When we arrived in Irkutsk me and Sia split up. I went to a hostel while Sia went to a luxury hotel and after maybe three hours I got a text message from her saying she gave up and was flying to Thailand the next day. Well well, travelling in Siberia is not for the faint-hearted:-).
So the next day I took a minibus to Olkhon Island in the Baikal. It was quite a trip: I slept most of the time and when I woke up and looked out the road was winding through the mountains, covered in snow and ice and going up and down. The driver was driving very fast so I decided to go back to sleep so i wouldn’t see an accident coming… Apparently he knew what he was doing so we arrived safely to the ferry and after a 15 minute ride across the lake we were at Olkhon island. And what a beautiful, tranquile place. I loved it from the first moment.
Even though it was very cold, there were no snow at all so it was just yellow-brownish everywhere with little hills an a dirt-road leading to the main settlement Khuzir, and cattle and horses in the fields.
I arrived at Nikitas Guesthouse and what a very nice place. I got my own room in a wooden house with a bed in a wooden frame, pieces of wood put nicely together for furniture and door handles and a nice fireplace. They had a big diningroom where they served all their homemade meals and except for the amount of fish I liked the food.
I went for walks to the Shaman Rock, a big bare cliff protuding out in the lake and the beaches north and south of Khuzir, strolled along the beach and watched the ice on the shore. Went to a Buryat village where we not very welcome because three dogs that kept us company from Nikitas decided to chase their cattle around so they broke out through the fence.
After three nights and two days there I went back to Irkutsk, again sleeping all the way because I was to nervous to watch the driving… I didn’t want to spoil the tranquile state from the island. And I survived to tell the tale…