Lake Baikal and Olkhon Island

So after a night at Golina's unamed hostel we were up for 7am to catch the minibus she said she had booked for us. Although it was a little late we finally got on our way with some people from France, Israel, Russia and Finland. The minibus was in an interesting state of repair with a very cracked windscreen, questional sealing on the doors/windows and some old vinyl flooring.

We had a 6 hour drive from Irkutsk to a small town called Khuzir on Olkhon Island. The first 3 hours of the drive were ok if not a little cramped (we were in the middle of a big rain storm and the driver didn't have any sheeting to put over the roof rack so all the bags were in the bus with us!), there was also a massive draft coming from the rear door that Kaz and Sadie were sat in so were freezing until the driver threw back a quilt for them. After a brief stop to use the most horrific toilets at a petrol station we found that the tarmac road had finished and the next 3 hours were on very bumpy, stoney and fairly dangerous tracks. This didn't stop our driver from still driving as if he was on the M42 and insisted on overtaking every vehicle we came across. To get onto the island we have a half hour ferry crossing and another hour to get to the town.

We stopped in place called Nikitas Homestead which was like a little hippy commune. We paid 800 rubles (16GPB) a night which included 3 meals a day. They didn't have room in the homestead so we stopped with an old lady just around the corner. We had electricity, water was from a bucket and a hole at the end of the vegetable patch as a toilet.  Kaz was delighted to find a stove outside so she could boil water for feet soaking and clothes washing! All the food was very simple but delicious. Breakfast consisted of porridge, eggs and pancakes. Lunch was always a pickled salad, some fish and rice. Dinners had the same fish and salad combo with some meat and rice/potatoe/pasta.


One of the highlights of an evening (apart from the stunning sunsets and stars) was the Banyas... You get to sauna first, then have a stand up bath. Unfortunatley there was no bunches of birch sticks to hit each other with, so we improvised.


The island and lake are mind-bendingly beautiful. A mixture of woodland, mountains, sand dunes and steppe. It is also has Russian's in tents listening to techno at all hours of the day and a depressing amount of litter from said Russian's (Greenpeace would have a task on their hands in some places on the island).


We walked up the coast about 5 miles and on the way had a swim in the lake. I say 'swim', it was the coldest water i have ever been in, so was a very brief dip. We also sat on the beach for several hours watching the world go by, skimming stones and Sadie and Kaz threw stones at me and at tomatoes...

In the other directions there was a number of hills so we had another day of trekking up to the tallest one (photo from the top). While taking in the views from the top, 2 bus loads of Russians turned up, took some photo's and one even stripped down to her bikini and had a quick sun bathe - wheres the sense of achievement in that?


The final evening we watched 2 very attractive women fire-dancing just outside the homestead... a great end to 4 days on the island.

Sadie's fancy long exposure shot...

Making stone monuments...

Sunset view from our room

Four days aboard the Trans-Siberian Express.

Hi! Now that we have the internet we are finally able to get stuff on here.

After sweltering in the heat of Moscow's hottest ever recorded day we were happy to be heading off to Yaroslavlsky Station to catch our train to Irkutsk. We had stocked up on noodles, coffee, biscuits and the requisite bottle of vodka (which cost roughly three pound fifty). We were in second class soft sleeper or Kupe. This meant four bunks in each compartment with a small table and room to stow your stuff. We met our first train companion Anya, who's mother introduced her as an 19 year old student going back off to uni. We bonded over a love of celebrity magazines (in particular Russian Heat! Magazine) and Brad Pitt in Fight Club and credit to Anya's English skills managed to chat away for hours with a shared understanding of about 50 words. We also met Kate and her mother and cute little brother Daniel who were from Irkutsk and spoke good English and better German than us.

After we waved Anya off at Tyumen we had a day of lounging in the carriage by ourselves which gave us a good oppurtunity to try out our 'Train Yoga' programme (We'd been on the train for over 48hrs and were a bit restless). Later that night we were woken up by a family from Kyrgystan occupying various beds up and down the carriage. I peeked out of my sheets to see a woman sat on the end of my bed breastfeeding a small baby, and a girl (who we think was the baby's aunty) moving into our spare bunk. Between the family they had two babies, two toddlers, various adults and grandad who had a full set of extremely striking gold teeth. And they were all lovely, the babies slept through the night without so much as a peep (except when Rich waved at one and made it cry) and in the day the girls sat with us and let us admire the babies, which we did for a considerable amount of time as they were ridiculously cute. And with our new improving Russian skills managed to convey our names, ages, jobs and of course the requisite showing of family pictures.

To our surprise we were given food, which after we tried to give it back as we assumed we'd be charged for it, was delicious beef goulash, a rock cake and some horrible vinegary bread. We got a food parcel every day, which was lucky as we'd only got noodles and soup to last us. At the end of each carriage there was a big water heater from which you could get absolutely scalding water from - frightning when the train is bouncing over the tracks at 50mph. Saying that, at every stop hawkers on the platforms were selling loads of things like bread, cakes, beer, ice creams, cups of berries and whole dried fish if you wanted, so we never would have starved.

The views from the windows were very similar for the first couple of days, which was dense forest right up to the tracks. This was broken up only by random things, one being an Obelisk marking the Europe-Asia border which was much lauded in the book but after we squashed our faces up the window for half an hour looking for it it turned out just to be basically just a 6ft white post with 'Europe' and 'Asia' written on it. After that the scenery opened up a fair bit and there were meadows of cows and hills covered in small wooden houses, all painted in a slightly schizophrenic combination of colours.

The next morning we arrived at Irkutsk very early and were given the perfect excuse to finally stretch our legs properly as we couldn't find our hostel and we ended up on an unscheduled tour of Irkutsk's streets full of old wooden buildings. This would have been more pleasurable if we weren't wearing our 15kg packs at the time. We finally accidentally stumbled on a hostel of which the name was never revealed to us, however Gorina the owner made us very welcome and amused us greatly with her red dressing gown, hearing aid which she kept removing and her continual shouting of 'kleine problem!' at our Swiss-German roomates. We booked the bus to Olkhon island for the next day as to get out of the town and enjoyed our first shower in four days, which is quite possibly the most I have ever enjoyed washing in my entire life!.

With Kate in our cabin.

A small part of our family from Kyrgystan. Initially unsure of the photo-taking etiquette, we knew we were okay to take pictures when they started snapping us on their camera phones.

Our first train beer.

The strange and sometimes delicious food.

Our train.

Irkutsk - 'The Paris of Siberia' (apparently)

Priviyet! Since we last posted we have been exclusively on the train. We took the Trans-Siberian Express part of the way down Russia to Irkutsk (where we are now) which took four nights, three days and covered over 5000 kilometers. We had a 2nd class cabin on the train which was roughly 6 foot square with four bunks and a small table. The four bunks meant we usually had someone in with us which included Anya (who is in the photo above) and a family from Kyrgystan who had the cutest train babies ever! Which we spent a good amount of time tickling.

We are now in Irkutsk stocking up on beers, crab crisps and misc foods we will discover the contents of later, or maybe not, its all part of the fun!

The train was an awesome experience which we will go into more detail later and post more photos when we have free internet and its a bit cooler in Mongolia. For now we catch a bus to Olkhon Island on Lake baikal tomorrow, where we will hopefully be for four days before catching our next train on saturday night. Missing you all lots, from Kaz, Sadie and Rich x