Sunday, August 5, 2012

From Novosibirsk to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal



Somehow I can't quite believe it myself: I made it to Irkutsk. I knew it would not be an easy drive but then there were parts in this where I really feared that my car would be ripped apart. But nothing like that, only the motorcycle rack that also holds my bicycle broke again. Admittedly it wasn't built to hold another bicycle (even if it only about 12kgs) but under these road conditions... well, after about 1900 kms it broke again and the rack including bicycle scraped the road but without major damage as I had noticed and stopped immediately. Thanks to the fact that I had discovered some large plastic quick fix straps in Novosibirsk and Andrei presented some to me I was able to quickly tie the rack back and continue to Irkutsk and be there in time to apply for my Mongolia visa...

This visa was the reason for the rather stressy drive as I had to be at the consulate by Friday 1300 (and I 'lost' another hour due to the next time zone), but one thing after the other:

I drove via Kemerovo where I made a quick tea and photo stop at the local branch with Anton Aksenov, unfortunately much too short but I had to get on to Krasnoyarsk where Alexey Melentyev received me at about 2200 and showed me where I could very comfortably park and sleep (like in Novosibirsk, I could even plug into the net). I at least could invite him for a beer at 'my premises'.
The next morning we had a breakfast together and a short tour through the branch after which I headed on. Again I would have liked to stay but the visa...

And now came the worst part of the road. From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk it is a little more than 1000 km. I guess about 2-300km are European standard, about 50 km aren't even paved and a large part is like a washboard which means that maximum 20 km/h are possible. The rest is paved and largely even without potholes but with waves in the road that get my vehicle into swings that are terrible for the shock absorbers and obviously for my bicycle rack... I drove till it got dark, stopped at a truck stop and continued at dawn. I was relieved when I finally reached Irkutsk, found the bank and was greeted by Nikolai Dolgushev who is the local branch manager only 30 years old. We immediately went to the Mongolian consulate and thank God everything had been sent from Ulaanbataar and tomorrow afternoon I can pick it up.

He then took me to the Decembrists museum which was interesting inasmuch as I had met some decendants of the Trubetskoy family just recently in St. Peterburg. The Decembrists in 1825 started a revolt against the tsar, and it is considered a precursor to what happened in 1917. For details please refer to:   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_revolt

After a little more sightseeing Nicolai took me back to the hotel as I was quite tired by then after having gotten up at 430 and driven about 400 kms that day. On Saturday morning I quickly repaired my rack (which from now on shouldn't give me any more problems) and Nicolai picked me up for an excursion to Lake Baikal. It is about 70 kms from Irkutsk and the largest freshwater water mass in the world due to its maximum depth of 1642 m. Also here please refer to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal

for the interesting details. Unfortunately it rained a little and so the visibility wasn't great. Nevertheless we took an old Doppelmayr chair lift up the mountain and down again. After a very nice lunch at one of the villages that is already very much geared to tourism (as for that matter is Irkutsk) we saw a show of seals which was quite impressive. I didn't know that at lake Baikal there are about 60000 seals. The evening I spent at the hotel relaxing as I still was tired from the drive. Also today I took it easy, did some small repairs and improvements at 'Datcha' and gave her a thorough clean inside, outside is no point... Also the weather only improved in the afternoon and I took my bicycle for a photo tour. The city unlike many other cities I passed has preserved a lot of its character and while there still are many buildings in a terrible state the efforts to preserve some of the old architecture are visible throughout the city.

So depending on the weather I'll do some more sightseeing or spend the morning working on my pictures...  If I'm lucky, my next blog might reach you from China...

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