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Sunburn in Siberia

I arrived in Listvyanka after a 90 minute minibus transfer from Irkutsk train station.  My driver, Evgeniy, talked nearly all the way about his time living in Siberia, and how he once had to sleep out with just a sleeping bag in -52C just because he got the bus timetable wrong!!! I certainly wont be making that mistake then.

The homestay i arrived at was like the Hilton compared to the shit hole i stayed at in Moscow.  I had my own double en-suite room which was actually clean and the shower was the best i have ever seen!!  So, it turns out not everything in russia is goppin.

As i said in my previous entry, Listvyanka is a really small port town on the banks of Lake Baikal.  You probably havent heard of this lake, but it is abtually the biggest freshwater lake in the world...eclipsing the 5 great lakes in the USA conbined.  My guidebook says that in a million or so years, it will actually have grown to divide europe and asia and will become an ocean...how interesting....

It was really sunny all day and about 30C, so I decided that i should go for a trek along the lake...earlier in the day, Evgeniy had told me that if i just followed the road, it would eventually turn into a dirt trakc and then into a path all the way along the side of the lake.  Easy enough, you would think.  I walked to the end of the road and up a dirt track up a hill, only to get near the top and get chased 50m back down the hill by a savage dog (kind of like an albino alsation, second thoughts, it might have been a wolf).  For about 30 seconds, i thought the bastard was going to bite me and i was over the moon that i had forked out 20 quid (or not as i didnt pay) for a series of rabies injectiosn before i left!!!

Anyway.....after my heart had stopped pounding and i had discarded my pants... i found the track that Evgeniy must have meant.  How could i have possibly missed a very small, near vertical passage of death?!  I strolled along the cliff face for about 90 minutes and decided to turn back as my ankle was giving me jip.

Down at the port, i treated myself to a shashlik (kebab on a skewer thing) for lunch, which turned out to be 70% fat, 30% meat, so i threw it to the fish...who also rejected it!  The two bites i did have though did manage to give me the shits!!!!

When i got back to the homestay, i looked in the mirror and noticed that i had burnt my shoulders, necka dn back to buggery, so rather like ed would, i moisturised!! 

Brace yourselves.....for dinner i actually ate salad!!!  It was pretty revolting, but i ate it nevertheless bcause i was so scared that it would be followed by Borsht (beetroot and cabbage soup).  Turns out it wasnt, so i had fish and mash instead, not that it mattered anyway, the shashlik was still running through the system!

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