Tim and Gem's Honeymoon Adventure: A Siberian Paradise – Olkhon Island, Russia October 9

The first 24 hours in Russia were pretty eventful!

It started when we arrived in Irkutsk early in the morning, with plenty of time to get to the bus station and purchase our minivan tickets to Olkhon.

Outside the train station we found a marked taxi waiting and got in, it had just started to rain so we relived to find a real taxi and not just a random car who might not know where to find the bus station. 10 minutes later we arrived at the bus station and I notice the meter hadn’t been turned on – this is never a good sign. We got out, got our bags and couldn’t help but wince when we asked ‘how much?’

Rooky error on our behalf, we would normally ask before getting in, but forgot on this occasion. He punched 600 into his phone. Ouch! There was really no arguing with this mountain of a man with gorilla sized hands, so we parted with 600 rubles ($20) and crossed the road to the bus station feeling ripped off. (We were later told a similar story where a Taiwanese tourist had been charged 3000rubles ($100) for a ten-minute taxi ride, so we didn’t feel as bad).

It was now 7.30am and we have plenty of time to get our tickets, sit back and maybe find somewhere to eat. I head to a ticket window and ask for two tickets to Olkhon. Neit…Followed by a string of words I didn’t understand. Apparently the bus does not run in the winter. Awesome!

Luckily enough an English girl over-heard and provided some very helpful information. She told us that minibus now departs at 9am from the Central Market, which was only a 5-minute walk away. Brilliant! We had plenty of time and the market was very close! Feeling very grateful we made our way.

It was 8am and the sun had still not risen. It was dark, windy and cold, and we found ourselves pacing the 100m stretch of markets, trying to figure out where our minibus was likely to stop. There were no signs and no other tourists in sight. I tried my best to ask where the minivan to Olkhon goes from in Russian, but no one knows.

It was now 8.45am and we decided to test our luck and stood in a spot where we were very visible, and there appeared to be a lot of vans coming and going. A man that looked like a yonger Daniel Craig comes up to us and asks us if we are going to Olkhon. We looked at each other relived and threw our bags on the roof of the van. While waiting for the bus to depart, we met some of the other travellers heading to the island. We spotted Pat, a Kiwi on his way home after a 5 year stint in London.

At 10am we were on our way to Olkhon Island in a van crammed with 13 people with all their luggage and for some unknown reason a crate full of live chickens. Gem, Pat and I were on the back seat, and the middle seat (my seat) had a large metal beam through the middle of it. In the end my bum was completely numb.

At our first roadside stop was uneventful and pretty much useless. The toilet was literally a septic hole in concrete that made it impossible to actually go to the toilet. The second stop was similar but the stench was slightly more bearable. And then we eventually reached the dock to await the ferry over Lake Baikal, to Olkhon Island.

Lake Baikal is the biggest body of fresh water on the earth, and apparently could supply the entire world with fresh water for 40 years! We were told that the water is so clean and clear, that you can see the bottom of the lake more then 50m from the surface. Also in winter, the entire lake freezes over, with ice more then 1m, allowing people to drive from the mainland to the island across the frozen ice.

We arrived on the island and had another short ride to the main town of Khuzhir. It resembled the Mongolian roads, dirt, bumpy and unpleasant really. Luckily it was only a 35 minutes drive and we were dropped at Nikkita’s Guesthouse, our home for the next week.

Nikkita was a former Russian Olympic table tennis player, and after his retirement he opened up the guesthouse. It looked very welcoming and homely - like a little neighborhood of wooden cabins. All three meals were included with your accommodation (which was lucky as it turns out there wasn’t much else in the town) and there was even a banya (Russian sauna) that we took advantage of on several occasions.

After dropping of our bags there came a knock on our door. Alan! who we had met in Ulaanbaatar was staying here for a few days also. It’s had only been a few days since we last saw him, but it’s always nice to see a familiar face.

I introduced Pat and Alan (both who, like me, have a interest in photography) and we decided take a walk and explore the island. Along the way, we had three dogs join us and escort us to a nearby wharf. They did however take a little break from escorting us to play a game of bulrush with a few cows on the side of the road, barking and trying to put each cow off crossing the road, it was rather hilarious to watch. Once they were done, the dogs soon rejoined our posse.

All the fishing boats were returning, so there was a lot of activity on the small wharf. As well as the working fishing boats, there were also old, abandoned boats left to rust on the beach. There were all types of boats, once someone’s pride and joy now left to decay. For us though, they made great photos.

When we were leaving, we bumped in to one of the islands fishermen, a strong, brick-wall of a man who reeked of booze and talked to us in slurred-Russian. He was oblivious to the fact that we didn’t understand a word he was saying. But he was smiling and laughing, so we went just went along with it and had a good laugh. He put his beaten hat on Alan and posed for some photos, and it was just as we were leaving that we noticed the bottle of vodka he was cradling, had a pack of condoms taped to it with electrical tape. Unusual!

On our way back we found a convenience store and got some beers ($1.50 for 700ml bottles) and some smoked omul (a fish delicacy on Baikal) and watched the sun set over the mountains.

The town had a main road, that was a wide, bumpy dirt road, a handful of random buildings, mostly houses, a few convenience stores, an internet café that was a caravan and a ‘diskobar’ that was closed for the winter. And that’s about it! Cows and dogs wandered the streets and occasionally an old soviet van would cruise down the street with some Russian techno pumping out of the stereo. But besides that, it felt like an old western town minus the tumbleweeds! This place is great

The next day we met up with the boys at breakfast and spoke to Alek, one of the locals who worked at the guesthouse, and he told us about a nice walk into the woods that would lead us to a spring. The sun was shining (which we later found out happens on average 300 days of the year) so we decided go for a walk into the woods.

We passed through the town and were soon wandering into the thick pine and cedar forest. The forest was stunning, we reached an opening and the needles of the pines had gone from green to a vibrant yellow, and the floor of the forest was carpeted in the yellow needles giving it an amazing contrast amongst the trees and the brilliant blue sky.

We walked for a couple of hours, following the stream and marveling at the peacefulness and silence around us. We found a section of the stream with a thin layer of ice over it. We broke a hole in the surface and we drank some of the extremely cold, and very clean spring water.

The rest of the time (another 4 days) we spent on Olkhon Island were very relaxing, it was perfect.

Alan had been swimming in the lake everyday and eventually talked me in to going along – this is where I met Doug from San Francisco. The sun was shining and the temperature was hanging around a balmy 6 degrees, and the three of us wandered down to the water. I launched myself into the crisp and refreshing waters of Lake Baikal and instantly my breath was taken from me! But it felt good. The water would have been less then 5 degrees, but it felt so clean and so refreshing, and I wanted to do it again! I understood why Alan had been doing it every day.

The days entitled sleeping in, eating breakfast and then wondering what to do with yourself for the day, wandering around the town, relaxing some more, having a sauna or two and then eating dinner. It really was a hard life. That night we had dinner with Alan, Doug and Elina and Sanni (from Finland), and we all ate dinner together.

That night Doug and I convinced all the girls to come for a swim in the lake, so the following day the 5 of us rugged up and headed down to the lake, ready to launch ourselves in to the freezing waters of Lake Baikal.

Doug took the lead and showed the girls where to jump, and without much hesitation, the girls all, one after the other, jumped in. There were a lot of screams, yelps and funny facial expressions pulled, but they were all surprised at how nice it felt when you got out.

So we loved our time on Olkhon Island, and if you like to relax, see some beautiful scenery and spend some time in a place that is less explored, we would highly recommend visiting this little gem of an island.