Tuesday August 13

We’d driven all night friday night into saturday morning  as our goal of reaching Lake Baikal is still 2 days away.

We passed lots of small towns, and each house had massive piles of stacked wood outside their doors – a not so subtle reminder that winters here in Siberia really must be quite fierce, with the wood ikely their only source of heat.

Sunday morning, while stopped for a freight train, we are thrilled to see another Rally car!  It has been weeks since we’ve another team  – and this merry band of frenchmen (& women) driving an ambulance is a wonderful surprise!  We pull over and sign each other’s vehicles, and swap stories and photos!  They’ve picked up another team member whose car crashed in Kazakhstan (those pesky roads) but he was able to sell his scrap car for $1k US, and find another team  – countrymen no less – to finish the race with!  That’s the Rally in a nutshell.

After a stop in Irkutsk to stock up at the market, we are on the road for our final push to Lake Baikal  – a gorgeous twisty turny drive up & down the hills with vistas every once in awhile.  Top altitude going over the pass was 994 Meters.  The first real overlook of the lake is stunning, full of folks and roadside stands of fish and knick knacks.

 

Lake Baikal is also THE only route through from east to west for all freight and passenger trains, and the famous Trans-Siberian Express which travels from Vladisvostok to Moscow, and whose tracks we’ve been following fairly close to for much of our journey across Siberia.

 

Getting to the far side of the lake and a camping sport takes us up and down more hills, following the power line cuts.  While the trains go right along the lakeshore, the road is inland and along the higher terrain.  Unfortunately most of the lakeshore is hidden out of sight beyond the treeline.

We successfully find ourselves a campground, down a muddy dirt road, and after having driven all the way from London, virtually without incident due to Sarita’s due diligence at every one of camping sites,  as soon as we arrive on the gravel beach, Don drives just THAT MUCH too far onto the beach, and the bus is STUCK!!  But have no fear, there is not 1, but 3, of the most amazing 4×4 machines I’ve ever seen that comes to our rescue – the Iveco!  Sarah’s been extolling the virtues of these machines for most of our trip, and lo and behold, they are owned by 3 Italian couples, that could not have been more happy to be helping out some of their own contrymen – Pietro and Stefano – and they are as thrilled as over the coming couple of days, they are treated to wine, expresso, and home cooked italian meals!

 

 

Bus freed, and near dark, we set up camp while Tommy gets hard at work building us our first fire of the trip.  It’s a gorgeous evening, and the view form our campsite is tremendous.  The mountains to the west come right down to the shoreline and there is no visible development of any kind along the shoreline, so it is peacefully quiet (except for the steady stream of trains whistling by)

 

It is also first night of the Perseid Meteor shower – which I am reminded about via an email a few days back from a skipper friend in Chicago – Thanks Jim –  about Siberia and meteors and that I should definitely keep my eyes to the sky.  It is a late night around the fire as I get busy grilling with a beautiful star and meteor filled sky.

Tuesday is a rest day at the lake – after convincing Sarah that NONE of us wanted to pack up and go after having come all this way to this beautiful place.  (Don took a poll via video interviews, and our mutiny won out!).  I washed the bus, (boy was it in dire need!), we swam, did laundry, more grilling, hula hoop lessons, frisbee, and some fierce corn hole competition, particularly when a neighboring Russian kid easily beat us all!

 

After a beautiful sunrise, our trip to Lake Baikal ended the same we it began, with a stuck vehicle, but this time we were the vehicle to the rescue! As one good turn deserves another we were more than happy to pull this VW passat out of the gravel!

Our next major stop… THE FINISH LINE!