Day 2 Olkhon Island
Breakfast is at 9am but I was up by 7. I guess I didn't need anymore sleep. I did feel a lot better this morning.
Good enough that I went out for a walk before breakfast. I went down to the beach and stuck my hand in the lake. There's a ship graveyard down next to a jetty and there are a few ships with some pretty cool graffiti on them. Walked through town a bit then headed over to the Shaman rocks which are a famous landmark in these parts. Blessed with good weather again and they look pretty awesome against the blue of the lake.
I completely forget what breakfast was but it was completely edible and very filling again.
Enrique is joining me on the tour today which is good. Always nice to have someone to talk to. Our driver for the day arrived a little after 9. Misha is driving one of those little grey Russian vans (hooray!) and looks like either he or his ancestors are from Mongolia. We go to pick up a few more people from other hotels then head off for the day.
It seems to be pretty disorganised. The first place we rock up to there are far more drivers than people coming out to get in cars. Misha runs in and tries to get his turf sorted I guess and he comes back with 4 people then we take off to another hotel to pick up our last person.
There are 7 of us total. Me, Enrique, 4 Chinese people and a South Korean lady.
The van isn't uncomfortable but it would have been better with 2 less people. There are no seatbelts and no hand holds in the van and it's a bumpy old ride.
The rest of the day basically involves us getting in the van then being driven to a viewpoint of the lake where we get out and walk around for 15 minutes then go to the next one. It's a beautiful day and there are some spectacular views of the lake and the surrounding snow capped mountains.
Around 1pm we stop for lunch and Misha cooks a fish soup which was OK.
A couple more stops then we start to head back.
Apparently one of the local superstitions is that if you drink the lake water you'll become revitalised and your body will be 5 years younger. Total BS of course but I had some anyway just in case. One of the rock formations also looks like a woman giving birth so I'm sure there is some sort of birth of a people or the lake legend associated with this.
Ran into a couple of people from the minibus yesterday on the tour today so clearly everyone does the same tourist route.
On the way back a few of the drivers pull over and have a bit of a stop work meeting. I find out from one of the people in one of the other cars that there are some cops checking licenses or something on the route back so I guess the drivers are trying to wait them out. I guess this means they are either driving unlicensed or don't have the relevant tourism licenses.
Eventually we continue on and we do get pulled over by the cops. Misha is taken into the cop car to have a chat and comes back a few minutes later and continues on his merry way. It's unclear exactly what's happening but when we got back Misha wouldn't take any money for the tour so I assume he got in trouble for driving tourists around without the appropriate license and he wasn't allowed to take any money.
I keep expecting someone to ask for it but nobody has yet so I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.
It was a long day riding in the back of the van. 9 til 6. We probably only covered 70km all day but the roads were pretty terrible and it was slow and bumpy going. Misha did a really good job.
Dinner tonight was a meat rissole of some kind with potato and some other stuff I forget. I eat with the French couple again and a guy from Slovakia. We talk for a while then I head off to sleep early again to try and kick this cold in the head.
No comments:
Post a Comment