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Khuzhir, Russian Federation
50° 25' N 103° 15' E
Sep 01, 2006 04:59
Distance 219km

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Other entries in Khuzhir

Olkhon, The Crazy Bike Day

Text written in: English

I walked over to Nikita's for breakfast and then went to rent a bike for the day with Eva and Manu.  Interestingly enough we all had similar desires and athletic ability. Our plan was to ride across the island and see the major side of the lake.  Our side of the island only had a view of the lake shoreline that a couple of km distant. As we were renting the bikes it occurred to me that GPS might come in handy so I spent 20 minutes walking back to my campsite to retrieve it. By the time I made it back the vast majority of the bikes had been rented away for the day at $10 dollars apiece. My bike was a bit unlikely but the real problem was the narrow seat along with my bony ass. The total distance of the bike ride was supposed to be about 50km so it was promising to be a busy day. Also the central part of the island was a series of large hills that we had to cross to make it to the other side. We had a paper map, a compass, and my GPS.  There was lots of confusion on which way to go as we were leaving town. There were man options. I quickly put myself somewhat in charge of navigation and I take full responsibility for the crazyness that was to become of the rest of the day.

The path which was a jeep trail had large portions of sand that the bike would sink into. Along with a slight uphill grade a part of the time, the ride certainly took some energy. We got a late start at 10:00 in the morning.  At some point we decided to veer left off the hilly grassy plain and into the forest. Manu of course was in better shape and could pedal himself up the hills that Eva and I had to walk up. Up and up the trail started getting pretty steap. After about 2 hours the trail just ended somewhere in the thick woods. We spent nearly an hour trying to find the trail, backtracking walking around, trying different options. Eventually I found a trail that at least went somewhere and seemed to be in the correct sort of direction.  I walked a part of it and then when I came back I decided to cut through the thick forest as a short cut. It took me just as long to make it back and without the GPS on my wrist I would have had some serious trouble finding Eva and Manu. It was more up and then more up and then we reached the top of the hill. We were about 4 hours into our journey near the top of the large hill when it was clear that something had gone incredibly wrong and that there was no path leading down into the valley. We could see the major Baikal side of the island but had no way of reaching it.  And despite it being a little late in day for adventure none of us was willing to give up.

 Manu wanted to take the bikes down the 250m hill into the valley but didn't seem to appreciate how difficult it was to get the bikes through the forest, how much they were slowing us down and the prospect for carrying them back up if there was nothing in the valley. Really we weren't sure where we were, didn't have a real map, and didn't know what was down there.  We could see the lake and I estimated the distance at 4 or 5km to the shore through a series of valleys. I could convince Manu otherwise so we started going down the hill with our bikes, there were portions where we had to lift the bikes over series of down trees.  After about 30 meters down the hill we had a conference and at this point I made it clear that I didn't think we should go further through the woods with our bikes. Manu decided to head off into the woods to see if he could find a trail.  After 15 minutes I started blowing my signal whistle once a minute so that he could find his way back to us.  When he got back he made it clear that it would have been hard to find us without the whistle.  Its very easy to get turned around when crawling through the woods.  I was still feeling energetic so when he got back we as a group resolved to walk down to the lake.  I was past 3 in the afternoon and we had 5 hours of daylight left. For setting out on a day trip we were decently prepared for a night in the woods, with a couple of flashlights, a few pieces of warm clothing between the three of us and of course lots of chocolate that I had bought the day before for some extra food.

We did walk into the valley and instead of 4 km it was more like 7. Much to my discredit as we went down the hill there was a whole series of logging roads and a road leading all the way to the shore. There were some Russian tourists and a couple sad looking boats at the shore.  Sadly because of the advancing darkness we couldn't linger long. We decided that we could save an hour if we could convince these older women to drive us back to foot of the hill with their car.  It wasn't immediately clear how drunk they were or that our attempts at communication were getting us nowhere.  They really seemed to enjoy our company and were plying us with tomatoes and cucumbers, fish and some sort of mushroom kiesch. The food was welcome but after 30 minutes we had to call it a bust. At this time Manu was getting a bit upset.  We walked quite fast both to the shore and back to the hill. We never stopped for any sort of rest break and the mood was a bit grim on our prospects for making it back before dark and our prospects for trying to make anykind of distance in the dark. The 250m up the hill was quite a lot of work and between me and Eva, especially me, the fatigue was starting to show.  On the hill I was using the GPS to help find the bikes and Manu seemed to have some doubts about how well it would work, he was walking at least 100m ahead of me and I would shout direction changes. We didn't have any trouble finding them. There was a quick discussion about whether we should take the bikes down the hills to the road, but was very adamant that we should stick to the road that we knew.  Manu directed us back up the hill on the exact route that we had followed down the first time.  Going up the hill with a bike seemed to take a lot of energy.

When we made it to the top we had only an hour left of daylight and dusk was starting to settle in ominously.   It had taken us a long time to get to the top and I had no idea how fast we could sail down the hills. It was like a toboggan run. Even large portions that had seemed flat were down hill.  It was a lot of fun, hands on the breaks trying to avoid the doom around every corner.  Just as full dark was starting to set in we made it back into town. The total distance for the day was 22km on the bike and 14km walking. There was certainly a triumphal feel to our arrival and we were certainly dead tired.

We ate a well deserved dinner and it was certainly time for bed when a couple of the staff invited us to a disco. Disco?  Khuizir?  It turned out that every school in the country starts on the same day, so for the secondary students they were having a dance party in the school. Still feeling like a hero I decided to go whereas Manu and Eva happily hit their pillows. There were about 6 of us, we stopped at the store bought some vodka and orange juice and some beer and proceeded to an empty market stall. I had no idea what was going on at all when Natasha who invited the bunch of us stated that we could start drinking as soon as the men were smart enough to start pouring the vodka. There were three men, me and two German tourists. One of them opened and poured the first round and I somehow poured the proceeding rounds. In Russia it is up to the men to handle the liquor and even more interestingly to decide the amount that each person gets. The first toast is to meeting. The second toast is to parents and family and must be drunk immediately after the first toast. The third toast is to love.

Natasha was forward to begin with but after a few vodka toasts she told that I was handsome man and not in the casual sort of way. But it was pretty clear to me from the start that was friendly with lots of the tourists who visited the island, but a little bit of harmless flirting didn't bother me in my exhausted and tipsy state.

The dance hall was like a largish meeting room in the school, there was drinking there, which is why everyone showed up a bit drunk. We were the only people in there who weren't teenagers, but the music and dancing was fun and I danced at least a few times with Natasha. She was even a bit forward with her dancing. Somewhere in the middle of this dancing and revelry a drunk Buriat teenager grabbed my arm and started leading me to the door.  I had no idea what was going on.. so he got me pretty far before Natasha ran over and grabbed my arm. Right before she got there I realized everything wasn't so cool and that this guy wanted to fight me.  Natasha explained that she turned him down for a dance and then moments later started dancing with me. Perhaps she didn't like Buriat men, really I am not sure. I was worried later that I might find the guy and a bunch of his friends in a dark street.  Most of the streets in the village were pretty dark. The event empted promptly at midnight and as we were walking home Natasha made some bold sort of statement about one woman can't walk home with two guys. Apparently out of the three men in our group she liked both me and one of the German tourists.  Even if there wasn't Laura in my life I certainly didn't want to fool around with someone like Natasha, even if she was attractive.  So I walked away from her in a way that communicated all of this and I am sure she at least fooled around a bit with the german guy.

This night was a little bit cold for tent camping mostly because I had put most of my cold weather clothes in Manu and Eva's room.  We had earlier resolved that we were going to leave the island the next morning mostly because the only things interesting to do were physically oriented and we had trashed ourselves and didn't want to spend a couple of days hanging around to recover.