The lake on the lake

During my first night in Irkutsk, I awoke at one point in the middle of the night and (as you would expect) the bed was not moving. However, in my semi-sleepy state the first thought that came into my head was "we're not moving - we must be at a station" :-)

While Irkutsk was a welcome break, our main reason for stopping here was to make our way to Lake Bakial - the largest lake in the world (and the deepest too at 1400m). We set off early for the bus station to get the 8am bus to Olkhon Island - an island situated on the lake. Now in most civilised cities in the world, you can buy long distance bus tickets and international train tickets using a credit card... but this was Russia!

We didn't expect the bus station to accept Visa but I suppose we half expected that there would be an ATM somewhere near the bus station (after all, there was one right outside our hostel). I won't begin to describe the rollercoster taxi ride I ended up taking from the bus station looking for an ATM, but let me say that only the Russians know why there are no ATMs anywhere nearby. The russians might also be able to tell you why there are only 2 ATMs in the whole of Irkutsk (population 600,000) - but they sure weren't gonna tell us!

Olkhon Island and the views of the lake were beautiful. The town itself was very quiet which was a welcome break from the crammed train and the previous big cities we had been staying in. In fact our guesthouse had an actual tumbleweed pinned to the wall :-) Other resembelances to the wild west were the lack of flushing toilets, no land lines and no running water.

We hired bikes and went exploring, planning on going for a dip in the lake but after putting our feet in, we changed our minds (the lake actually freezes over in winter and you can drive across to the island). The temp rarely goes above 6 deg. Instead, we settled for a smaller lake on the island which gets a little warmer.


One thing I was quite impressed with was a particular entrepeneur (sp?) who set up an internet cafe... Bearing in mind that there are no land lines on the island and electricity was only installed last year, I didn't expect to find any internet access. Anyway, I followed the signs and was lead to a guy's house! He brought me into his bedroom where he had a connection set up. I can only guess that the huge satellite dish on the side of his house had something to do with it :-)