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(Day 55 on the road)The trip to Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal got off to a bad start: After a smooth 4h minibus-ride through some snow-covered roads and forests to the ferry which was supposed to bring us to the island, we found out that the ferry was cancelled due to strong winds. And windy it was - I have never experienced anything like it. We were ten people sitting in the van, and the car was being moved back and forth by the storm. In the end, we waited eight long hours in the bus (it was way too cold and windy to stay outside the bus for any amount of time), before the storm finally settled and the ferry took us across. So what should have been a 4h tour became a 12h torture...
But it was worth the wait, because my stay on Olkhon Island was just perfect, certainly the visual highlight of my travels in Russia! Olkhon Island is situated on the western shore of Lake Baikal and very sparsely populated. The stream of tourists however is increasing every year, and by now there are quite a few guesthouses on the island, including a popular and
indeed great backpacker's hangout called Nikita's Homestead, where I crashed.
Lake Baikal itself, often called the "Pearl of Siberia", is a crystal-clear body of the bluest water you can imagine. It is drinkable pure, and indeed I walked up to its edge and drank the water. With about three degrees water-temperature even at the end of May, swimming however was out of the question. The lake is vast and extremely deep, about 1.6KM at its deepest point, and contains about a fifth of the world's fresh water supplies, more than North America's Great Lakes combined.
Have a look at a picture I took of it and imagine pulling the imaginary plug from the lake, thus draining all the water from it. You would be left with a canyon 1.6KM deep at its deepest point - the Grand Canyon would look dwarfed in comparison - I find this image to be very powerful. Apart from that, Lake Baikal is stunning at it is and feels deeply serene. When I visited, it was cold, cloudy and very windy, but this somehow only added to the magic of it. I drove around the island for a day on a tour and leisurely
strolled across it the rest of the time and was dazzled by the beauty and expanse of it all.
The crowd of people in the hostel was also great. I have very fond memories of the evenings, which I spent with the other travellers in the hostel. The first night we got a pretty international crowd together (Australian, Norwegian, Swiss, American, German) and were soon joined by three Russians who had caught a few fish only native to Lake Baikal that day and were only too happy to share it with us. After a delicious fish soup the highlight was clearly the Russian Sushi: The Russians had sliced the fish in half, removed the bones and salted it, and with a sharp knife we were taking big junks of the fish and ate it raw. The taste and the texture were amazing! Another night we spent in the private banya of the hostel. 100% wood-fired and seating about four, we crammed in there with six people and had a hell of a time - sorry, no pictures of that :-)
The stay at Lake Baikal unfortunately also ends my travels in Russia. In three days, my Russian visa
will expire, so I need to hurry and leave the country unless I want to get into major problems and risk a huge fine. As you can imagine, I am not too keen on than, so I will leave for Mongolia on the 31st of May.
Next stop: Ulaan Baatar (Mongolia).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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