Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal, Russia – 09/19 Day

(Michelle) On our second day, we want on a tour to the Eastern side of the island (yesterday was the northern parts). The northern part had a lot more open (treeless) areas, whereas the eastern part is more wooded. We took a group tour this time from Nikita’s guest house, which was alright but the guides didn’t speak any English so we didn’t really know what was going on when the bus stopped and people got out wondering around on their own in the woods. Fortunately, there was a nice Czech guy who spoke Russian and English and he finally told us that we were just supposed to walk down a path to the water, walk around on our own and then be back in like 3 hours. Ok. We walked down to the water, and it was quite pretty there. We met some Hungarians who were camping there on the water (we would later see them on the train to Mongolia). It was pretty cold though and we were not really sure what to do with ourselves at the water front, so we decided to head back to the bus early so we could have the 30 minute walk in the woods by ourselves (without the others from the group). This was a really pretty walk with all the leaves changing and they were falling off the branches slowly as we walked through them, creating an effect like it was snowing yellow, red and green. It was so quiet that TJ and I heard bird sounds we’ve never heard before.

When we got back to the van, we were greeted with a campfire and another lunch of “fish head soup”. Fortunately, our hostel owner from Irkutsk showed up with 2 people he was doing a private tour with that morning and he arranged for our guesthouse to send with us a packed lunch. So we ate our lunch in the woods with a campfire, which was kind of cool because it was like we were camping but with no work.

(TJ) No real comment other than it was my idea to take the photo above since I noticed that Michelle’s rain jacket matched the leaves despite my color blindness. Don’t let her tell you differently this was my idea and I took the photo.