Day 15 – 17 July – Ulan Ude to Irkurst

I woke up in the middle of night with my bed shaking from side to side. I dismissed it as ghosts and went back to sleep. But when we went down to breakfast everyone was talking about the 6.3 earthquake that happened in the middle of the night! George slept through it. There was minimal damage but it was only 10km deep.

We set off up into the hills today. Apparently these roads are all closed in winter or are at your own risk. Lake Baikal where we go for lunch is the worlds largest fresh water lake. It freezes in the -40c winter and trucks etc can drive directly over it.

As we get close we can smell smoked fish in the air. There are all these little stalls where individual people sell a few smoked fish direct from their gate.They smoke them at the roadside in drums. We buy a couple for lunch – they work out to about NZ$2.50 each. They are very tasty and flavorsome but have a gazillion little bones – hard work. We have also bought some fresh Russian bread, a salami, cheese and tomatoes for our lunch. We stop on the lake side and all the passengers have a swim. The drivers pull rank and refuse! It is amazingly smoggy for such an remote area.

It is Sunday afternoon so the roads get very busy as we head to Irkutsk. The stalls increase in number. Everyone selling their own specialty. Buckets of strawberries, bunches of branches for the sauna where they whip you with them. Some even sit out there with just one jar of blueberries. Not always outside their house, sometimes they are in the middle of nowhere. There must still be a lot of subsistence living here.

The roads are only good for about 4 months of the year. So all the transportation of goods including vehicle imports is in this time. There were gangs of drivers delivering imported cars from Japan driving flat out on the road. Apparently they work in shifts with 2 drivers. 4 hours on and 4 hours off. Then turn around and come back again.

Our hotel is beautiful. There is a market right behind it and we are keen for a layover day after driving all day today.