Olkhon Island

Adam apparently did some research in what there was to do in Irkutsk, and it turned out the thing to do was leave Irkutsk and go to an island in the middle of Lake Baikal. I didn't really know any better, but went along with it.

After a couple of nights in mostly vacant new hostel in a mostly sketchy neighborhood in a mostly under-construction building, we got picked up in a minibus for the 6-hour ride to Olkhon Island. We picked up a few other passengers - a doughy Asian matriach, a young couple of exceptional ugliness, and a couple of otherwise unremarkable passengers.

We left the grimy urban sprawl of Irkutsk and drove at very high speeds north. We had lunch at a yurt-esque lunchhouse before we ran out of pavement and bumped and bounced like crazy to the ferry to Olkhon.

Once over the frigid water, it was more bumping for another half-hour until we got to Khuzir, the largest settlement on the island, and a place reminiscent of what I imagine a Dark Ages hamlet to look like.

It was all roughly-hewn wood shacks and stockade fences, with dirt roads under the jurisdiction of packs of ragged dogs. Smoke rose from chimneys to add a nice touch to the town. The island had been on the power grid only since 2005. The one place to use the Internet on the island was in a tent. It was like a massive log cabin summer camp.

We stayed at Nikita's Homestead at the end of town closest to the Shaman Rocks. The compound had an even more distinct summer camp feel. Three hot meals a day were included in the price, and we showed up at the canteen regularly to get served up delicous hearty meals.

The rooms were in rustic buildings placed here and there within the Homestead's walls. We had a three-bed room to ourselves. Two massive ceiling beams of solid wood ran along our ceiling and there was a single outlet in our room which we plugged the heater into. In the bathroom stalls there were two plugs each. Didn't make sense, but it must've had something to do with the eco-friendly nature of the place. All wastewater was reclaimed, toilets didn't flush, and every building was highly insulated.

Nikita turned out to be a former Russian ping-pong champion. Adam and I saw him playing with his little son, maybe 8 or 9 years old. His son was wailing the ball like a pro and Nikita simply stood around casually and returned everything. His son was alternating sessions with another young girl who was even better, yet still failed to make Nikita try, or even move, to make a return.

We spent one day on a minibus excursion to the northern cape of the island, stopping along the way for picturesque cliff and seaside photos. We met a French-Canadian couple who turned out to be really nice, despite Francois' affinity for the Montreal Canadiens.

That evening some Austrians and a pair of French-Canadian guys built a fire in the fire pit after an accordianist played music while two Russian women sang folk songs. James, the young Kiwi, drank a shit-load of vodka and entirely disproved his vigorous claim that, "Students know how to drink!" by nearly falling into the fire and stepping on a sleeping dog on the way out. He'll learn, he is a student after all.

The next day Adam and I rented mountain bikes for a 16 kilometer ride to the only lake on the island. Wrap your head around that: a lake on an island in a lake; god, that's so metaphysical.

Adam almost made it to the lake but was forced to backtrack when he realized he lost his point-and-shoot camera. At one point on the ride there, the track we were following headed downhill for a good distance after we had just spent a good amount of effort ascending. Adam decided to go off-road and blaze his own train in an attempt to maintain elevation to get to the cross-trail we would have to wind up climbing anway. I said fuck it and decided to stay on the trail and cruise down the hill.

It turns out that humans can generally be trusted to build roads where it makes sense to build roads. Adam had to go up and down hills that the track I rode on passed in front of. And he lost his camera somewhere along the way when he failed to close his bag the whole way. Hard luck.

I went on to the lake alone while he retraced his tracks in a futile attempt to hunt it down. I wasn't sure I had made it to the right lake when I got there because it was hardly more than a mud-ringed puddle with a bunch of cows milling about.

Anyway, it made for a great place for a picnic of the food the canteen had packed for us, and I relaxed after all the riding, the first exercise I've really done for maybe two months, thanks partly to the surgery I had in Korea.

Making my way along an alternate route back, I finally came to the ridge from which it was all down hill. I lowered my bike seat and cruised down for maybe 20 minutes straight, first through the woods along a rugged trail, and then out into the open and sunlight as the trees gave way to rolling hills. After a short traverse with patches of Lake Baikal visible, I crested the last hill and had an open downhill shot to the coast. Horses grazed freely to my right, and ahead the horizon was dominated by the glittering deep blue lake with white mountains on the far shore. To the north was Khuzir, with the Shaman Rocks clearly visible 4 or 5 kilometers off.

It was a truly breathtaking ride. I burned down the hill towards the lake, nearly skidding out and going over my handle bars here and there, and chapping the shit out of my nose and lips, but it was an absolutely unforgettable ride down, and made the trip to the underwhelming lake more than worth it. I felt that if I returned home to the States the next day I could do so fully satisfied.

Olkhon Island is worth a trip to Siberia. It's quiet, peaceful, and in the middle of some amazing nature. I guess it gets pretty hectic in the high season of the summer, but we had just missed it. Nikita's was a great place to stay despite the bistro running out of beer. The food was great and the banya's were invigorating after a long day of hiking or riding or whatever. The air was clean and fresh, the water of the world's deepest lake clear and clean, but way too cold to swim in in early October.

I wished we were staying longer, but we got back on a minibus to Irkutsk with James to find the same hideously ugly couple were accompanying us back to Irkutsk. At least they had each other I guess.