultuk. For
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