The title of this blog relates to a travel mishap made while going through Russia, which I recount here. Myself and my friend Alex had travelled from Moscow to Irkutsk, on our way to Mongolia. At Irkutsk we met an odd eccentric by the name of Karl Widerquist. At the beat up hotel over a typically unsatisfying dinner, he said he was going to a place called Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal, and wondered if we wanted to join him. Being tied to no set itinerary apart from a flight booked from Hong Kong in several weeks, we decided to join him.
We arrived at the bus station, which was run by an old Soviet soldier, or who at least gave an impression of running it, sitting behind his counter with his Army uniform on and a generic Communist flag draped across the wall behind him. His gesticulations to us were incomprehensible and probably influenced by prodiguous quantities of alcohol. Piling into a beat up bus that took us on a fairly uncomfortable 8 hour ride to the ferry stop. On the ferry we met a young Russian couple who were genuinely shocked that we were travelling on a totally ad hoc basis. Upon arrival at Olkhon Island - I'm not one for effusive and eloquent landscape descriptions - it was bleak. The one town was bleak - beat up wood/pre-fab constrcutions, dirt roads, rest of the island failry nondescript - some copses, mostly grassland. Lake Baikal was amazing, after so much time going through Siberia, a great block of pure blue streching all sides into the horizon.
We walked past a fight between drunks on our way to the lodging place (a proper fight, with the two guys slugging it out with each other, drunken pugilists with blood on their faces). Our lodgings were in fact in one of these basic houses, which was acually pretty nice.
The mishap proper began the next morning, where in our desire to have a look around we thought it an idea to venture to the northern tip of the island, have a bit of a walk around, and then come back.
In short, this is a to be continued post...but what's coming up: a) attempted robbery by our driver and his mates, b) running out of water in the middle of the biggest freshwater lake in the world c) stumbling across a deserted farm d) hitching a lift back with a Buryat who tried to fleece us, left us in his home village with three of his very large and very drunk friends e) escaping from that situation to spend an evening on the beach singing songs with Russian teenagers f) nearly missing the twice weekly bus off the island, and then finally escaping from Olkhon Island.