Breakfast in the cafeteria on Olkhon Island started at 8 o’clock. So if we wanted to swim in Lake Baikal, which we did, we would have to get up at 7. Which we did.
Well, Liam, Andy and I did. Adam, whose idea I recall it being, was still in bed. Which was where we all secretly wanted to be. Down on the shoreline, near The Teeth, we quickly finagled ourselves out of clothes and into swimming shorts, and resolved that there would be no backing out of any kind.
Is the water freezing cold?
Yes.
Does it start to feel warmer after a minute?
No. Not at all.
Did we stay in the water longer than a minute?
No sir. No way.
Andy ducked his head under for a bit, I swam 5 metres back and 5 metres forth, and Liam went in as far as his waist.
And then we got straight back out, and dried off and got back into clothes as fast as possible.
Breakfast was totally rad.
Corn porridge, pancakes, fried eggs, lots of tea.
Then we went back to our room and Alice went back to sleep while I (anyone see a pattern) wrote some more travel journals and sorted through pictures. At 11.30 we figured that we ought to leave our room at some point, even though the sun was coming through the window and we were actually warm and not in the wind and not freezing our purple fingers off. So we went for a stroll back over to the rocks and just sat and had a look around. I took some video, Alice took some photos of me taking video, I took video of her taking photos, Adam took photos of birds, Andy sat against the tree taking it in.
After going back to the cafeteria for lunch Alice and I went for a walk around the township with Steve, which was actually a very short walk but still worth doing because we had a look at the old traditional houses and in a clothing stall came across an old woman with about 9 gold teeth. I pointed to my teeth and she smiled and I smiled and we had a short mime conversation about I don’t know what. It was fun.
Then began the table tennis. We had a good time stuffing around for an hour or so but then some Russkis turned up with former-National-Coach-guy and played some very professional looking table tennis, mostly involving absolutely thrashing the ball at each other.
At 6 o’clock we got changed to go have our 20-minute Banya (Russian steam bath), which I can safely say was one of the best things we did in Russia. It was much hotter in there than any other sauna I’ve been in, but the smell of the wood was fantastic. You get a big barrel of water and a ladle to wash the soap off with and then you sit down and relax, then you rinse yourself with a couple more ladles of water.
Then you’re sweating too much to put clothes on so you put on your sandals and swimming shorts instead and RUN down to the beach to dive into Lake Baikal one more time. And I can assure you that after 30 seconds in there, you’ve stopped sweating. When I came back out of the water and stood on the beach looking at the rock formation, that was a very special moment.
Up on the hill there was a van that looked like an ambulance, so I walked up to see if someone had fallen off the rocks or stayed in the water too long but it was just some rangers coming to have a look at the sunset, and from the top of the ridge I saw that there was a far bigger and wider beach on the other side, and that you could actually see past the edge of the island and out to the lake itself. Now we could see why Dunya (local guide) said that the Buryat name for Lake Baikal doesn’t actually mean lake but rather ‘Baikal Sea’.
And I didn’t have my camera on me at the time.
So I headed back for dinner and found Alice wondering if I had drowned or not, which she does sometimes. Dinner was again quite nice and warming, and then we stayed in the cafeteria and waited around for the promised Russian folk music concert to start. I wasn’t convinced it would be any good until they started; the group was two Russian women in traditional dress and an old guy with an accordion. And when I say with I mean with; he was loving every minute of playing that accordion and if it weren’t an abomination unto the lord he would have married it by now.
Before some of the songs he would introduce the song by saying ‘And now, pretend we are in Ukraine’, or ‘Pretend we are in Belorussia’, and so forth, according to where the tune was traditionally played. After a while the ladies needed to rest their voices and a guitar was bought out, on which the old man played, among others, ‘El Condor Pasa’, which he sang in English.
After the concert we did the usual, which was sitting around playing cards and making fun of each other, and Adam dobbed me in as a Known Guitar Player, so I just played some melody for a while until somebody asked me to sing, which I must never do.
Greg
