Baikal, we made it

Finally, after 350 km, from Irkutsk to Bugul’Deyka, we arrived to the Baikal Lake: the deepest and oldest lake in the world. And it is completely frozen.

Click here to see the film from the whole trip

Now, this are our boots

The road from Irkutsk to Bugul’Deyka is a good road, and the day was good, so there were no problems to make the “last” 350 km. The views reminds us the Mongolian landscapes, but with a good road in the middle. Big plains, full of snow, and some mountains far away; small furry horses everywhere and some cow on the way.

 

Ol’honskiy Rayon

When you enter to the region of Ol’honskiy Rayon, the shamanistic ritual says you have to make a small offer in the border of the region. So you have to let some coin, fill a small glass of Vodka, throw a little in the table and drink the rest. Then, you are pleased to enter. And every few kilometres, we found more sacred places, so you have to stop in every of that places and do the same ritual. In a 40 km road you can find 10 places like that. Fortunately, there are no police controls on the area.

Border place

We have been on Bugul’Deyka village for three days, living in Ilja’s grandmother’s house. We have done many things: eat, talk, pray, drink vodka, climb a mountain, skate on the lake, drift on the lake, skate on the river, drift on the river, eat, talk, pray, drink vodka…

  

The life in the village is not easy. There isn’t current water on the houses. So for cleaning the dishes in the house, you must bring the water from the draw well. Which is very deep, to get non frozen water. The temperatures on winter arrives to -40º C. The lowest one we have had is only -25º C, acceptable for us, good for the inhabitants.

The village, the frozen river and one small part of the frozen lake

For shower, there is a sauna outside the house, but inside the perimeter of the property. You have to fill a big bucket with water from the draw well and bring it into the sauna, then make fire on the place for fire and put the bucket on the top of the fire. Then wait some hours to the physics laws make his dark magic and the water will boil. Then, you have the steam and a warm place. You can also have a second bucked, and let in the sauna, just to have water in a good temperature (not boiling) to have the shower. The bigger is the bucked, more people can take shower.

In that village, people have sheep, cows and make grown their own vegetables. So that is the main alimentation. Everything is very tasty, and also there are some shops in the village to buy other products.

In the village, almost all population is from Buriat region. They say they consider the Mongols as cousins and they respect them. They say the Mongols are strong like them. And we can ensure this is true.

 

Yes, we made it

And yes, we have made crazy things in the lake [spoiler alert], there will be some video in the future.

Baikal car-skating

Now, with energies, moral and stomach to the full, we begin our coming back trip. Probably it will be a death race, because our visa expires on 19^th March, so probably there won’t be more posts… who know…

Thanks to all the family

Our fans can follow our position in the “where are we now?” page, on the top of the main page, the coming back is marked in green colour.

 

 The BMW has a long trip to do yet…

Dirty Irkutsk

Frozen Hell on Earth. This is the road from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk. 1070 km of bad roads, no roads, frozen roads, snowed roads and even, sometimes, good roads. There are some medium cities on the way, without circumvolutory road, so the city must be crossed. And also some small village, that must be crossed at low speed. Impossible to do it in one single day, at least, on winter. So we had to stop to sleep in the car, with the engine running, to avoid the freezing of ourselves.

There is also many train crossing

 

Sunrise on the road

So after 16 hours of pure Mad Max driving, we arrived to Irkutsk on the morning. We were received by Ilja cousin, and we have some deserved rest, after a good lunch. On the evening, we visited the city with the family.

 

Beer, better cold

Irkutsk: the door to Asia. Big city, with an important train station and many different railways, direction to Mongolia, Kazakhstan, east Russia and west Russia. Irkutsk is bigger than Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buriat region, but even is not the capital, is the centre for the communications and moving goods and people.

Irkutsk centre

In Irkutsk live people with different religion: orthodox or shamanistic; different origins: west Russian, Buriat, Uzbek, Kazak and also Mongolian. And there isn’t any conflict, at all. There is mixed couples everywhere, and any racism can be appreciated. Regarding the people of the area this is another achievement of Soviet times: no religion, no regions, only Soviet Union people.

 

Irkutsk writer, half Russian, half Buriat

Apart from this, the city is dirty, due to the snow, the salt, and the gravel that is used to avoid the ice. The old centre is beautiful, the new commercial centre is empty, and the rest is dirty.

The old

The new

 

The dirty

Krasnoyarsk: finally city tourism

From Barnaul, we went to Novosibirsk again, and we sleep in a house were a birthday party was on process. Crazy night. We only can say next morning we were the first to get up and we leave the house early, we had to do it, because the road to Krasnoyarsk is ~850 km, more than 12 hours of driving.

 

Radical party in Novosibirsk

The road gave us spectacular views, like frozen rivers with the boats stuck in the ice.

 

Del barco de Chanquete no nos moverán

Then, we arrived to Krasnoyarsk: the capital of Siberia (with the permission of Novosibirsk, the other city who wants this honour). It’s an old city, founded on 1628, and it was not destroyed by the Second World War. The streets are different from the rest of the big Russians cities, there is a small European aura on the buildings and the disposition of the streets. And Krasnoyarsk is the cities of the fountains. Well, the fountains only work on summer, because on winter they are frozen, so… there are lights instead of the water.

The biggest fountain

And we had this information because of our hosts. Masha and Dima, are a very nice couple who lives with a giant cat in a wonderful flat. They were waiting us at the entrance of Krasnoyarsk, and we must say that we arrived so late to the city. We jumped on their car and they showed us the city.

Krasnoyarsk bridge

Next morning, Masha and Dima wanted to show us the big dam that provides electricity to Krasnoyarsk, and also the river and the mountains next to the city. Nice guided visit, we also watched the skiing tracks they have just next to the city.

 

Masha, Dima and David

The dam

We had a good impression of Krasnoyarsk, maybe because the city is more beautiful than the rest of the cities we have visited, maybe because our hosts were so nice.

At the midday, we left Krasnoyarsk and begin the long long long road to Irkutsk. 1.070 km, more than 15 hours, and the worst roads we will found on the trip.

Siberian State Aerospace University in Krasnoyarsk

Mechanical interview

It can’t be a road trip blog without a post speaking about the third passenger, The Car. The BMW, nameless, is not on its better conditions. We used the changing tyres moment to do some checking.

Rear Suspension: Dead. Bumper without oil, broken spring.

 

Rear suspension

Front suspension: Terminal prognostic. Springs are OK, bumpers are on the end of their long career. We can observe some nasty corrosion, what can show us the engine from the outside, very practical…

 

Front suspension and corrosion

Engine: Good. We are lucky, the engine is consuming a little bit of oil, but is an acceptable leakage, probably, it will be fine.

Electronics: Crazy. Speedometer is working randomly, we check the real speed on the GPS. Windscreen washer, when it is not frozen, they are very useful, a must on that dirty roads. Windscreen wipers, if the speedometer is not working, we had to activate the manually every time we need one wiping (part of the fun). Radio, not working, the antenna wiring is lost, but we can listen our mp3 by USB.

 

Interior mess

Then, we must talk about our New Blue Suede Shoes, the new winter tyres, with spikes. They are so useful on these roads full of ice and snow. And we must talk about the guy who changed the tyres: he was faster than McLaren team. He only need one lift and the tool used to remove the screws of the wheel. With one single lift, he can change two wheels, the procedure consist in elevate the car more than normal, so the car is only in the ground by one rear tyre and the lifter. Safety? Guaranteed!

 

F1 tyre change

Barnaul, family meeting

We make a little deviation in the way to visit Ilja family, who live in Barnaul. It was David’s second time in Barnaul in 6 month. It’s a curious place to be, at the same distance from Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Any traveller can feel that place as a crossing point, with different cultures and influences, that kind of places that you feel as a known place, even if you aren’t been there ever.

 

Barnaul skyline

We had great lunch, some rest and a great dinner. The food was perfect, and abundant, also the drink. The night was long, we were singing all together. Russian songs, some Catalan song, and the kindness that makes you feel in home, even if you don’t understand a single word.

 

Great dinner, better company

Next morning, after the deserved rest, we went to buy new tyres. The road is so bad, and so frozen that it’s impossible to continue the trip with our regular winter tyres. For our surprise, Ilja uncles bought the tyres and give us as a present. Big present. We give them many thanks.

 

New tyres

Then, David prepared lunch: pasta at “Catalan/Italian/David” style. Which consist in pasta, mushrooms, milk, butter and different kinds of cheese, as many as he could find. And we went to Novosibirsk again, but before they showed us their second house in a small village near Barnaul.

 

Thanks for everything

Novosibirsk

We were dirty, tired, and we had 9 hours to Novosibirsk. We didn’t visit Omsk at all. We just drive to get early to Novosibirsk and take some rest.

The road was cold and very windy. We saw some trucks accidents.

 

Hit the road, Jack

Novosibirsk is the third biggest city in Russia, with 1,5 million people. It looks like typical soviet city: big avenues, big grey buildings and statues everywhere. Lenin Street and Karl Marx Street are the main streets in the city, not a surprise in Russia.

 

Workers monument with Lenin Monument

Once we arrived, we met our guests, Marina and her godmother live together. They just arrived from their trip from India. The surprise, the godmother speaks Spanish, she works as a English and Spanish teacher, so we share some histories in Spanish language. On the next morning, she had a Spanish class and David helped her with some talking with the student.

The sleeping room

Our energies were back and we decided to go to Barnaul, to meet some Ilja relatives.

Omsk: the day of broken rules

The way from Yekaterinburg to Omsk is about 1.005 km. More or less, 14 hours driving in bad conditions.

That day, we broke all the rules of this kind of trips:

We were fast: so we had a fine from the police: 30 minutes talking in English with one police officer who only speaks Russian. That was completely useless. The only solution was offer him 50 € to get back our car documents.

 

DPS (Police) office

We didn’t rest: only stop, to re-fuel, and take one single picture

Random Lenin Statue

We drove at night: bad idea in this road conditions, low visibility, slippery surface, kamikaze truck drivers without lights, and so on…

The road at night

 

We slept in the car: at -8º C outside, we had to turn on the engine to get some heating in the car. The comfort was inexistent.

Please, don’t do it.