#trans mongolian

[analog-kyle]

St Petersburg Fuji GF670 | Ilford HP5 at 1600

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[analog-kyle]

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[whereislinda-blog]

On Saturday me and a finish guy I met in the hostel, Jarmo, decided to do a day trip to Baikal. We took an early morning bus to a village called Turka, which took about 3 hours and from there started hiking north towards to an other village. The weather was perfect, few degrees plus and sun shining from a blue sky. The hike was so beautiful, amazing view after an other. I was so happy I got to visit Baikal another time after having to leave Listvyanka earlier than planned because of the food poisoning. Near the village of Goryanchski we found a perfect sand beach and for a moment it felt like summer. :D When we got to the village we tried to buy a bus ticket back to Ulan Ude but turned out the last bus to go there was already booked full. For a moment I was worried that we'd have to stay the night in the village or pay lots of money to get back, but then I remembered that everything always turns out fine. After leaving the bus station we met a Russian girl who was working as a guide on tours to Baikal. We explained her our problem and she promised us a ride in their tour van to midway the village and Ulan Ude. So we sat down in the van with a group of elderly Russian ladies on their holiday. After about one hour of driving we stopped to visit a natural spring to fill our water bottles. There the tour guide talked to some people at the stop and one group of friends agreed to take us to Ulan Ude in their van. We thanked the guide and hopped in to another van. The guys who took us were really nice but talking was again quite hard without a common language. Soon we made our first stop where we also met with a couple who were driving to the same direction as us and apparently knew our hosts. They spoke a little bit of English and they were super excited to meet people from Finland visiting Baikal and Ulan Ude. We had some shots of vodka and some military food (???). And continued driving. Soon we made an other stop to meet again with the couple (they were driving behind us), to drink more vodka and to take some pictures of this quite unusual traveling crew. The guys drove us all the way to our hostel pointing out interesting sights on the way. We offered some money for the ride but they just laughed and refused to take any. We said thanks and goodbyes and started walking to our hostel when we hear a car horn honking behind us. It was the same couple we met several times before, they had followed us all the way to the center of Ulan Ude to see that we got there safe and to shake our hands one more time. In the evening we celebrated our successful adventure with some pizza and vodka with a nice group of people from our hostel, Finland, Brazil, Belgium, Russia and South Korea being represented. Perfect day.

[whereislinda-blog]

I ended up staying in Ulan Ude in total of five days. The hostel I stayed in was one of the best hostels I've ever stayed, they had thought everything through so well and the staff was super nice. Also other guests in the hostel were really nice and it was easy to find company for excursions, dinners, beer etc. Ulan Ude is the capital of an area called Buryatia and the closeness of the rest of the Asia is more visible here than in the places I've been before. Majority of people look Asian and there are lots of Tibetan Buddhism temples around. It's been interesting driving around in local busses to visit some of the temples with my new friends from the hostel. Most of the pictures above are from a temple called Ivolginsky. It was built in 1946 and it was the only lama temple in the Soviet Union territory. I was really impressed by the beauty and atmosphere of the temples. In one of them we managed to go to follow a ceremony where the monks were throat singing and it was really impressing! Ulan Ude is also famous for its opera and theatre scene so one night we went to see a opera called Madame Butterfly. Tickets cost only 350 rubles (~ 5 e) which I think is really affordable! It was sometimes a little bit difficult to follow the story because they sang in Italian and the subtitles were in Russian but I enjoyed it a lot anyways. Visiting the beautiful opera house built during the soviet times was a nice experience itself.

[whereislinda-blog]

My last day in Russia! Ended up staying the rest of my stay in Ulan Ude and it has been great. Today I'm enjoying the comfortable city life as much as I can because tomorrow I'll take a bus to Mongolia to a farm where I'll most probably be working for the next month. I have no idea about Internet connections there so there might not be any posts here for awhile. Thank you Russia, you've been so good to me! :)

[whereislinda-blog]

Today in Ulan Ude: I saw the largest Lenin head ever built, cooked borsch and had a nice dinner party followed by a jamming session. Good day! 👍

[whereislinda-blog]

Yei I'm finally feeling better! I spent two days in Irkutsk in a really nice hostel resting and getting better which was very much needed. Last night I took a night train from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude and the town and hostel and people here seem really nice so I think I'm going to stay here for awhile. :)

[whereislinda-blog]

The first snow came to Listvyanka on Saturday-Sunday night and in the morning there was already almost 10 cm of snow and it was still snowing. I had a dive booked for the morning so I headed out early and walked almost an hour in the snow to get first to an atm and then the diving center. There were lots of people in the diving center but almost no one spoke any English so the atmosphere was a little bit intimidating at first. Also they had really hard time understanding that i know how to dive and I know how to dive with a dry suit and that I can put my own fins on and off without help. The dive however was amazing! We dove by the cliff that continues its drop somewhere really deep and it was really impressive. There were a lot of sponges and interesting looking invertebrates and plants. Water was of a really beautiful color and visibility was surprisingly good for this time of a year. I wished I had an underwater camera! The day started really nicely but ended poorly because as soon as I got back to the hostel my stomach and head started hurting and soon I got fever and started throwing up. The rest of the evening and night I spent trying to sleep but waking up about once an hour to throw up again and again. In the morning I had stopped finally throwing up but I felt really weak. I wanted however to get to Irkutsk because everyone else had already left the hostel in Listvyanka and even the closest small kiosks were quite far away from the hostel so it wasn't the nicest place to be sick. The trip from Listvyanka to Irkutsk wasn't nice (1,5 hours in a minibus on bad roads) but I'm happy to be here in Irkutsk now. The hostel is really nice and I've finally managed to eat something. I still feel really weak though but hopefully I'll feel better soon!