Beautiful Olchon on the Baikal-lake

A bit shorter than first planned but fully successful was my trip to the beautiful island Olchon on the Baikal lake. After a 6-hours trip with a small Marshrutka and a ferry I arrived in the 1200 inhabitants counting capital of the island "Khushir" and checked in in "Nikitas Homestead", a hostel which is - thanks to Lonely Planet - populated with many foreign back-packers.



The island itself is quite sandy and dry but still really beautiful - just get some idea of it (travellers from Scottland told me that it looks exactly like this over there...):

a ger near the lake

buryat-tradition: you can find loads of trees all covered with coloured bands (couldn't find out what this tradition ment though...)

So of course I spent a lot of time walking around and drawing.
However, what I really wanted was taking a bath. But I got rather desperate regarding the outside-temperatures knowing the lake itself is - due to its incredible depth - supercold throughout the whole year anyways...
There's a saying that if you take a bath in lake Baikal 25 years will be added to your life - who wouldn't want that??
And I got them!! hoooraaayyy!! I was really lucky when walking around the beach I discovered a movable Banya!

Oh yes, Russia, the land of extremes: hot banja and then freezing cold bath in the lake! and this again and again - loved it! :D

On the second day I rented a mountain-bike in order to see a bit of the islands inland and forests. I will definitely try to do some mountainbike trips in the future again to get a better condition - how embarassing: I had to push the bike when the hills were too steep :/
The nice girl from the hostel had prepared a lunch-pack for me. But when I was sitting in the middle of the forest two wild dogs running up to me let me know that - by eating away my two cookies - I had eaten enough sweet stuff the last days... (I was quite happy when they left shortly after though...)

Yes, all in all it was a really nice bike-trip as the roads were definitely more interesting to ride on than our asphalt-streets (there is not one single asphaltstreet on the whole island...)

 Still I decided to leave after 3 nights due to the fact that it was the end of the season on the island: still sunny but cold and windy weather and Nikitas homestead, which in summer is said to be overcrowded, being rather empty. But there were still enough travellers to spend the evenings with as Olchon is like a small oasis of calm (there is no noice except from a car sometimes and the barking of the dogs) where travellers are taking a rest before or after their trip on the transsiberian. All the people I got to know were all really nice: some of them were travelling in the same direction as I am, some in the opposite. So I was lucky to get a lot of information about Mongolia, which I am now really looking forward to discover!

So, on the third day in the morning I left beautiful Olchon Island again - good bye красавица!