End of maslenitsa week

Obviously, the maslenitsa festivities will not carry on forever, so to celebrate the last day, we returned to Taltsi to see how the party was being celebrated there - apparently its quite a big thing there, so the six of us and Tamara went and caught the bus at about 10:30 and went down there for some fun. The marshrutka was extremely easy to get - we found one instantly and seeing as as soon as we got in it was full, it left immediately and arrived at Taltsi about an hour later (for the first time, I've seen a traffic jam on that road - it seems that most people try to actively get out of the city and celebrate maslenitsa in the countryside somewhere (mostly in Taltsi, it would seem).

Emily with a camel (not Ikbar)

We walked into the main part of the village, which was very crowded - there were stalls everywhere selling a lot of different Russian delicacies and gifts. Also wandering around the village were some ponies, horses and even a camel, looking very out of place, and obviously ferrying small children around as if we were on some beach in England. As we were taking photos, one small girl dressed in the traditional Russian maslenitsa outfit came up to Dries and told him that he had to pay 5 roubles per photo he took of her. Obviously, we met this with astonishment and informed her that there was no way she was getting these 5 roubles off us, so she went away to harass other people. In addition to this, at the drinking stand, I ordered a hot chocolate. The woman put the chocolate powder into a take-away cup and then filled it with cold water, thereby completely defeating the point of the hot chocolate. When I pointed this out to her, she at least had the good grace to give me my money back, although she was unable to find another sachet of hot chocolate to give me.

The whole of Taltsi was full of games and things - I gave the stilts a try, thereby discovering that this is not my secret hidden talent, nor, apparently, is knocking other people off a log with a sack full of something (not entirely sure what was in the sack, but it was fairly heavy). There was also a long rope in the centre of  Taltsi, which people would occasionaly play tug-of-war on for no particular discernible reason. Two people would pick up the rope and start off, and immediately about 50 other Russians would swarm to the rope and start helping one side of the other, very liberally changing positions whenever they felt like it! After watching these for a short while, a procession of very-traditionally-Russian-dressed people walked straight through the centre and down nearer the river, so obviously everyone followed them. Once there, the man at the head of the procession began shouting in a very odd voice and gave a short speech about maslenitsa, continuously pointing at the doll made to represent maslenitsa standing behind him. Eventually he let out a load of words I was unable to comprehend and everybody started to dance around, holding hands, in a large circle. I was dragged into it by a couple of the ladies who appeared to be working there, skipping around with everyone else, but I completely lost sight of everyone else I was there with in the crowd.

After the dance, I got a message from Guillaume, who had told me he would meet up with us a little later - seeing as I'd lost the others, I walked back, and, after getting slightly lost several times, eventually found Guillaume in the main square again. We then headed down towards the river, where he was tempted to jump off a high plank onto an air-bed type castle, but I eventually convinced him the queue was too long to wait for and we wandered back down to the lake. On the way, there were more games being played by the crazy Russians. On the one side there was a massive snowball fight, with half of the people hiding behind a large snow-fort, and the other half pelting them relentlessly with snowballs, whereas on our left, we saw a large pole with four gifts at the top which four Russian men climbed up to retrieve these gifts, whilst everyone else stood around below, shouting up words of encouragement..!

After this, we met up with Ingrid, but she didn't seem entirely keen on our idea of walking across the Angara, so the two of us walked across on our own. It took us about 20/30 minutes to cross the Angara from one side to the other. At first, everything seemed good, we even met up with some Russians who had gone some of the way and were on the way back, and one man who asked us to take a photo of him. Eventually, though, the footsteps we were following to the other side seemed to turn back, and from then on the ice seemed a little more fragile, and the layer of snow far less dense. Therefore, we obviously proceeded with considerably more caution just so that nothing would happen. Obviously, nothing did, as the ice, despite being thinner on the other side, was still a good 20 centimetres thick, and it would take a lot more than either of us to break through it!

Nick and Guillaume - on stilts

We got back to our side of the shore about an hour after leaving it, and there immediately bumped into Ingrid and Nick, who told me that the others had gone back to Irkutsk just a short while before. We slowly followed back, as neither Guillaume nor Nick had tried the stilts and were keen to have a go on them. However, they were there as part of a group, and therefore hurried away soon after to join the other people at the GreatBaikalTrail group before leaving. We walked back through the museum, again, this being the first time Guillaume was there, we felt it would be better if he got to have a look around, and then went back to the entrance where we waited for a marshrutka. Needless to say, everybody else was also waiting for a marshrutka, and so we didn't look like we were going to have much luck. We tried hitchhiking, but nobody would take us either. After a long while waiting, we finally managed to grab ourselves a marshrutka, although we almost had difficulties squeezing in, as everybody in Taltsi seemed to want to get into the same one.

Today, back in Irkutsk, the only thing of any interest which has occurred has been me buying a new telephone, with a Russian keypad, which will finally allow me to text people in Russian!