Mongolia to Siberia on a Ural Part 2
Y'all:
Ok... Ok, I think I was a little hard on Rodina (Mother Russia) in my last letter from the cozy little border town of Kyachkta. Once we left there, the grass got greener, brown hills became forested mountains, and we found the Russian people are super friendly, the food very very good and in general a very awesome place to be in and to wander in. I think judging a country this big by the little border town of Kyachkta would be like judging all of Mexico if you only went to see Tijuana.
As we headed north into Russia, the first thing we noticed was that the grass fields were grassier and there was a lot less animals chomping on it. In Mongolia there were herds of yaks, cattle, horses, goats and sleep wandering all over the place. In Russia, there were only a few cows. The "steppes" land looks a lot like Eastern Montana, and the further north we went the more it looked like the area around Flathead lake or Lake Yellowstone in Montana. Hey, did I just accuse Montana of looking like Siberia?
A great Russian breakfast at the lodge at Baikal
The big difference, however, is nobody here puts fences up, except around their house to keep wild animals out. It appears that there is no ownership of the land except where the herders have placed their ger. As far as you can see it's unfenced grass. Mongolia is more than four times the size of Montana.... With no fences! They must just sort out the herds as they roam around, which makes seeing animals on the highway a common occurrence.... And a big hazard.
All the houses are in painted, but the work on the windows pretty well
Piloting a fully loaded Ural motorcycle with a sidecar over Mongolian and Siberian roads at 50 mph is more akin wrestling an 800 pound Russian bear than riding a motorbike. Every time I accelerate, shift, decelerate, or brake it lurches to one side or the other, so I really have to hang on tight. Turning a Ural with a side car is a full body workout and when I'm going down a hill and have to turn right I almost have to come to a standstill to do it. About 50 mph is top speed most of the time if the road is really good... i think I've grown some new Ural muscles! Jim tried driving the Ural up by Lake Baikal and he went off the road several times on a two block ride....I was smart enough to stay out of side car! Like my sister Barb said before leaving Ulan-Bataar, "In Mongolia, the road IS the adventure!" The Lonely Planet guide book says the roads are as nomadic as the people, so if you get lost follow the telephone poles because they usually go to a town and don't move around.
A Russian neighborhood in a lakeside town
North of Ulan-Ude the road was wonderful, smooth and no pot holes, but climbed over many mountain ranges as we headed straight north to the center of the Eastern shore of Lake Baikal. The mountains are covered with an even mix of tall skinny white aspen and several kinds of pine and fir trees. The little towns we went thru looked like logging camps from the 1920s, which is exactly what they were. The houses in this part of the country are all weathered wood with paint only for the window frames, which is almost always sky blue and I think looks really nice. See pictures below...
By the time we neared the lakeside, it was just about sunset and the air had become very cold. So far on the trip we had really lucked out with the weather, warmer than usual days and only one day of rain back in UB (their second day of rain in 2017). It was over 80 in Ulan-Ude, but it dipped to 45 by the lake which is really cold for riding. We found a spectacular lakeside Lodge to stay at called Baikalskaya Riviera that served us up some great salmon salad and fish (from the lake) soup to warm us up. It was about 8:00pm by the time we arrived and it took a very friendly Russian girl to reopen the kitchen so we could eat. I asked her who came as tourists to the Lodge and she said "China". I asked if Americans came here, she said, "never".
North of the lodge we stayed at was another town called Turka. In the morning we drove up there and pulled over next to the lake where some cattle were munching on the grass. This was the spot we were going to go swimming. It was a bit overcast, and only 50 degrees but I switched into my bathing suit and took the plunge.... It was a couple quick dunks and I was outta there, as melting snow was still on the shore in mounds from winter! I had read in a Russian travel book that in order to swim in Lake Baikal, you had to "practice", and that in July and August the water got up to 45 degrees. Well, I think the water was 33 degrees today, but nearby was another of the many little cafe restaurants that had some good Russian homemade soup to warm me up. Jim went in up to his ankles...
For more pictures of Lake Baikal go to Baikalmagic.ru
Baikal is so big it actually changes the weather. It's such a huge mass of chrystal clear cold water, the lake chills the air in the entire valley it's in. Besides being the world's largest lake, at over 5000 feet deep it's also the deepest lake in the world ! We saw no boats on it, and no fish jumping even tho it was covered by a fly hatch of some sort. I honestly think it's just too cold to grow much.
Where I swam in the lake
On the way back to Ulan-Ude, I was pulled over by some police. I surely wasn't speeding, and we decided they just wanted to look at the Ural. Even tho the bike is made in Russia, it's quite the attraction whenever we stop. The Russian police were friendly and only asked for my documents. While they were looking thru all of the motorcycle's declaration papers, I fished through my bag and whipped out my secret weapon.... Trader Joe's chocolate covered cherries!! I offered the cops some but they refused and walked over to the side of their car.... And then they motioned for me to come over to that side also. Surprisingly, they pointed at the cameras on their dashboards pointing straight forward and did miming to let me know they couldn't take my chocolates on camera but we're more than happy to eat the chocolates over by the side of their car! They smiled as they chewed, handed my papers back and said goodbye....Sugar wins again!!!
Snow on shore
As we neared the border on our return trip we came across a couple of 20 year old German bikers and we invited them to lunch with us. They were very nice kids and had been riding about a week since Irkutsk, where they had disembarked from the trans Siberian railway from Moscow. They had plans of riding South thru Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, India and finishing in Nepal. Now that's a trip!
The long road back in Mongolia