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Published: September 16th 2006
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"I just can't believe it's Siberia!"
Saraysky Beach, Olkhon Island. Our campsite is just off the right So i'm in a hospital, on an island, in the middle of the largest lake in the world, in siberia.. The tv's on in the corner of the surgery, my translator swears he's with the KGB, & the doctor is asking me if it's true that we send busloads of Kiwi girls out into the country to marry farmers. 'Didn't r-e-a-l-l-y expect to be here.
We've been in Russia for just over a week now, 20 days until we kicked out once and for all! For those of you not privy to the process, getting visas to enter the country was one of the most difficult things we've had to do for this trip. We had two options, join a tour for several thousand NZD (~4k for 12 days), or do it independantly & be a little creative with the paperwork. Option B was also far from free, and our visa is strictly limited to 30days from when we said we'd arrive, and it has to be registered every 3 days in a city.. "Welcome to Russia, please take your time" :/ On the upside, we can travel exactly 1/4 of the way round the world for under $500NZ 😊
Our little bus
No.2.. 5 hours on this one :) We tubmled out onto the Irkutsk railway platform early on the morning of the 5th & were met by our friendly hostel lady. One thing i've learnt on thistrip is to book hostels ahead & make use of any free or arranged pickups, it makes getting settled way easier & will usually cost you less in the long run.
We spent the day running round sorting out onward train tickets, visa registration, a bus to Olkhon Island for the next day, and some lunch for our bellies. Irkutsk is a strange city, it doesn't really have a heart - maybe it's just Soviet in general(?) - like Mongolia, the shopfronts don't really advertise what's inside. It took us about 1h of wandering round the city to find anywhere to eat!
Despite tis, Irkutsk wasn't a bad place, but with the pressure to keep moving, not really a place to be wasting time and money. The bus out to Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal took 9h (let's just say Russian reliability was put to the test early on). Given that the lake holds 1/5 of the world's fresh water, and there's not much else to do in Siberia
Saraysky Beach, Olkhon Island
Looks beautiful, you can drive a truck on the ice off this beach in winter :) (except for possibly something like
this : ), we figured we'd take a look. We camped 3 nights on a golden sandy Mediterranean beach, almost uninhabited but for the handy backpackers just round the corner. Ha ha!! camping on a beach in Siberia 😊
We ate, washed, and made friends at the backpackers round the corner. They also hired out pretty decent mountainbikes.. ha ha ha 😊 mountainbiking in Siberia! About 6 of us grabbed some bikes and set off on a mission to the other side of the island. It quickly became apparent our hand drawn map wasn't going to cut the mustard without expanation & we were kinda on our own. I was kinda also the only person who'd bought any food, and after our first about-turn everyone was looking pretty tired.
BUT the tracks were awesome 4wd and twisty singletrack & we had a 40min downhill to the beach (shhh.. do we really have to go back up there?). It was getting late so we scoffed the food on the beach, made noises about a swim in the 9deg water - until someone actually did it & made a whole lot of noise 😉 ..
Camping, Saraysky Beach
Take a tent when you travel.. awesome! and headed back. We got back up the hill a lot easier than we expected & things were really going too smoothly until i hit some soft sand on the downhill & the front tyre washed out. I hit the ground, looked around "sweet, no-one saw", checked myself out "sweet, all in one piece", then pulled up my shorts and saw a horrible looking cut on my knee that had something suspiciously white and boney looking in the middle "you stupid cunt". I pulled it together so no-one could see & strapped it up with tape.
The doctor was at home & appeared in shorts and a t-shirt, he sent us off to the hospital and appeared 20min later in a suit and tie 😊 reassuring !? A couple of stitches, some instructions on how to take them out on the train, and a directive to buy a bottle of Vodka for the night & I was home free 😊 We all had a bonfire on the beach that night & the vodka worked a treat.. The next morning I mentioned to H I thought I might've broken my finger as well & he mentioned he'd really like to
go for a swim but didn't want to miss breakfast. The jury's still out on the finger - no x-ray, no idea, but I think it'll be ok.
Something that's really surprised me about russians is their friendliness, often they can be a completely closed book until they really get "talking". and their systems are awful & inflexible, but we've found the average Sergei Mikalovich on the street more than happy to sit down and have a drink (on the street if need be). there have been some exceptions, like the guy who deliberately ran his truck into the hostel restaraunt on Olkhon then ran in with an axe and started smashing things (a little scary). It seems vodka both solves and causes most problems :/
I'm in Ekaterinberg all on my lonesome now, found the cheapest bed in town last night.. tonight will be a different story, it's expensive - $30NZD for a bed! Miss you guys, txt heaps 😉
K.
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Helen Lord
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Mongolian friends
Hey there Kerry- wow you do explore in an exciting fashion. Good on you. Sorry to hear about your cut knee- but sounds like you soldiered on in true kiwi spirit. Good to hear the Russians can be friendly- they don't always seem that way eh? But I know some fabulous Russians in Ch-Ch. Take care and I will keep reading your blog. Regards Helen and Don in Ulaanbaatar