After a few relaxing days with Nataly and Fedor in Utulik, this morning we boarded a Russian train (train 006) for the final leg of our Trans-Siberian train adventure.
What a great find Nataly and Fedor's place in Utulik was; it's an absolute gem and I would heartily recommend it to absolutely anyone who is thinking about visiting Lake Baikal. Their house is made almost entirely of wood and set in the Siberian wilderness on the shores of Lake Baikal. Our room was fully equipped with a en-suite bathroom; in the main house there was also a self-catering kitchen, and a living room with an open fire; and then of course, there was the a Russian banya hut, which I am convinced Fedor built himself (perhaps with a little help from his friends); in fact I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't build the entire house himself! The whole place had so many incricate details that you wouldn't expect of a "standard build" - the leaf-shaped and swirly hinges, the hooks and door handles made from forest branches, the beautifully designed iron fire hearthes, the aluminium cooker-hood (!) - that was definitely a DIY job; we were in awe of Fedor's craftmanship. Over the weekend, him and his companions were making a lovely wrought iron sculpture, just outside the lean-to wooden extension (where him, Nataly and their family live), so perhaps it's his hobby?
Oh, but I must tell you about the bus saga!
On Sunday, we decided to take Nataly's advice and go to the local ski-resort, which operates its chair-lift to its panorama viewing-deck at a dizzy height of 900m as an out-of-season tourist attraction. (It was absolutely stunning, but Lake Baikal just looked like the sea because you can't see the end of it; it's insane.)
To get to the ski-resort, you take the 102 bus from pathetic bus stop just outside Nataly and Fedor's house, maybe 200m down the road, on the opposite side of the road. Despite getting up at a relatively decent time (08.34 local time, 03.34 Moscow-time), we were delayed by a variety of factors:
1) Being locked out of the kitchen. Another couple arrived very late on Saturday night so hadn't read the how-to-lock-the-door-properly-so-people-can-access-it-with-a-key-from-the-outside sign (to be fair, it was in Cyrillic and they got in at 1am local-time). Luckily we made so much noise trying to get the door open, Don came and opened the door for us.
2) We met and got chatting to Don and Amber, also newlyweds on their honeymoon! They got married August Bank Holiday weekend, but were taking much longer and going much farther on their honeymoon; I think their final destination was Malaysia? Or maybe Insonesia? They previously worked in Dubai, but were moving back to the UK, so they were calling this their "travel-moon" and going all out before buying a house, having babies and other general "settling down" stuff.
3) John. John probably hasn't taken a bus in awhile.. It was 09.30 and although we were ready to go, he lay down and was doing his physio, "We've got loads of time! We've got like 10 minutes!"
As a result of the above, we walked out of our room door at around 09.35 (the bus was scheduled for 09.40) and as we got to the main road, we saw the bus pulling into the bus stop, 200m away, on the other side of the road.
Fiddlesticks.
I'm pretty sure I've haven't run that fast for a while, plus having been on a train for the last week, the whole using-your-thigh-muscles concept was a bit alien. Anyway, we caught the bus. That time.
The 2nd bus we wanted to catch was again the 102, but from the ski-resort to Baikalsk (the neighbouring town). This time, we didn't make the same mistake. We were at the bus stop at least 20 minutes in advance (the buses only run once an hour, sometimes even less frequently, as we found out later...) and waited patiently for it, never taking our eyes off the road, so we didn't miss it.
It got to 13.46 (the bus was due at 13.40) and following our first bus experience, we thought it was odd that the bus was late. So we started looking at google maps, to try and figure out how far this town actually was and whether we could just walk it... I glanced up to see the 102 juddering towards us at an almighty speed and stuck out my right hand as quickly as I could... But it zoomed past us with the driver muttering, waving his arms around and shrugging his shoulders; we later learnt from Don and Amber (they were on the bus), that the driver hesitated for a split second, but decided we weren't worth stopping for, "The look on your little faces; it was just so sad!!" HTH.
As if that wasn't enough, then there was bus number 3. The same bus, bus 102, for the return journey from Baikalsk to Utulik. Now because we hadn't got the bus TO Baikalsk, we weren't entirely sure that a) we were in Baikalsk and b) where the bus had dropped people off - the bus stops have no information on them, they are literally a shed with a blue sign that has a picture of a bus on it; no numbers, no nothing. Nataly had drawn us a little schematic diagram of the Baikalsk town centre, showing us where the market was, where the restaurant was and where the bus stops were. Unfortunately, we didn't realise the drawing was of the town centre, we thought it was of the main road... This resulted in us waiting at the wrong bus stop for the 15.30 bus. We waited and waited and waited. No bus came. We also knew that the next bus was scheduled for 17.00, so at 15.57 we called it quits and made the decision to walk the 7km home.
At least we got full use of our legs during our day off the train? And we were able to take photos of some interesting Russian concrete signs; play spot-the-Lada, which in hindsight we weren't really playing properly because we didn't really keep score, the game basically just consisted of us saying, "Lada," "Lada," "Lada," every time we saw a Lada (but not the new Ladas coz they're not cool enough...) It also gave us lots of time to ponder some life questions, "So, why *did* we get married?" "Do you think so-and-so and so-and-so will work things out?" "How many languages are the children going to have to learn!?"
But my favourite topic of ponder was, "What the *hell* are we doing, walking along the side of a main road, in the middle of Siberia, on our bloody honeymoon!?" Followed by hysterical laughter and the usual response of, "I don't know," and then, "Cos we're stoopid."
We cross the Russian border tonight at 20.33 (17.33 Moscow-time) and enter Mongolia at 22.10 or maybe 23.10; the timings are a bit out and nothing really makes much sense... Welcome to Mongolia!?
We'll start with the Chinggis Khaan statue. Yes, the stainless steel statue of Chinggis Khan on horse-back, with his golden whip at one hip and his sword on his other; slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. It looms 50m overhead and (apparently) points east, towards his birthplace. The statue is said to be built where Chinggis found his golden whip - I'm not entirely sure of the significance of this whip, apart from the fact that it's probably SOLID GOLD. Or not.
