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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