Sunset in Russia

Pick of the day: Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture, Nr Irkutsk

Back to nature in the Irkutsk region. This long drop featured a creaky wooden base which gave the impression it could give way at any moment, sending you plummeting into the clearly visible mound waiting underneath.

Style: Long drop

Atmosphere: Wooden

Extras: Only a minor divide and no doors means easy chats with your neighbour. Forced inventiveness required for wiping.

03/03/13 to 11/03/13: Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and the train to Mongolia

We are currently in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) which is proving the perfect place for a little R&R following Russia.

Krasnoyarsk marked the start of arriving in towns in the dark of morning, and following a little jiggery pokery with our hostel sending us to another (nicer) hostel we were set up ready to go by 10am. The town’s main draw for us was the Stolby nature reserve just south of the centre and famous for granite ‘Stolby’s’ which are in similar to Torrs at home, though a subtly different lithology. Backing onto this reserve was a ski resort we were itching to see if we could have a bash at.

The view out across the Stolby nature reserve

Once settled in we hopped on the local bus to the ski resort to take advantage of the chair lift to allow us access to the nearest stolby. Public transport in Russia is actually pretty good and relatively dirt cheap. For a flat rate 12Rubles (20pence) we got a half hour ride to the reserve. Despite being told it was “too dangerous” to access the stobly we thought we would go up anyway for a look. Other than having to walk down the ski slope for a short distance braving the variable ability of Russian skiers the route to the stolby was fine with a little scrambling. It was fantastic to be out of the city and look out across the forested hills of the Stolby nature reserve and we both felt almost reenergised. Too much soviet architecture can get you down it seems.

Talmack Stolby, psyched to be out of the cities!

That evening we dined at a restaurant full of the contradictions you see across Russia. It was American diner in style but with a Former Soviet Union theme, with dishes from Afghanistan to Siberia. Thank god for the picture menu though!

The next morning had us back to the ski hill and hiring kit. Unfortunately for some reason (being a Monday perhaps) only one of the lifts was open giving us a wide but quick blast back down. Still it was great to get a little skiing in this year, especially as it was in Siberia!

Playing with a GoPro during some Siberian skiing

Chilling with the local statue. Russians LOVE statues

Our hostel amazingly did a voucher for a free dinner for our stay which we put to good use and then scoped out a bakery type place we had seen called ‘Cinnabon’. This turned out to be an American chain that was krispy kreme in style but did warm cinnamon buns. Ben had some sort of spiritual/religious experience. He described the bun as ‘life changing’.

Vi unaware of the spiritual experience about to commence

Oven warm. Mouth watering all over again

The following day had us train bound from midday until Irkutsk the following morning.

Chilling in 2nd class, top tip... in winter you can often get these to yourselves at half the price of 1st class

We arrived in the early morning, hopped on the tram and found the hostel relatively easily for once and got a bit of a nap in our dorm before heading out for an explore. Our hostel actually had British and German people staying there who were the first non-Russian people we had spoken to since Moscow. Sounds terrible but it was such a relief to be able to have a normal chat and not have to worry about offending someone by saying what we thought of Russia (ie. Your country is bloody weird).

We spent our first day in Irkusk generally having a wander and getting our bearings, checking out the local market (puppies and kittens for sale alongside socks and sunflower seeds) and going to a museum which was set inside the old house of a member of the Decemberists uprising. This involved Russian army officers leading around 3000 soldiers in revolt against Tsar Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after his brother stepped down. The uprising was crushed and the leaders sent to exile and labour in Siberia where a fair few of their wives followed and made new lives for themselves in towns such as Irkutsk. The museum was pretty interesting in that it showed us what life was like in Siberia at the time for those who did and did not have money (this particular family lived in a rather plush Siberian mansion!).

Irkutsk lies about 75km north of Lake Baikal, the world deepest lake, and our target. Fortunately our hostel also had a branch at the lake side town of Listvyanka so the following day we hopped on a bus down there for 2 nights before our train from Irkutsk to Mongolia. Once again it was great to get out to a more rural version of Russia. Our hostel was billed as an Eco-hostel, think solar power, and solar showers, it comprised a complex of three great little wood cabins in the woods behind the town.

The Bailker Eco-hostel. Home for 2 nights, much relaxing.

We had a great couple of days down by the lake which is fully frozen leading the locals to drive all over it, often drunk it seems. The lake fills a 25 million year old rift system (land masses splitting apart)and so drops to 1000m within 100m of the shoreline. When you walk across the ice you get a distinct sense of vertigo as you look down into the lakes depths below.

On our first day we went dog sledding, expecting huskies and being sat in a sledge for 10km. Being Russia, our expectations were wrong, and the dogs seemed to be a random assortment of breeds who all seemed to clamour for the honour of pulling us round. It also turned out we would be driving our own sleds. Fortunately for us the dogs knew where they were going and we just had to steer the sled leaning left and right as we bounced along between the trees. It was great fun although surprisingly tiring (also, watching a dog try to simultaneously poo and run is massively entertaining).

Impossible to film and dog sled at the same time!

The following day we hired a couple of mountain bikes with studded tyres and made for the lake. It seemed relatively straight forward in principal and although the studs gave grip on the ice most of the time, when they slipped you were buggered as you instinctively put your foot down only to have it fly from under you on the icy surface. 

Vi, barely able to stand. Pushing off was hilarious

Frozen lake Baikal

After cycling down the lake for some time the weather closed in and we both started to get seriously cold and made a return to the market for a bowl of plov. This is a fried rice, carrot and beef dish which was just was the doctor ordered when our faces were so cold we couldn’t chew properly. The market proved a good place for a spot of souvenir shopping, with coming away with some sort of shamanic idol which in retrospect may actually be a fertility idol and a local delicacy of a smoked fish called Omul.

Omul. So smokey, great with beer

We returned to Irkutsk via the Taltsy museum of wooden architecture the next morning. This open air museum has collected various examples of wooden buildings from those produced by aboriginal Siberian peoples through to 19^th century farmsteads, including a Cossack fort. It is impressive to see the complexity and beauty which can be achieved with only timber as your raw material.

Wooden lace. Siberian classic

The fort. Seems a little prone to fire arrows

We spent a good few hours getting our lives in order at the Irkutsk hostel before heading for our 10pm train to Ulaanbaatar.

Our train only seemed to have a single carriage, the view at the Russian border town 

The following day was spent mostly at border controls, 8 hours in total, with us leaving Russia 5 hours prior to our visa expiring. Unfortunately the long wait at the border had allowed us to discover the penalty of 2 years prison time for overstaying the visa! As we chugged through no-man’s land the Mongolian steppe opened up and we spotted herdsmen on horseback and Gers for the first time. Up to this point we have travelled over 10,500km from home, not including side trips, and it certainly feels a long way from home, and already a stark contrast to the birch forest dominated landscape of Siberia.

The sunsets poetically on the Russian stage of the adventure