Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal, Russia – 09/18 The Guesthouse

(Michelle) So, I described the dining situation on the first night, and now I will tell you a bit more about the place we stayed at on Olkhon island. We had a nice big room with a picnic table, two lazy boy chairs and a bed (see photo of TJ sitting on a lazy boy enjoying his Baltika 7 beer). It was not winter yet, but it was plenty cool. I was wearing long underwear under my clothes plus about 3 layers on top. Our room was heated by a wood burning fireplace which meant it was blazing hot at night and freezing cold in the morning.

Toilet – well, it is the old fashioned outhouse and it is not right outside the door either – it is out in the garden. I have gone in some outhouses before, but these were the “freshest” I have ever been in (read fresh as rank). It was also a cold dark trek out there at night, so I will admit that I may have peed in a plastic cup in the room one night when TJ was too tired to walk me to the outhouse. For washing hands and brushing teeth, they had a system set up outside with a “sink” and a bottle of water hanging above it so you could create running water.

Now, the banya – this is the best part. This is how you bathe here in the land where there is no running water (although according to Lonely Planet, group banya’s are quite common throughout Russia). It is really just a sauna, but the ritual is supposed to entail beating each other with a venik (a tied bundle of birch branches) pouring cold water all over yourself and then going into the hot sauna, while drinking tea or beer. We tried the venik thing, but we didn’t feel we were beating each other properly, so we stuck to the cold water, hot steam and beer part of the ritual. This is not so dissimilar really to something we used to do at the RCI when I was in high school, where we sometimes dared each other to leave the hot tub at the hotel to go jump in a snow bank outside.

The photo to the right is the front view of the guesthouse. Our room was the window on the right, next to the green gate.

(TJ) Nuff Said.