Siberia

By Pete
04/06/2019
We left china on a Mongolian train, we left Mongolia on a Russian train- headed to Ulan Ude.
This leg of the journey was a ‘hard sleeper’ (basically 3rd class) I would like to say we took this to save money or for the experience but in reality it was because the soft sleepers had sold out! It was in fact very comfortable, 4 bunk cabin, with just the 2 of us.

As the train pulled out of the station, one of the well wishers saying good bye had her cup and spoon and blessed the train for a safe journey. A nice touch.

Leaving Ulanbaatar mid afternoon the Trans-Mongolian follows the Kharaa river, considered to be the most picturesque section of the whole route, The scenery was wonderful. The relatively tight river valley, hemmed by rolling hills, was more reminiscent of England than Mongolia and in stark contrast from the steppe we had just left. There were still Gers, stockman, yaks, cows, sheep, goats and horses yet in an altogether more picture book setting.

We crossed the boarder into Russia about midnight (lengthy but uneventful) and arrived in Ulan-Ude early the next morning. Our friend Karen (from Bangkok) met us on the platform and escorted to the apartment where we were staying. Karen had arrived a day earlier on the Trans Siberian from Vladivostok and would journey with us to Moscow.

Ulan-Ude is not a large town, touristically, so KC had already seen the sites so acted as a tour guide, retracing her steps and showing us the highlights including a very good latte.

What it lacks in attraction it makes up for in its Siberian charm, It is easily walkable and has yet to be gentrified and its timber houses, now a little dilapidated, keep the rough edges that give frontier towns hardiness. The river that winds along the cities northwest flank is basically wild, no promenades or million dollar mansions just the occasional fisherman with his banged up Lada parked on the dirt track near by.

In the evening we headed to one of Ulan-Ude’s top bars, a revolving one at that. We ordered cocktails and sat down..for all of 2 minutes until Bea and KC’s motion sickness drove us to the sanctuary of the verandah. The night before Karen had dined at the second best restaurant in the city and described it as lousy!! This night we tried the best- ‘Tengis’ who served a really nice tasting menu of Buryat traditional dishes yet refined and elegantly presented, yak tartar on rye toast and tarasum, meat khushuurs, lamb giblet soup, Baikal fish soaked in moonshine and yak cheese with royal jelly, forrest honey and homemade sour cream & baked yogurt ice cream.

The train to Irkutsk the next morning hugged the edge of Lake Baikal and again the views were magnificent, traveling through forests and hamlets. The lake edge on the right and snow capped mountains on the left.

We were picked up at Irkutsk by Valeri, the owner of the apartment where we were spending a couple of nights before heading to Olkhon Island in the middle of Lake Baikal.
I was keen to take the ferry to the island so after dropping the bags we headed to the tourist information.. unfortunately the ferries only run twice a week.. and wouldn’t start until end of June anyway, bugger we would have to go by road- it worked out just as cheap to get a cab for three as it was take the bus so we booked a car while we were there.

Bea and KC had read about ‘Rassolnik’ soviet era themed restaurant that sounded kitch but fun so, against my better judgement, that’s where we headed for dinner. The restaurant was in the ‘130th district’, a revitalised precinct that Vika, a friend of Kirsty’s friend (refer Botswana), had put us on to.

The restaurant turned out to be really quite good, cool, soviet era classics, beetroot and pickled herring salad, pork fat with pickles and mustard, pork minced rolled in cabbage, fishcakes with sour cream sauce and mash potato.

After a breakfast of home made kedgeree (my first attempt) spent the next morning meandering along the riverside promenade watched a businessman take a ten minute break for a spot of fishing, seriously- he came down in his suit and briefcase, flicked the line in for no more than 10 minutes then headed off again... cool! Before arriving at the train station to buy our onward rail tickets. Bea and KC went to the counter and after 20mins came back with the first leg!! We adjourned to Harat’s Irish Pub for lunch and to emotionally recharge before booking the rest. With our itinerary now written out and translated into Russian, and confirmed by the bar man, Bea and KC once again approached the ticket counter and managed to get the rest of the tickets (Note- I am writing this on the first leg and it is nice, we have now learnt to read the tickets and it appears we are in lower third class hoval for the remainder of the journey, a situation we hope to rectify tonight when we arrive in Novosibirsk)

We had discovered a wet market the day before (hence the kedgeree) so having finally got the tickets we headed there again via Karl Marx Street, a lovely pre-soviet era street that had only partially been gentrified. The plan was to use the apartment facilities to cook dinner so we picked up what we needed at the market and headed home to cook. I know a good tradesman never blames his tools but I’m not good and the oven temperatures were completely false. Anyway the slow roasted leg of mutton was ok, just!

After reheated (improved) Kedgeree for breakfast Igor, our cabby, picked us up for the 5 hour drive to Khuzhir, the main town on Olkhon Island.

Olkhon island was entirely what I wasn’t expecting! This is an island of Siberian Tundra wild and unkempt, the rolling landscape ends abruptly as headland cliffs plunge into the deepest blue waters of the lake or in sheltered sand beaches between them. There are no paved roads on the island, the main graded artery is flanked either side by lesser veins where locals have cut new tracks to avoid the bone jarring ruts of the main road.

Khuzhir is more a fishing settlement than a town, there is a main dirt expanse that acts as the primary thoroughfare for both vehicles and livestock off which tracks lead off to the unplanned residential areas. The tourist season doesn’t start till July (ie ferries) so the town felt as if it was waking from its winter hibernation. Huts were being repaired, coffee shops and cafes, still closed, were getting fresh paint and the hotels were adding a few extra rooms for the summer.

Luckily some cafes had opened early including Baykalochka run by the lovely Katia that we discovered after our first afternoons walk around the town and a visit to Sharmen Rock.
A friend that KC had met on her journey from Vladivostok was staying at a hostel in town so we caught up with her for dinner. Tracy is a recently retired New York Cop who, leaving hubby behind to work, was travelling on the longest train, in the biggest country to the greatest freshwater lake. She was down to earth and great fun.

The weather was so good the next morning we decided to go for a bit of a stroll. We arranged for a local guy, Sergei, to drop us at a settlement about 17k’s up the road, with the plan to spend the afternoon walking back along the coast. It was stunning, crumbling headlands and sandy beaches... with cows. Looking out from the island, over this vast lake, its hard to get your head around the fact that it is fresh water so when you see cows strolling along the beach, drinking the water, it does your head in a bit.

Lake Baikal may not be the biggest lake by area or the deepest but it is the biggest by volume and believed to hold 20% of the worlds fresh water.
By the time we walked through the last azalea filled pine glade and staggered up the hill into Baykalocha cafe we had covered 22kms. We were tired but fulfilled and Katia’s compote juice &, not so, homemade honey cake felt a well deserved treat.

Still exhilarated from the previous days hike we chose to do something similar the next day, this time, however, a tad less taxing. A simple 10km loop into the forested hill above the township. I wasn’t sure of the destination but I had seen what looked like a meadow on google maps so that’s where we headed, again it was a picturesque walk through fields of azaleas and pine forests. We were shocked, given the temperature and bright sunshine, that, at the top of the meadow, we found a stream still iced over from the winter, a lovely place for our picnic lunch.

The only way to see all the island is to take a tour and that’s what we did on our final day. A small group of us piled into a UAZ 452, (ref. Mongolia) my new favourite vehicle, and headed to the northern cape of the island. The weather had turned over night it was blowing a gale with intermittent rain showers, we were glad not to be hiking, but it felt appropriate as we visited the most windswept cape of this wild island.

For our last dinner on Olkhon Katia served me meat coutlets with rice and salad while the girls had fish!
Sergei drove us back to the ferry the next morning where Igor was waiting to return us to Irkutsk to catch the train to Novosibirsk.