Lake Baikal, not in a nutshell (Vodkatrain part III.b)

It's been a while now since my last update. Many things have happened, but most importantly; I'm back home! If you'll remember (or indeed, just read the previous update) last time I put something on here I was still in Irkutsk, ready to hop on the train that would depart for Moscow. Since it has been 2 weeks ago all of this occured I'll try to do my best to give a complete as possible story. Basically I still have to report on the whole Russia part since the last update was just a short one... so anyway, here we go...

When we departed from Ulaanbatar we were already told the bordercrossing could take as long as 12 hours. Luckily, it didn't take that long for us, since we could continue our journey already after 11.5 hours! This basically tells the whole story about that period of time since all we could do was just hang around and wait for stuff to happen, which it obviously didn't. This part of the journey would take us a similar amount of time as from Beijing to Ulaanbatar. The main difference was that instead of two days like that one, this was two nights. The whole waiting part was during daytime so as soon as we got moving again nightfall was kicking in soon enough. In the train we met our first Russians, a father and son. They were travelling with various bottles of vodka that without any doubt took us as a complete surprise. It turned out to be a fun evening after all.

The next day we arrived in Irkusk and were greeted by our honcho. We were loaded into a bus and taken straight to lake Baikal. From what I've seen Irkutsk seems a nice enough town but we didn't visit it much in the end. The trip to baikal didn't take long and we arrived after about one and a half hours. The weather was really shitty, very clouded which gave everything a bit of a depressing feel to it. I'm sure the baikal area looks great when the sun shines, but it wasn't that obvious with the weather we had. We were brought to our accommodation which was actually really nice. It was a big wooden building with several rooms, just a 5 minute walk into town from lake baikal itself. After checking in and arranging which room goes to who, we went for a walk. The honcho wanted to show us the lake and took us uphill where we had to take a chairlift to go up higher. This chairlift was probably the slowest chairlift I've ever seen or been on in my life. It took us seriously 15 minutes for about 100 meters or so. Anyway when we came up the hill it was very foggy. Hence, we couldn't see much. We kept walking again and came to a spot which is supposed to be an amazing lookout place over the lake. Unfortunately we didn't see anything because of the weather, so this plan didn't work as well as our honcho wanted it to work. Not much we could do but head back for the amazing chairlift and head down again. Coming back down we just walked down passed the lake again and saw the same weird guy we saw on previously. I forgot to mention the first time, but we saw a guy that could seriously compete with Chuck Norris and probably win. This guy was pure evil disguised as a pure evil russian. You had to be there... Anyway, upon reaching the village again we saw some boats no doing much, so we decided we wanted to go on a boat trip. After some negociation (which didn't work well for us at all) we managed to get on a boat for an hour. The great plan was to eventually jump off, adventurous rascals as we were. The boatsmen first didn't let us because the water is supposed to be freezing cold, but after some persuation we could. And we did. And yes, the water was indeed freezing cold. Nevermind that, at least I can say I swam in the worlds deepest lake and on top of that we all had a blast.
That evening we didn't really do much. We had dinner at the accommodation since it started raining severly when we wanted to depart for a restaurant. That evening we just stayed inside. John, Yoko, Tash and me played some cards, and Tash did the occasional dancing now and then.
The next day we set off for a walk first because some of the pansies didn't go on the boat and wanted to swim off the shore. Before that we actually went to a local market where we bought some stuff and John showed off a bit by demonstrating his excellent bargaining skills. It went something like this: John wanted to buy an extremely cool matruska doll of former Russian presidents. It had Putin painted on the front. So he after hearing prices of similar kind of those things he decided to offer the lady selling it 600 roubles to buy it. She stared at him for a bit before answering "no, 550".
We went back to the accommodation and hung out for a bit before Steve and me decided to take a small hike up a hill to a observatory we've seen from the boat the previous day. After about an hour or so we arrived there and saw there was a fence surrounding it. Behind a the fence was a the most vicious dog we had ever seen and it was ready to attack. However, it seemed it was attached to a line that was attached to a fence so we considered to walk around the complex and see if there was an easy to access it. We found a gate which so poor constructed we could both perfectly fit through it (keep this in mind, this bit is essential before reading the next part). Everthing seems fine at first; no evil Russian guards who wanted to make us political prisoners what so ever. So I started to pose in front of the observatory to take a picture and stuff. Suddenly we heard the noise of a chain and barking. We looked at the right side of the building and saw a dog (whether it was the same one as before or not) approaching us with great speed and before knowing it we were running as fast as we could back to the fence, naturally assuming that behind it we would be perfectly safe. Of course, if could get through it the dog wouldn't have a chance reaching us any more (right!). To make matters worse, I got stuck in the fence with my body (fat bastard) and the gate just swung upon. It was never locked! The dog was luckily attached to a chain (it probably was the same dog as before) and we couldn't stop laughing. We went back inside to actaully take the pictures and look inside some windows. Steve then spotted some Russian soldiers coming out of the building and yes we run for it again. Although I wanted to experience Russia to the fullest, spending some nights in Russian prison didn't really appeal to me that much so we kept running for a while.
Afterwards we walked around for a bit before heading for a restaurant back in town. The rest of the group went for a sauna while we were doing our running excersice so we met them afterwards in the restaurant. The evening we didn't really do much. It was quite late already before we came back at the accommodation. Dave and I went to do a bit of nigh photography and some beers, but not much interesting happened.

The next day was moving day and in the morning we had to pack our stuff before heading back to Irkutsk where the train to Moscow would depart at around 4 pm. We departed from Baikal at around 12-ish and had lunch in Irkutsk. We went to an internet cafe there, which was the place I had my last update before arriving home. The train left for Moscow as predicted around 4 pm. The traintrip would take a good 78 hours which immediately marks the longest consecutive time I've been on a train. The trip was doable since we went drunk the first night and just hung around the other two (!) nights.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. We arrived in Moscow on saturday the 11th which marked my return to Europe after almost 7 months of absense. I will discuss the Moscow and St. Petersburg the next time since a lot happened as well...

thank you, bye bye!

Lake Baikal in a nutshell (Vodkatrain part III.a)

Since I haven't got much time to properly update my website, I'm going to write a small story about what happened since last update. First thing, we are in mother Russia! After a 2 night traintrip we arrived in Irkutsk from Ulaanbatar. The bordercrossing took an amazing 11.5 hours but eventually we got through. After arrival we were awaited by our honcho that brought us to the bus that took us to Lake Baikal. We stayed in a guesthouse. The first day we walked around first and went on a boat on the lake. There we jumped in the lake which was freezing cold. It was really good. After that we had dinner and went back. The next day we went for a walk again and some people went swimming again. that evening me and Steve went to find an observatory point up the hill, which eventually we did find. We climbed through the fence and wanted to make pictures when a dog came running towards us. Scared as we were we run for it, but luckily the dog was chained to a fence. This could have been quite nasty, but afterwards we couldn't stop laughing. After that we had dinner again and me and Dave did some nightphotography. The next day we took the bus at 11.30 back to Irkutsk where we are now waiting for the train that will bring us to Moscow. This will take us 3 days, since it is now wednesday afternoon and we will arrive on saturday afternoon. Big trip!

Next time I will try to go more into details, but now we have to go, so I can't

thank you, bye bye!

Ulaanbatar - Ger Camp - Ulaanbatar (Vodkatrain part II)

It's the 4th of august now and I am posting from a post office/internet cafe in Ulaanbatar. We just arrived back from the ger camp we spend 2.5 days at. In my last post I was a bit short about the traintrip we had from Beijing to Ulaanbatar and I forgot to mention a bit which was heaps of fun. The thing is that the railway in China is different from the one in Mongolia, and at the border crossing we had to change the wheels of all carriages before we could enter Mongolia. Once our passports were taken away by border attendees we had to wait before they would return. The compartments were opened and we were free to roam the platform and shop. We went to the shop to get some snacks and stuff and just when we wanted to go back on the the train it took off to go and change the wheels. John, Jamie and me were just too late while the others were just in time. Result was that we had to wait on the platform for about two hours untill it would return. Very boring indeed, so we decided just to go walk towards the hanger where the train was at and try to hop on it again or at least see how they change the wheels. Although we were told not to go off the platform we started walking towards it and just before we reached the hanger we saw the train move again a bit towards the platform. Thinking we were in deep we just stood there in doubt untill we saw that most carriages were lifted in the air and that the train couldn't return yet. A bit nervous we entered the hanger were we saw the others in our carriage just looking outside the windows. We thought the Chinese would be pissed off when they would see us entering the hanger, but on the contrary, they basically ignored us and when it became clear to them that we actually belonged in the carriage they even opened it for us so that we could hop on. Quite something that could have gone wrong but turned out to be a lot of fun. By the way, it's quite amazing that the wheels have to be changed anyway, I've seen anything like that. Thankfully the tracks between Mongolia and Russia are the same!

Back to more recent events then. The rest of the day after arrival we spent in UB. The city isn't much special, quite ugly actually, but we had time to go on the net, refresh and just hang out a bit. The next day we took off early to first go to a local monastry and afterwards to the Ger camp. Around 1 pm we arrived in the Ger Camp and immediately had lunch. The area where the camp is located in is amazing and nothing like UB. On the way we saw heaps of cows, horses (of course) and the occasional yak. The gers itself were much like the Yurz we slept earlier in at the Karakul lake near Kashgar although instead on sleeping on the group we had beds this time and a stove in the middle where we could make a fire to stay warm. Because there was no sun the first day it was quite chilly and we lit the fire right away. We soon found out that it's either cold or really hot because the fire was clearly to much for the small ger. Anyway it was nice anyway, it felt like going back in time when providing yourself with a good fire to keep warm. That day we didn't do too much, just hung around a bit, went to a local family to drink fermented horse milk (3% alcohol) which tasted horrible, in my opinion. That night, after dinner we decided to make a big camp fire up on the hill near our gers and went into the woods to collect some wood to get the fire started. At one point we managed to have a big one and enjoyed it untill Sana (our Honcho) received a phone call that he had to put it off. We decided to just let it run out and leave but 10 minutes later a car approached and the site manager insisted that we had to put it off and warned Sana that he would report this. While this was totally unfair, since it was our idea to do it, we saw the guy was unreasonable and there was not much we could but putting the fire off, which we then did. A bit dissapointed we left the fire and returned to our ger. We had some local vodka and went to sleep.
The next day we woke up early to have breakfast. The idea was to go horse riding afterwards, since we reserved 10 horses. However, most of the horses been given out to a group of Japanese and therefore we had to wait untill 11 am before they gathered enough horses to go. The horse trip was (for me at least) absolutely amazing, and one of the highlights of the whole trip. They were asking people who could ride horse because there were a couple of rough ones and more particular; they were supposed to be fast! So I said that I could and I was given the best horse of the group, although I've driven a horse only once before. Anyway, the first half half hour I was led anyway untill I asked if I could off by myself. I could, and I could say the horse was just amazing. It wasn't the biggest one but it was responding amazingly well. And it was fast! As soon as I tried to get it gallop it did it immediately. I was going real fast for a moment but got it to stop pretty quickly because Steve's horse was following it, tripped and fell. Luckily Steve and the horse were okay, but the horse caretakers weren't too happy. The rest of the trip I was keeping it tamed, although sometimes that was really hard because it just wanted to go and run. When were heading back to camp two hours later there was a long stretch of land and my horse was almost impossible to keep calm anymore. I then asked one of the caretakers if I was allowed to go nuts the last couple of hundred meters and they allowed me. I let go of the rope and horse just took off real fast. This was absolutely amazing and by encouraging it the horse just went faster and faster untill we had to stop when we reached the camp. I was completely psyched and didn't want to stop anymore. Horses rule! I asked if I could take the horse for a ride that evening by myself and Sana said I could. We then had lunch and proceeding by chilling out for a few hours. Around 6 Tash, Dave and me headed over to the horse camp and found that the horses were taken by the damn Japanese again and we had to wait untill they returned. When we gotten three horses afterwards they were all very tired and the trip was nowhere near as fun as the one in the morning. A bit dissapointed we returned after half an hour. I guess you can't have it all... We had dinner afterwards and spend the night just hanging around a bit.
The next morning we wanted to get up around 5 am to see the sun rising. We did get up at that time, but were to sleep to see it all trough and went back to sleep. Later that morning we had breakfast at 9 before getting in the bus that brought us back to UB at 10. The trip took about an hour and we went back to the hotel we were before to leave our bags and charge some electronic devices. After that we headed straight to an internet cafe where I am now...

However, during all this, Jamie received a call from home that her grandmother passed away. She gotten messages from her parents before that her grandma was not doing well. Although she saw it coming it's still a mayor setback, especially since she can't be at the funeral. She will continue at the journey and it is to us to cheer her up. Anyway, it's a setback and I wish Jamie the best for the rest of the trip...

thank you, bye bye!

Vodkatrain first Stretch - Beijing to Ulaanbatar (Vodkatrain part I)

The day after the last post on my website the vodkatrain program finally started. At 5 pm on July the 28th we would meet our honcho and our fellow travelmates. Before that me and Jamie went to see the forbidden city and square of heavenly peace. Originally we wanted to go see Mao's body as well but when we arrived there the mausoleum was closed for public due to restauration. bummer. Instead we went to the Congress building of the Chinese government, not suprisingly called 'the great hall of the people'. Lonely Planet warned it would be rather boring, but stubborn as we are we decided to go for it anyway... and dull it was... After that we went to the forbidden city which was loaded with tourists, mainly chinese tourgroups, but I enjoyed it anyway. Although Beijing doesn't strike me as the greatest city on earth, this bit is definately worth a visit. Like I said we met our group that day at five. The group consists of 4 Aussies, 3 Brittish, 1 Swiss and two Dutch (guess who, us!). That night we went out for a communial dinner with our honcho called mark. Mark is a story on it self, actually, since only after three days nobody really trusted him anymore. It sort of started at dinner, where we all were starting to know each other and me and Jamie told that we booked tickets for an acrobat and kungfu show for the following night. Mark then asked us where we booked it and started moaning about how bad it was and how we got ripped off. Ok, fine, matter a fact, I would know a bad acrobat or kungfu show if I saw one, and I was sure we paid a reasonable price for it, because in the end the acrobat show that mark suggested was even more pricy. Nobody was really impressed with his behaviour towards us but we dropped the matter and just went on with our dinner. We ate Peking Duck which is food everyone should have eaten once visited Beijing. It's good but a bit fatty. That evening we didn't do much, just hung out a bit and went off to sleep.

The next day Jamie and I visited the summer palace with Steve and Tasha, two of our travel mates. We set off around nine and after a half hour taxi drive we reached our goal. Again; completely packed with tourists. I've showed my dislike about touristy place before on this website I guess and ofcourse this was a setback but the summer palace is none the less well worth visiting. It's one of those places where you understand why it's so packed, much as like the forbidden city. I probably liked the summer palace even better. After that we took the cab back, first to a camera store where Jamie and I dropped off our cameras to get them fixed after our little desert expedition. We handed them in the previous night and thankfully they were fully operational again. After that we headed back to the hotel where we ate pizza at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards we met up with the others. We wanted to go to a local market but at the end Jamie and I ended up in a shopping area due to lack of time. I bought a new phone (my old one didn't survive my brave effort of teaching it how to swim back in Hong Kong) and did some souvenir shopping and headed for the theatre where our shows but be. Not really expecting something great, we sat down at 5.30 for the first our of two shows; the acrobat one ...and I can say it was really something that was better than my expectations. I was sort of expecting something sickish, you know crazy stunts where people do crazy stuff with there bodies, but it was really something classy and impressive. The show lasted for an hour and we had a one hour brake before the kungfu show would start. As I expected this show was even better, with a story about a guy (called Kong Kong) who became obsessed with kungfu and had to conquer difficulties to become a true master... really Chinese I suppose. The whole bit was really enjoyable to watch and I wasn't bored one moment. Mark could say whatever he wants, but that was definately worth the money. We were supposed to meet back at the hotel at 9.30 that evening but due to the very anoying subway system of Beijing we were about half an hour late and heard from the guys that Mark actually couldn't get tickets for the so called better acrobat show and they had to settle with a crappy one. On top of that he didn't manage to book as a minivan to the great wall as he promised because of bad weather forecast. We none the less wanted to do it and ended up booking one through the hotel which was more expensive. Nobody of the group was very fond of him anymore after that...

The next day we got up at 6 am to get to the great wall. We didn't go to the part next to Beijing that was completely restaured. Instead we went to a bit which was a four hour drive out of Beijing and wasn't restaured, only the first bit. I would be a 10 k walk on the wall, and I can tell it was much harder than probably any of us thought. Since Beijing is probably the most poluted city in the world (in the last 3 weeks, the city had 2 hours of sunshine in total according to locals) this part was still very misty and damp, and it was hard to walk in these humid conditions. Soon everybody was sweating like mad, also because the wall is not built on flat ground, but on endless amount of hills; very steep climbs were followed by very steep descents. I was great though, the view was more than once spectacular and it we didn't have rain at all. It started raining after we had lunch (which was included) and set off for Beijing again that evening around 5.30 pm. Arriving back at Beijing at around 8.30 that evening we were all quite hungry and went for pizza again. After that we didn't do much more, just played a bit of cards... call it preparation for the upcoming traintrip to Ulaanbatar.

The next day a van was waiting to bring us to the train station. We had to be there at 6.20 am! The train departed at 7.45 am and took a mere 31 hours to reach Ulaanbatar where I am posting from now. The traintrip was rather smooth and time flew. The dorms are comfy, but only slighty better than the hard sleeper we are 'used to'. We basically were just killing time with talking about previous trips, playing cards, reading and listening to music (since John brought portable speakers, mine died ages ago). Ulaanbatar is an ugly city, but people are nice and know English pretty well. Tomorrow we're gonna set off for a Ger camp on the countryside where we will spend 2 nights. Then we will go off to Russia, to lake Baikal. Right now I'm off for dinner.

thank you, bye bye!