Lake Baikal
Text written in: English
A couple of people recommended that we check out Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal, and Jack's wealth of knowledge immediately paid off. He told us to go to the bus station, look for a minibus and say "Olkhon." When someone tells you to get in, he said, say "Nikita", and apparently that's about it. Once again our spirit of adventure got the better of us and we figured the worst that could happen was being robbed and left naked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. So we went to the bus station, and within a few minutes were packed in a minibus with 11 other people. Lest you get the wrong idea, let me clarify that a minibus is what we call a minivan in the States, and I don't know 11 kindergarteners that could fit in one let alone actual adults. And by the way, I didn't include the three year old as a person. Fortunately we were the last two on the bus, so I got the seat facing backwards by the sliding door, which afforded me precious legroom in that little well just inside the door. Andrea got the front seat window which was a mixed blessing. One one hand, she found the only seatbelt. On the other hand, while I only had to watch the looks of sheer terror on all those facing forward, she had a front row seat experiencing six hours of hyperspace over dirt tracks better described as riverbeds than roads. After prying Andrea's fingers out of the dashboard upon arrival I thought I was going to treat my first case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Later when I asked someone why the guy had to drove so fast, he told me that it was actually less bumpy to drive faster over those kinds of roads. I personally think there's a mental disorder involved somewhere.
Nevertheless, true to Jack's advice, the word "Nikita" got us dropped off at, no surprise here, a place called Nikita's, which is a sort of compound with a bunch of small buildings with various rooms, a dining room, and a few saunas. Dinner was family style, and well, so were the bathrooms. There was actually a pretty cool vibe to the place, with travelers from all over staying there. We were told that the staff spoke English, which was half true: the only English we seemed to understand was a blank stare and the word "no." A good example is as follows:
Us: Where can we get water?
Staff person: (blank stare)
Us: Is there a place where we can get water?
Staff person: No.
Us: Uh, does anybody drink water around here?
Staff person: (blank stare)
Us: Thank you very much, we'll be down by the lake.
Even with the language barrier it didn't take long to figure our way around, and after a day or two it was actually fun to watch other newcomers fumble about with same problems. One day we figured out that the place had private saunas called banyas, which were much more fun than the community showers, and immediately signed up for one. These were old style Russian banyas which literally had a wood stove in the middle of the room and a tub of cold water. Since we had no idea how to get the steam going, etc. we had to figure it out as we went along, which is best done naked, of course. So after staring at the heating contraption for a while I simply poured a bunch of water on the wrong part of the stove which resulted in a massive cloud of searing steam to billow out of the thing directly towards my privates. Well, if any of you ever thought I couldn't move fast, may I direct your attention to this scenario in the future. Just so you know, we are still planning on having kids. The banya was actually the best part of every day once you figured out how to work the thing, and we even went so far to save the privates of a couple of other people we met before they went in for their first time.
The island was actually quite beautiful. The clarity of the lake gives it various shades of the most incredible blue throughout the day. The contrasts with the stark landscape and brilliant whitecaps make it something you can just sit back and watch for hours. We hiked around most of the time and generally wound down from the city life for a few days. The evening skies were even more stunning with the most beautiful twilight lasting lasting until almost 10pm. The night skies were just as intense with the lack of pollution and proximity to any city, we just sat back and watched the satellites criss-cross the sky.
One day we went on a van excursion to the far side of the island with a few others. This van, however, was one of those indestructible Russian 4-wheel drives that looks like a Volkswagen Bus on steroids. Since there are not a lot of roads on the island, at times our driver would just drive over fields in the general direction he wanted to go. No looks of terror this time, but we did hit our heads on the ceiling once or twice. Around the middle of the day while we were hiking down a ravine to the shore, our guide took some fresh fish, potatoes, carrots, and a few herbs, threw them in a pot of water over a campfire and when we got back we ate the best fish stew we've ever had.
We were wondering when it would happen, but a day or two before we left one of us got sick. Surprisingly it was Andrea, and fortunately it seemed to be a pretty classic case of eating something that just didn't agree with her. After a night of keeping a basket next to the bed, Andrea was ready to try the anti-nausea medicine my doctor had prescribed to us "not to be used lightly." One look at the description told us why. Possible side effects were a "mask-like expression", and "uncontrollable lip-smacking." Excuse me? Uncontrollable Lip-Smacking? I guess since the usual side effects of headache and nausea were the actual symptoms they had to come up with something else to scare the crap out of us. Since we had no idea when the next bus left should any of these so-called side effects appear, I recommended against it. But Andrea was truly miserable, so she chose to take the plunge and down a pill. I figured in a worst-case scenario if she did experience symptoms I could dress her up as a mime and we'd work our way back to Irkutsk. Luck was with us, however, and she was fast asleep with full use of her face in no time.
When it was time to leave, we weren't a bit surprised when they messed up and overbooked our minibus ride which necessitated us to take the big bus back to Irkutsk. I can't say we were too upset about it when we saw Mario Andretti gearing up to soil the pants of another 13 people as we headed towards the bus stop. The bus ride back was gloriously uneventful. It was big, slow and actually comfortable. When we got back to Irkutsk, we stopped back at the same place we had stayed at before and got a great night's sleep before leaving for Mongolia the next day.
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(6) (Sarah Allen)
We were picked up by our guide at 10 in the morning to make our way to the hotel in...
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Entry 8 of 39 
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