Day 529km
Trip 10.794km
Bike 15.819km
The morning sky over Tulun reminded me of Soweto again. Low hanging smoke from wood stoves and some industry mingled with early morning mist.
But the sun was showing also so after Andreas’s morning routine lamentation about no or lousy russian breakfast being served, we were off on our final lap to Irkustsk š
Unfortunatley it soon started raining and at some petrol stop I decided to give Irkutsk a miss for now and head straight for Lake Baikal. Andreas decided to check out Irkutsk Nightlife and so we seperated for a couple of days, probably meeting in or after Ulan-Ude next week.
Good choice it seemed when I passed through the city – another one of those bleak, ugly, blown out of human proportion city dying in its pollution and traffic jams. As you can guess from my words, I am fast tiring of places I normally wouldn’t be seen dead in.
By the time I got to Listvyanka, I had been driving in the heavy rain for a good 5 hours so I was in desperate need of a hot shower. This place is located right by the shore of the lake and it is – well quite disapointing too. One row of houses all geared for tourism (but there are none with this weather) but again only on the surface. Hotels expensive, no internet, no english speaking staff and only the boring monotonous side of russian food. Let’s see what tomorrow brings, this – in my mind at least – was supposed to be a highlight of the trip …
offwe_r 