olkhorn island

today we went to take a ride across the island. boy was it a ride.

isaac tan chi ming, if you are reading this, you should come and bike in olkhorn island, irkutsk, russia.

first, how we got to olkhorn island.

before I stepped off the train, I talked to a guy who turned out to be from the czech republic and had spent a semester in tomsk studying civil engineering. good thing he knew some english and could speak russian, so we took a taxi together to the bus station.

a minibus guy, looking all shifty and sneaky, got us a minibus to olkhorn island for 390 roubles (15+ usd). a 5 hr ride and a 1.5 hr wait for the ferry (where we had some splendid shots) and we were in khuzhir village.

the bad thing about lonely planet's guidebook (or lying planet), is that it generates so much publicity that prices get jacked up. it so happened for nikita's, where we are staying for 3 nights. price was 700 (28 usd) per person per night, including 3 meals. and we were being housed in a place off the main kingdom of nikita's. LP said it was 530 for everything, and the receptionist replied that the LATEST edition was 2 yrs old. that was the most confident load of bull i've heard for the past 1 yr.

so I put on the poor meek face and ask if there was a student price, and luckily we got 600. i'm not really complaining, since the food portions are generous and it isn't all that bad. but the receptionists are quite a cocky lot.

did I mention the little kingdom here? nikita's a former table tennis champion and has built quite a self sufficient little estate for himself. it's situated close to the cliffs, has a fenced up village with cabins, dining hall, banyas ( russian saunas), toliets, bike shop. and I think he has a son (about 30 yrs old?) with plaited hair ( both on the scalp and on the chin). I guess the son could be called Petunia. and I really did smell burning marijuana while reggae was playing (Jah rasafari!!). we were talking about this kingdom here, and it seems like it's a kind of reverse Smurf village. all we saw were girls and nikita (papa smurf) and petunia. I really do sound a little bitter, but that's cause I really hate it when
1) there is a some unreasonable pricing due to monopoly and
2) there are cocky staff due to the monopolistic company.

but the food makes up for it. there's 3 courses for every meal, unlimited tea and free sugar and water too. note: they charge for sugar, here in russia.

anyhow, we got our bikes with jeff (an american who's travelling to beijing and then india nepal and tibet) and kah (who's finishing up his year long round-the-world trip) and headed off to moscow tomorroe. our gears weren't working too well, and we were not too conditioned as compared to the other 2 who were in mongolia trekking for 2 weeks, thus they went ahead.

quoting a, this place is like the cheap swiss alps. we cycled UP the steppes (bukit timah hill but stretch the distance) and after zooming through the wondrously lit and pine scented forests, emerged onto a great clearing. it's flanked by the hills, the field has blue pink white yellow flowers poking their heads up, and the sky is an amazing blue, swathed in carpaccio-like sheets of white.

and the place is quiet. no sounds of Man, just flies buzzing and eating the salt from our skin, the wind and the crickets. nothing else. amazing. it's just like the clearing near dairy farm towards the end of the mountain bike route in BTH, isaac.

we head further and reached the other side of the island. the locals say that dipping yourself in the very chilly waters grant you a few more decades of longevity. I did it twice, so i'm not sure if I get the life extension X2 or the life extension squared.

cramps soon came once we started back on the bikes (the return was mostly uphill), so I had to stop and ask for salt from some campers. they were giving me weird looks when I asked them.we reached the so-called lake on the map, but it looked more like a muddy pond, where we rested our cramped legs, shared chocolate, and tried to enjoy the view of the muddy pond.

we hit more uphill slopes, walking most of the time, and eventually reached the downhill portion of the steppe.

isaac, you should have been on this ride. it was more than pretty fast (and i'm using those 3.0 off-road tires). a bird took off 10 m ahead of me and I nearly caught up with it in 4 seconds before it took a sharp corner to the left. it was really really fast. shiok man. imagine, almost 1.5 km of downhill, with a few slopes of gradient similar to the starting slope of BTH to give you sonic the hedgehog-like speed boosts. and not much cow/horse/large mammal pats to mar your speed.

WAH LAU.

of course, all things must come to an end, and we soon hit the flat dirt road with deceiving sand patches. we took a road to the beach, where I spent a sorry 5 mins trying to enjoy the amazing view because I was so dehydrated. you see, I stupidly did not bring my water, since I thought 2 litres of water among 3 of us, with 30 km of biking would be more than sufficient. so I drank no more than 300 ml of water throughout the whole 5+hr ride. we got back to the village of the smurfs ( I can still imagine them singing 'it's a small world after all' while holding hands in a circle. and swaying their heads too.) at 4 +pm. this has become my 2nd most exhausting experience i've had. and my first, due to dehydration. all the other times i've been exhausted, I'm still considerably hydrated. not this time though. I had pretty little saliva left and my breath was extremely stale.

I plopped my bike wearily (very), made my way to the dining hall, and greedily ate whatever was there (buckwheat pancakes made from this morning's leftover buckwheat porridge) and drank copious amounts of hot sweet black tea.

a&k soon joined me. I put on the sorriest face I could and asked the girl if there was still lunch. Thank God there was. there was fish soup with potatoes and cream, fried fish and russian sauerkraut and a beetroot salad with raisins and nuts. and tea of course. I wolfed it all down, rehydrated and made my way to my sweet precious bed. I missed it and I knew it missed me.

a 3 hr nap later, we had dinner, washed up and headed to the russian cliff to watch the russian sun set over the russian landscape, while we emptied our russian beer bottles.

now, i've just spent an hr or so typing, and I will lie on my russian bed to sleep. not before crossing the russian field to get to the russian hole(toilet) though... shucks.

joel and joshua lee, I still remember fraser's hill, pahang, malaysia in late nov 2003. here at olkhorn island, it's like fraser's hill, but with mongolian steppes, a giant lake and drier weather but with no afternoon tea and prata and teh halia.

we're spending the day walking around and just eating the meals provided. probably will read and we'll get up early to watch the sun rise over lake baikal tomorrow, before we leave for irkutsk to ride the circumbaikal railway. will have smoked omul ( a type of fish found only in lake baikal) and will definitely have lots of tea. with sugar of course.

-l