Todays breakfast consisted of a totally huge slab of cottage cheese and sugar pie, made from flaky pastry. It was damn good, even if said slab measured around 20cm x 20cm. Yesterdays now stale bread made a reappearance, as did the cheese and rhubarb and orange marmalade. It honestly took me around 30 minutes to get the pie down, it tasted great, but man, it was heavy going to get it all eaten. It sat like a big fat house brick in my stomach, luckily todays trekking did not begin for another 2 hours.
Valyera our trekking guide and resident botanist with an interest in the algae living in the lake turned up at 11am sharp. He had on a pair of Teva sandals, instead of boots and a pair of the most gnarled, cracked and tough looking feet I have ever seen.
We set off at a brisk pace down the main road of Listvyanka, once that had run out, we then began a slow climb up a hill on a forest access road, where we ate wild strawberries and learned about the local Doc Rose, that can be used as an antiseptic for cuts. We followed this road for a few more kilometres and eventually set off along a narrow forest track. This trek was sold to us as “soft trekking”, which is about 50% right, the soft part is completely wrong. Whilst it’s not a challenging walk, there are some pretty steep bits and very narrow bits, where if you put a foot wrong, your going down the side of a cliff and landing in a broken heap at the bottom of the lake. The path is also muddy and slippery in parts, pretty tough on the ankles and knees. I’d call it more of an easy to medium difficulty walk.
We were told that Valyera spoke excellent English, but it turned out that this really consisted of the words “attention”, “20 metres”, “5 minutes” and “how are you”. Every time there was a perceived hazard on the path, Valyera would bark “ATTENTION”, to well, bring our attention to it, whilst continually asking “how are you”, meaning, are you doing OK. When asked, “how far to the top of this hill” he would answer “20 metres” or “5 minutes”.
We saw some beautiful views of the lake, eventually climbing to the top of one of the mountains where the plan was for us to descend and have lunch on the stony beach below. After about 10 minutes of discussion we managed to find out that we were walking back via the same route and that Tanya would have to ascend a bloody steep hill to get back from the beach. This, we could not do, so instead we had lunch on the top of the mountain. Valyera lit what was basically a bonfire and began to cook our lunch, which was mushroom soup, cakes, biscuits, lollies, potato and cabbage pies, followed up with some caramel pies and finally a pot of forest tea, made with all manner of wild spearmints, which again is a no no for those that are up the duff.
Having had around 50,000 cups of tea at breakfast and about 50,000 more at lunch, I was bursting and needed to relieve myself in the forest. We walked back along the same track in the warm afternoon sun, Valyera collected wild mushrooms that he will dry and eat during the winter.
We arrived back in the town, and bought a beer and some Sprite for Tan’s, then we headed down to the beach via Olga’s to change and pick up a towel.
The beach is great, all little pebbles and no annoying sand that gets into everything. I dug a little pit for our drinks and buried them underwater to cool down, whilst I nerved myself up for a swim.
The weather was stunning, a light breeze, 25 degrees Celsius, no clouds and a clear view to the snowcapped mountains on the other side of the lake.
I stripped off and took a few small steps into the lake, it’s bloody freezing. I ventured further, by this time I could not feel anything below the knee, I got out to where the water was at around bum height and went under. A full two seconds later I was seated on the beach, shivering, the warmth slowly coming back to my extremities. After a bit more time in the sun and a now icy cold beer in my belly, it was time for dip number two. This time I think I was in for a 5 full seconds. The water is around 5 to 7 degrees this time of year. To warm up, we went and had a coffee.
Back at Olga’s we had Omul and potato for dinner, as there was another traveler at Olga’s, I was able to have a banya this evening. Olga, who’s son is a dwarf kept encouraging Tanya, to have a banya, “my banya not hot”, “my banya no problem” she’d say. We did check it out, but at around 50 degrees inside, and perhaps the evidence of one too many banyas walking around next to us, Tans decided to pass.
I do have to say, the banya is totally awesome. There is a small changing room that you enter from outside and another door off that, where you enter the banya proper.
Inside the banya is a stove, which is full of scalding hot water, a huge metal tub of cold water and a series of wooden benches the same as a dry sauna. You risk burning your hand on the stove, fill a plastic tub with piping hot water, dilute it with a little cold and douse yourself in it. You then soap up, wash your hair and other bits and pieces and then continue to douse yourself in hot water until thoroughly clean. It is the bathroom of champions and would go down well during the Siberian winter, which regularly cracks minus 40.
The family left us alone in the house at around 9pm, Tans had a shower in Sputnik 1 and we both fell asleep in our childrens beds.
