Пик Черского

This weekend has been a slightly longer one than usual - starting with my having Wednesday off from work (the students were being let off early and the school was therefore closing a bit earlier than usual). Thursday was the International woman's day, and so we were also given that day off, although I was told on several occasions that I had to congratulate EVERY single woman of my acquaintance, at least within Russia. Obviously, my list of Russian female acquaintances numbering only about twenty, this wasn't at all hard, and I was able to do it within a few minutes. Because of the slightly longer weekend, we all made plans - a large group (Danya, Dries, Emily, Ingrid, JungHeum, Lara and Maria) went to Olkhon to spend a few days there, and only got back today at some point in the afternoon. It appears that they had a very good time there in any case!

Whilst they were off on Olkhon, I had already received another ivitation to a place I'd never been to before. Guillaume had told me that some of his Russian friends from the state university were going to be going to the mountains to the south of Baikal for a few days, and invited me to go along (this was a couple of weeks ago), so I was very happy to agree to this trip, somewhere different in any case. I borrowed Emily's sleeping bag and got a roll matt of Nastja, a friend of Guillaume's, who was to be going on the trip, but eventually had to drop out because it clashed with a wedding which she'd been invited to. In order to pick up the roll matt, I had to travel to the other side of the town, where I discovered, inconveniently, that the texting capabilities of my telephone are rather limited, as it told me it had sent 3 text messages to Nastja, and I ended up waiting for a long time until eventually I called her and she asked me why I hadn't texted her! After several repeated attempts it appears to be the fault of my mobile... Maybe its memory is limited to 6 messages? Either way, she turned up and met me, and then we went back for tea and pancakes at her house, my first time in a Russian house! It was really nice, and the appartment had a great view over the city.

After sitting there and chatting for a while, I realised I would be late for lessons, so I left and arrived just in time to run to the shop, buy a pen and notebook and make it to lessons on time. On Wednesday, the day before we were due to depart, Guillaume called me and told me that Pierre wouldn't be able to make it, and that therefore we had another space free on the trip - I therefore called up Nick and asked him if he was free (he had initially planned on Olkhon, but he gave his answer too late and they had already booked the trip). The resulting answer, was, therefore, obviously, yes, and so I forwarded some messages to him so he'd know what to bring and where to meey us.

Yulia, Guillaume, Xenia, Denis, Anya, self, Valery, Olesya, Lyuba

Evgeny, leading the way

Thursday morning, I was meant to meet everyone at the train station at 9am, so got up rather earlier than usual, grabbed the sleeping bag and ran off. Obviously, when I say meeting everybody, I mean meeting Guillaume and Nick, and meeting a dozen Russians for the first time, so it was quite hard for me to figure out whom I was going to meet up with. Fortunately, I had Katya's number, so I called her, and she sent me on the right route to the marshrutka that they had pre-booked. In addition to us three foreigners, there were eleven Russians (Anya, Denis, Evgeny, Katya, Lyuba, Masha, Olesya, Sasha, Valery, Xenia, Yulia), whom we of course, became acquainted with over the course of the trip. Unfortunately, I ate some soup which must have gone off a bit the evening previously, which forced me to ask the driver of the marshrutka to pull up on the side of the road, just before Kultuk, for me to go into the bushes. Obviously not the greatest of first impressions! We drove on, through Kultuk and Sludyanka, until we came out of the other side of the latter of these two villages, and pulled up on a gravel-road.

Anya, Guillaume, Katya, Genia and Nick - in the Khamar-Daban tour-base

Old Russian Tractor, from the 1930s.!

Here we all got out, put our backpacks together and headed off down a snow path which appeared more trodden down than elsewhere. This walk to the tour-base at the foot of the mountain took us about six hours. We initially walked past a disused marble quarry with signs warning of rockfalls (brilliant word for the vocabulary). We then seemed to walk through endless taiga, stopping only occasionally for a rest or to let others catch up. I was generally up front, usually either with Denis of with Evgeny, the latter of whom explained to me what some of the trees we were seeing were (not all that much variety, there were a lot of pine trees, mixed in with some other trees occasionally, depending on how close to the mountain we were. After a six hour walk, of course, we were all absolutely worn out and collapsed in the tour base, where we ate, fooled around, and, eventually, fell asleep.

Denis leading the way up the mountain

Friday was the day we had put aside to go up the mountain (and back down again). Unfortunately, this turned out to be the day with the worst weather. It was miserable and foggy, and very hard to see. Again, Denis and I led the way for the most part, although in a large part, this included wading through snow which would sometimes come up to waist-height if you fell through it! The well-worn path we had followed the day before promptly ended, and we were forced to make our own path up. By the time we reached the top of the first mountain, half of the people decided to turn back, as it looked a bit too miserable and dangerous to go on, but the other half carried on. We went through a valley and up another mountain. Once there, Denis and I started across the ridge linking this smaller mountain to Cherskovo, but I decided it was foolish and not a little dangerous to carry on, so I turned back. Evgeny went on after Denis, but I met up with Anya, Guillaume, Olesya and Valery and led them back out of the miserable weather to the first mountain (there were rather ominous black clouds closing in, part of my reason for turning back).We got back and waited there until the other two returned triumphant from the peak, and then went to take a banya, followed by a lovely soup which Lyuba whipped up for us.

Our water source

Saturday was the trip back. Fortunately, we manage to cut a fair bit off the 6 hours it took us to walk in, as this was all entirely downhill, and I did it all in one go, without waiting around or recovering anywhere. On my way, I ran into a Russian man, Max, who had been snowboarding, and we eventually got talking (turns out he lived in New Zealand for four years or so, accounting for his very good level of English). I walked with him all the way to the end, where I met Evgeny, who had skiied the last section thereby arriving somewhat before me at the marshrutka meeting point. Eventually the others all turned up though, and we got back on the marshrutka back to Irkutsk (250 roubles each way). Once there, we stopped at the train station, and after a quick farewell to everyone, I got on a marshrutka with Nick, Olesya and Xenia, which took us back to my residence, where I said goodbye to them as the all went on.

Last night, after getting back and going shopping for a bit, I was invited by the Italians upstairs to dine with them, as I would have been here on my own otherwise. After this, I got talking to Anna-Maria and Monika, the two polish girls who arrived a week ago, and explained to them the sights of and around Irkutsk before going to bed. The remaining few arrived back here this afternoon, and all seem to have had a really smashing time there..!

Lyuba, Yulia, Valery, Sasha and Katya