110 zimnik - lake Baikal: there, around and back againPart 5, Leaving "110 zimnik", Umkhay and Barguzin valley

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Leaving "110 pimnik", Umkhay and Barguzin valley, 21-23.07.2012

In the morning, we passed Birankur river and tried to "translate" it from German as "Bier-an-Kur". Strange word combination, but our free translations made some people inspired :). The road was getting better with every meter. There we have met huntsmen; they were taking a group of water tourists to Barguzin. We talked a bit, and the tourists were really impressed that we had a kid in our crew, and the huntsmen admitted that they were in doubts that my car could withstand the road. Well, it was no surprise for me, all people were having doubts, and we were making our ways.

There was a cordon where we paid 250 rubles for every single person for being in a nature reserve and picked up one of the workers to show us a totally safe way to cross Bargusin, which looked here much wider and much deeper than yesterday. If we just went straight across it, most probably it would have been fun for some gawkers and Lithuanian bikers  on the other bank, but we didn't want to take the risk and opted for the long track; the water there was just half-wheel-deep. By the way, this track is quite well shown in at least one of the videos on YouTube.

That was it. "110 zimnik" was over.

We started our rest visiting Umkhay spa. It is possible to drive up to it, but we left the cars in the parking lot and went on foot via the pendant bridge. It was fun, although nothing special after the pendant bridge over Katun river that leads to Inegen.

There were some bungalows, a cafe, a hot lake and a sort of sauna in the spa. As far as we understood tha sauna was heated by the mineral water from the lake.

Gonig to the sauna costs some money, but you can just get into the lake for free, so we did. The lake had a very strong smell of hydrogen sulfide, its bottom was sometimes really hot and reminded me of Vulcano island in Sicily. There were radiators in the lake which supplied hot water to the local people – very convenient, I think.

Having spent enough time in the lake, we got back to the cars and went to the nearest village (Ulyunkhan) to do some shopping. To please my daughter, I bought her some sweetened cottage cheese, but their expiration date was already in the past. So, I replaced them with oranges which were quite expensive, but Irina got really happy. We also bought some beer and wine to mull.

Then we drove along Barguzin until we reached a bridge, and Mikha was showing us his havigating abilities: we were making circles, arrived to a sand beach which was several meters below us and no way to drive there, etc. Eventually, we arrived to a clearing not far from a local swelling (it's a sort of eastern steading – several houses or sheds, cows and pastures). Gavrilovs started camping right on the clearing, but we were certain to camp on the sand beach, so we drove through the bushes and started going here and there in the beach trying to find a good spot. Sooner or later, we found one and Gavrilovs also came to us, so we started preparing to have rest, sunbathing and fishing.

Barguzin valley is almost always dry and hot. The clouds are all around the place, every morning they were right above our heads, but every day they moved back to the mountains or elsewhere. There was no single drop of rain, and in this day and a half me and Irina turned into two real African albinos (i.e. with white hair).

Gavrilov's backup fuel tank was leaking all the way. We could not do anything about it but put two plastic bottles under two holes and collected around 5-6 liters of diesel for Korando.

Mikha was walking around with a spinning and a special mechanism with lots of various hooks and flies, but didn't get anything, so one night I have been teasing him severely for several hours. However, he brought a local to the camp, and it was a boy living in the steading next door together with his grandma. He brought a 3-liter jar of milk. It was extremely yummy, so we finished the whole jar in 15 minutes. Even I had a couple of mugs although normally it «smells like a cow» for me and I don't drink it.

We were swimming and bathing in Barguzin, went to Ulyunkhan for beer, brought a whole box, but it was not enough anyway. We've met some locals on the bridge who came to fish grayling, but discovered a taimen under the bridge. We admired the fish, and Mikha said he's got tackles for it in his tent, but when we got back with the beer, the taimen has finished whatever it was doing under the bridge and went away, not leaving a single chance to Mikha to catch it.

We discovered that the wine we bought to mull was white (we didn't notice it in the shop), so we drank it as «lemonade» when it was hot and ate the fruits. All in all, we had a great rest, but the taimen could sure make it even better.

The rest of the story (almost no off-road though) is in Russian here and will be available in English soon.

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