16 August 2014
Minibus from Olkhon
Island to Irkutsk
The Country Outside
the Window. Outside the colors change from the light green of pine forest
to the dun brown of steppe. Oh, here is a field of light purple wheat grass for
variety. I’m sitting across from Gracie and Patsy, Anita’s mother, also known
here abouts as Nana Patsy. We’re returning from a couple days on Olkhon Island,
a chip of land into the sapphire waters of Lake Baikal. Tonight we’ll begin a
three-day journey on the Transiberian, stepping down in Khabarovsk, two time
zones west of here. On the inked route of our journey, this is where the
northern trajectory turns due west.
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| Russia Far-East Log Cabin-Style |
From Mongolia we drove north to Ulan-Ude , passing through
Russian customs, complete with drug-sniffing dog and getting back onto pavement
to the great relief of all passengers. The next day, 12 August, was hands down
the most stressful of the trip so far. Arriving in a new country is never easy.
There is new money to get used to, new ways of doing business, new taxi rates,
train websites, etc. In this case, we had to get to Irkutsk on this day or we
would miss Patsy’s arrival by flight from Moscow. Little did I know the 11 am
from Ulan-Ude was departing at 11 am Moscow Time +5 hours – which meant
dragging Gracie to the train station just time to find no one on the tracks
which was all quite mysterious until eventually someone figured out I had no
idea about this Moscow-time convention. Surprise! We have an afternoon in
Ulan-Ude, which would have been fine, except our 7 pm arrival suddenly changed
to a midnight arrival. Add to this that our hotel was actually a private
apartment in some anonymous apartment block surrounded by construction. But the
icing on the cake was that Carrie was increasingly nauseous. Peeling out of our
compartment, she went first to one end of the train and then to the other only
to find both bathrooms locked. She was able to enlist a convenient trash
receptacle in which to be sick, a trash receptacle that wasn’t there when she
got off the train in Irkutsk at midnight to be sick again on the platform. The
two other kids were too grumpy about having been awoken with too little sleep
to offer much sympathy. Then the cab driver spotted us as marks. After finally
finding the door to our apartment, he held our luggage hostage until I overpaid
him about 8x the appropriate cab fare (about $66 for a $9 ride).
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| Cotton candy in front of Lenin's head. Ulan-Ude |
By 1 am, Liam was at the end of his rope, “Just pay the man,
Dad. This is ridiculous.” He was right; I had lost. That was little solace.
The dark events of the evening were overshadowed by the joy
of a 6 am knock on the door from Patsy, smiling and ready for come-what-may. I
had been worried after our experience that she wouldn’t be able to find the
place. I had been armed with a note that a helpful hotelier had written for me
in Ulan-Ude and we still had troubles. She was fresh off the boat. I was up
until 2 am trying to resolve the issue cross referencing plane schedules and
sun rises and so forth. But all that worry had been for naught. After
connecting with Anita and the kids in Bangkok, with Karen Schweickart and
Lauryn in Siem Reap, with Elizabeth McDonald and Skye in Beijing, here stood
the final link. Patsy will be finishing the journey with us.
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| Othodox church, Irkutsk. We were luck enough to catch a mass here before leaving and got incensed! |
Irkutsk Oblast. Irkutsk
is a provincial outpost of imperial Russia. It is filled with buildings that
have a distinctly eastern frontier architecture – log cabins with planked
wainscoting and elaborate gingerbread window trim. The style is absolutely
unique, completely unlike the Mongolian gers that were here before. It bears
more resemblance to the American west, or Northern Minnesota log cabins, than
to anything really Asian at all. And then of course there are these elaborate,
100% Russian, 
In terms of progress toward the tundra, Irkutsk is 52° N,
which is north of the U.S.-Canadian border. It is north of Calgary and just
about every other large Canadian city except Edmonton.
We were in Irkutsk to see Lake Baikal before experiencing
the epic train ride that is Transiberian. Lake Baikal has the distinction of
being the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. It contains roughly
20% of the world’s unfrozen surface fresh water. It’s a “rift lake” so its deep
– 1642 m at its deepest. Picture Lake Superior at the latitude of the Hudson
Bay, with crystal clear cold waters, a railroad that goes the whole way around,
and its own species of seals. (According to Wikipedia, it may also be the
world’s oldest lake. I don’t know who figured that out, but perhaps that’s what
it takes to get your own species of seal.) The water is so fresh the water
system for our town drew directly from the lake. That’s what we did as well.
Olkhon Island is connected to the mainland only by pair of
serviceable ferries that alternate every half-hour. Cars line up for hours, but
public buses, even if loaded with foreign tourists, get pride of place. The
pavement had ended some miles before the ferry terminal, so no one was
surprised that Olkhon Island itself was completely unpaved. In fact, there may
not even be a road grater. Vans like ours chose a track – a la Mongolia – and just chase it across the hills and dales that
make the island. The only choke point I saw was a tree draped with prayer flags
where all pass traffic stopped to pay homage with small coins or pieces of
cloth. It turns out you need more than water to change steppes into something
else. Olkhon is a sandy steppe desert surrounded by water.
Dusty Doings. Khuzhir
is the largest settlement on the island, and is where Olga’s Homestay is to be
found. Olga is the image of an efficient, middle-aged Russian woman running
what is anything but a homestay – much more akin to a boarding house, with
several plank-houses built with cantilevered porches. Our rooms were little
cubbies into which two beds had been crammed there being no space for anything
else. Like the rest of Olkhon, Khuzhir has not been discovered by concrete, so the
houses are largely wood and the roads and alleys are wide and sandy. All yards
are enclosed, so walking along is mostly looking at 2m high fences. Even the
dust is covered in dust.
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| Patsy relaxes in something between paradise and the post-apocalpytic wasteland of Khuzhir's rusty port. |
Khuzhir has four attractions. The first is a
first-class beach that stretches for kilometers along the Maloe Sea of Lake
Baikal. This was enough for the kids right there. Everything else paled in
comparison. The second attraction is a lovely crag or chalk that defines the
tip of the town. The third is a relatively new Orthodox church with onion domes
from central casting and a free-standing belfry out front. The church is poised
above the village, so you can see it from anywhere. Fourth, at least this week,
was a spirit tree clinging to the edge of a cliff. Someone, perhaps a local
Buryat, had hung a totem from a lower branch consisting of three twigs in a
triangle with fishing string webbed across the middle. I don’t know how may
spirits it caught, but it certainly held my attention as I admired it from the
edge of the cliff.
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| Our current configuration. We're delighted to have Patsy, Anita's mom, along for the ride! |
Walking along the beach Liam said this was his favorite part
of Russia because if he dropped a stone in the water he could see it falling
all the way to the bottom.
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| Glimpse of the rare Baikal seal photobombing |
Carrie and I reasoned that if we could but get mountain
bikes we could get a different perspective on the island, perhaps from the
central ridge, or even hike down to the opposite shore. Instead the vendor sent
us further along the road. Carrie was really upset by the 2nd hour
of this, and even worse by the 3rd hour, when all we had encountered
were a few additional beaches and kilometer after kilometer of sandy roads,
many of them requiring us to walk the bikes. It’s more fun when bonding
experiencing end with an amazing vista or a cool ride. This particular bonding
experience was far more work than either of us envisioned. Perhaps we should
have tried the central ridge anyway? To make up for lost time she recruited
Grace and Patsy to go back to the beach with her at 7:30 am this morning before
breakfast and the bus to make a big sand castle.
All in all, it was a chance to catch our breath before the
last legs of the Tip to Tundra Tour. Let’s hope we caught enough breath to make
this train ride!
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