In Ulan Ude we again took a hotel and parked Melville at a nearby paid parking lot of a different hotel just to be on the safe side, our hotel was at a major bus station, and when we arrived two men had been having a fistfight right in front of the entrance… Despite this slightly weirdo start to it, we liked being in Ulan Ude. The city is a nice place and has good vibe to it with lots of young people populating the streets and many internet cafes and western food oriented supermarkets. The city apparently sits right at the brink of local Buriat, Soviet and Mongol culture and looked very lively, we had our first glimpse of a statue displaying a horse and a rider (many more to come in Mongolia). We stayed again at our way back from Lake Baikal (even though only over night). We had dinner at a place called ‘Happy Land’ :o) The place was more like a canteen and situated close to the main plaza which was dominated by a huge Lenin-head (actually the largest one in the Russian federation (if not the whole wide world).
From UU we started towards Lake Baikal, we decided to go up the Eastern Shore because we did not want to drive up the Western part via Irkutsk which would have meant a few hundred k’s more. WE were also very keen on getting to Mongolia soon so we thought this might be a good compromise – and it was a very good decision. The East of the Lake is supposed to be far less developed than the West (for now – we passed many big construction sights of what looked like holiday mansions) and has a direct access to many beautiful pebble and sand beaches all along the shore. Getting there however was bit of a challenge :o)
First, as always it took us a looong time to get out of UU, but we managed and by pure miracle we ended up on the road we had chosen in the road atlas. The first surprise was when the road suddenly made a turn in a village and we stood in front of a huge river, without a bridge in sight but a pontoon tied up to some pillars, apparently there was a ferry service in operation.
The second surprise was when the car in front of us turned out to be from Michigan! This is how we met Kristin and Stani who were also waiting for the ferry and had just come from Mongolia, starting the last leg of their journey before shipping their car back to the US from Vladivostok. We started chatting about our travels and exchanged information about the routes each of us had ahead of us – it was so nice being able to talk to other people and having a conversation that went beyond “Hello, my name is…” and “Excuse me, where is…?”! Once we had passed the rive we decided to go up top Lake Baikal together. This turned out to be a really good idea and we spent a lovely couple of days together.
The two also stood very bravely beside us when we came across a serious case of ‘bad gas’ which befell us shortly before reaching the lake. We filled up Melville at a petrol station and after about 300m he just wouldn’t run anymore! It took the guys (Stani is a researcher at Michigan University working on combustion engines – imaging that coincidence!) only a short while to figure out what was wrong but when I discovered that they had just put up a sign ‘Out of order’ at the pump we had used minutes before things seem to fall into place. Hence they siphoned out 70l (!) of that not so fantastic bottom-of-the-barrel petrol and replaced it with higher grade petrol. Thanks to my pledge and Kristin’s persistence the people at the petrol station did not object at all. Stani pulled Melville back to the petrol station.
However all of that took 2-3 hours and we were very happy when Melville finally came to live again (when we had nearly lost hope). It was disconcerting to see the attendant at the petrol station put the petrol back in the big tank, but maybe Russian cars don’t mind…
For all this drama, we were rewarded with a beautiful camp-spot and a nice camp-fire at Lake Baikal which is truly magnificent!
Holger tried the flint and it worked – even though it took him a few tries but so we also had a camp fire which was great because it turned out to be chilli night.
Later that night (which was really cold), we also had some Russian visitors who lingered around our fire and we managed to have a somewhat limping conversation. Apparently we had the best fire :o) However the guys had already had some Vodka (in rather large quantities we presume) and stayed a bit longer than we had expected. One of them displayed some (Russian?) bravado and even jumped in the Lake which must have been icy-cold. They returned later that night trying to persuade us to come out by offering ‘Russian Vodka? Russian Vodka?’ but we were all already in bed and way too cold to climb out again…
Next day started with a pleasant surprise: one of the rare seals populating a nearby peninsula (called the ‘Holy Nose’) took a sunbath on a stretch of beach close to us and made us very happy. Nevertheless we drove up to the 'Holy Nose' despite the appalling piece of road we had to conquer to do so! Again we were rewarded with a nice sunset and Holger and I decided to take a dip, making the most of our stay at Baikal. Unsurprisingly, it was cold - really cold :o) The good thing was, afterwards, once we were warm we felt warm for a very long time! Next morning Stani went for a hike up the Holy Nose Peak and we started towards UU, to enter Mongolia the following day.
No comments:
Post a Comment