September 18th, 2008 ~ Bol'Shoe Goloustnoe, Siberia

Leaving the Ranger Station

I love hiking and camping with people who know how to hike and camp. The Americans with me have accumulated years of nights under the stars. Anya and Roma, the Russians, are very much at ease with old-style camping. We build a big fire and arrange a large stick over it to hold a couple of pots, one for boiling water and one for cooking whatever variation of porridge the upcoming meal will feature. Pour in oats, buckwheat, barley, or rice, add the contents of the cans with unidentifiable contents, stir in some berries and minty leaves picked nearby, and after it has boiled awhile it's dinner. Or breakfast. The pot of hot water is for tea which we drink with meals and then fill two Thermos bottles so we'll have more tea along the trail.

We survived the night in the Baba Yaga Hut without incident other than some hella-scary snoring, and hiked into yet another spectacular day. Strong, cold winds again, but then this is Siberia and it is September and winter is going to be here soon. The trail continued its up and down ways, presenting us with lots of challenges to consider as we put together our thoughts on advising the Great Baikal Trail Association in how to proceed.

The northern half of the trail that we completed today is new territory both for Anya and for Roma. We were more intent on covering ground than making detailed assessments of the trail. Even so, it took a long time to cover some of the terrain. In places we waded in the lake. In others we climbed high on cliffs. Then we would hit gorgeous stretches of woodland trail where Anya would hit the afterburners and leave it to us to keep up with her. "My father took me hiking when I was young and he did not wait," she told me, "and so I don't wait either." All righty, then.

Roma had a huge pack on his shoulders and was carrying more weight than the rest of us. We tried many times to get him to share some of his load, but he insisted on Russian stoicism and labored on, moving so fast it was a challenge to keep up with him, too.

"Isn't it wonderful that with all the options of color our sky came out blue?" John Griffith remarked as we hiked. I'd never thought about that, but with the lake and sky more than filling our fields of vision, he had a very good point.

Lunch among the Siberian Fairy Tale Houses

As yesterday afternoon waned, we reached a ranger station on a meadowed peninsula about ten miles from the end of the trail. There were a dozen buildings. Some made up what appeared to be a small homestead with a couple of cows, chickens, and a garden. The ranger met us (I assume from the pin on his hat he had official capacity) and Anya and Roma made arrangements for us to spend the night. There was a bunkhouse with cozy little rooms and a dining hall with a small kitchen. We got out of the wind and Anya cooked a pot of borsch--beet soup that she served with mayonaise, bread, cheese, and a condensed milk spread for the bread that was even sweeter than all the sweets we'd had so far.

After dinner with did "banya"--the Russian word for sauna. And this was the deluxe banya of all time. Boris Yeltsin visited here when he was president of Russia, though I suspect he arrived by boat rather than on foot. The low, wooden building was close to the lake. The first room was set up with a big table and chairs, perhaps for the sampling of vodka. Hanging on pegs on the wall were hats made of felt and shaped like funnels that we could wear into the banya to protect our ears from the heat. The next room had big barrels of water, both cold and hot, that we could mix for washing and splashing. Beyond was the door to the room that gets so hot you need a felt funnel hat to protect your ears from abuse. Hanging on the walls were bundles of branches that we could use to whack one another, should the urge arise. Anya told us that if we got too hot we could run down and jump in the lake, "but I would not recommend if you have the cardiac problems."

So to summarize. I found myself naked but for a felt funnel hat, sitting on the same banya bench where a naked Boris Yeltsin once sat (and perhaps wore the very same hat), barely able to breathe because of the hot steam rolling off the rocks, sweat flowing out of every pore, and I've got to keep an eye on Schubert in case he has a mind to start chasing me with a bundle of branches and I am forced to run into the lake, cardiac problems or no.

We slept really well in the bunkhouse and this morning got an 8 a.m. start, hoping to cover the final ten miles to the village of Bol'shoe Goloustnoe in good time. Once again the trail presented challenges, but also astonishments. We came into a clearing and were surrounded by remarkable Russian houses right out of some fantasy story. "This is where the fairies live," Anya told us, and she might well be right about that.

Mischa and Anya

"This is where we're having lunch," I told her, and we broke out the sausage and cheese and bread and tea and sugar and dined amongst the fairy subdivision.

The final miles dragged a bit as the trail turned into a two-lane forest lane, and that turned into a dirt road and that into pavement. We walked all the way through the village that marks the end of the trail and came to the home of Mischa and Fiya Mangaskin, who are opening their home to us for this evening. More and more tourists are coming to this village, in part because of the trail and in part because of easy access to the lake, and an increasing number of people are making a business of "homestays"- a bed and breakfast setup that is more akin to us piling in and living an evening with the people who already live there.

Mischa is 55, a Buryat, who works for the telephone company, and has a good grasp of world geography and affairs. He went out a few minutes ago to fire up the banya out back--a small version of the Yeltsin banya of last night, but just right for what we needed. He also milked the cow and brought in the bucket of milk for us to drink with the dinner Fiya has cooked for us. The table has a big bowl of potatoes with a few meatballs on top, a bowl of cabbage salad, another bowl with finely grated carrots, and plates with bread, cheese, and cookies. There are jellies and bowls of homemade butter and homemade sour cream. The conversation is already lively, with Anya translating but Mischa obviously picking up much of the English conversation.

We've talked a lot about what it is like to live here. In winter the ice is thick enough for easy travel up and down the lake. That was a good thing in the wayback days when the Cossacks came and the Buryat had to flee the far side of the lake and come to this side. Their appeals to the Czar to come and help them defend their way of life was answered with success, the Russians who came from the West intermingling to create a blended culture.

Tomorrow we catch the bus to Irkutsk. We've made it the full length of the Lastvyanka-to-Bol'Shoe Goloustnoe trail, and that's a good thing. I suspect more good things are waiting for us soon.

BB

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