Olkhon Island

If seeing Lake Baikal for the first time was a dream realized, then seeing it a second time from Olkhon Island was heaven. We stayed at a homestay in the small village of Khuzhir for five days and it was so relaxing that we could have stayed a lot longer. In that time we got used to an old-fashioned Siberian way of living.

We stayed at the home of Lube (pronounced: Luba), a 45 year-old with the energy of a 25 year-old, and her mother Liza. Their simple way of life was exactly what we needed to experience the Siberia we came to see.

Their home had three bedrooms and one living room, a dining area and across the dirt yard, a small kitchen and banya (the Russian equivalent to a sauna where you bathe - in this case a small wooden room with a very hot stove - we were very careful in there). The toilet was an outhouse at back of the garden. There was no running water and no electricity although after 9 O'clock at night they did run a generator for a few hours. Water came from a well on the island and was delivered twice a month and pumped from a truck into seven 55-gallon drums that sat in the yard. (We were more than mildly impressed when Lube's mother bent down and hoisted up an empty drum to move it.)

The sinks, one outside, one inside, were metal containers filled with water with a dip-stick plunger hanging from the bottom. push up on the stick and you get water. The waste water was collected in a bucket underneath.

We shared our time at Lube's with two Finnish brothers (Osmo and Lassi) that we met in Irkutsk and with whom we shared a taxi to the island (5 hours by car, 8 by bus). At $10 a night plus three meals a day (read: three banquets a day) it was more than a bargain for us. For Lube (her first time having foreign guests) it must have been a godsend.

As the village librarian, Lube makes only 800 Rubles a month (roughly $27). Her mother's pension adds another 600 Rubles and for a while now she had been trying to save money to install another Banya in the main house. That costs 5000 Rubles ($180). Our five nights there was equivalent to 3 1/2 months of salary for her and basically paid for the banya.

Despite the fact that Lube speaks only Russian, we learned a lot about her and her family and got along great. She was proud of her daugher who just this week graduated from the Irkutsk University and was recently married. We spent a lot of time passing her Russian/English dictionary back and forth and communication in one word sentences - and laughing an awful lot when we got things wrong. We met her sister, her 6-year-old neice, and her uncle, plus a lot of people from the village who stopped by to say hi and try their tongue on some basic English words, "Hello, how are you?"

The meals that Lube served us were incredible, especially considering they were prepared in such a tiny eight-foot by seven-foot kitchen with one table and one stove. All the food people eat on the island is grown in their garden and stored for the winter. (Fish of course is a staple.) It is only the beginning of the growing season now so Lube's menu defyed us - soups, salads, egg dishes, homemade fruit drinks, cottage cheese, breads, dumplings, pancakes, coleslaws, porridges, jams. When we told her about the American version of her fried bread (french toast made with eggs) it appeared before us the next morning. There was more food at each meal that we could possible eat at one sitting. Lube's mother said that if we were vegeterians we must be starving so feed them more.

While the smells of Lube's kitchen were filling her yard, the smells of the island swirled everywhere. Olkhon island smelled like a comforting combination of tilled earth, pine wood, cow patties, and soap with a fresh sweet breeze from the lake to meld it all together.

The island is beautiful with sandy beaches, a huge rock outcropping (Shamanaya rock which the locals are very proud of), steep cliffs, magnificent views from the hills surrounding the village, and 300 days of year of sunshine. Winter turns this place into a crystal wonderland (we saw photos). The lake freezes in January. The lake is so clear that you can see up to 40 meters down in some places. It isn't until mid June that the ice is completely melted near to the very top of the lake.

We took two tours while on the island from Nikita, another Russian who has run a homestay there for seven years. The first was what I call the Eco-Siberian Bike Push because for our 36km moutain bike trip, we pushed the bikes over 3/4 of it. Our excursion to a lake at the center of the island began at 10 am and after countless breakdowns of all four bikes (free-swinging handle bars, a broken pedal, no rear brakes, seat adjustments) we got very little time actually on the bike seats. At the top of the lake, John's tire blew and we had an 18km bike push back to the village. We arrived back at Lube's at 9:30 pm - over two hours late for dinner.

Our second island adventure was a bit less strenuous but we began to really appreciate the linquistic differences of the world. We took a van ride with 2 Swiss (Susan and her mother Olga), the 2 Finns and a Russian guide to the top of the 70km island to see the cliffs and hopefully the world's only fresh-water seals. Our Russian driver pointed out all the landmarks (the big tree growing next to the little tree, the radio tower - the islanders are proud of these things for some reason) and the ruins of the old fish factory. His long explanation in Russian was a bit shortened when translated into Czech, an even shorter sentence when it made it to German and by time it got to English, it was one word "Fish". We all got a good laugh out of that.

The guide we had to pay for (who only spoke Russian) was worthless and we wondered why she was with us. Her only contribution to the day was pointing to the wild flowers and commenting in Russian "Aren't they pretty. And no one even planted them."

We didn't end up seeing any of the seals but we did get great views, did some nice hiking, and got to meet some other travelers. Our time on Olkhon Island was a highlight of our time in Russia so far.