Getting to Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal Russia

After nearly a year away from the city of Irkutsk, Russia I’m back again with some time to travel around. With a couple of days already in the city I was headed out down P418 highway for a journey to Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal. Olkhon Island is located at about the halfway point from North to South on Lake Baikal. As you get close to the island, you drive out on a peninsula and then take a ferry to make it over to the island. Olkhon Island is also the third largest lake bound island in the world and has a population of inhabitants of around 1,500 people.

The drive out there was scenic and also offered some good stops along the way. Notably some randomly painted bus stops every so often as well as many Buryat ‘spirit’ stations as I like to call them.  There seemed to be one of these areas off on the side of the road every 10-15 minutes as we were driving along and from what I was told, they are meant for travelers passing by to stop and either tie a ribbon to the pole or leave some Vodka. Why, I have no idea but it is meant to bring good luck for your travels. When I asked about the Vodka tradition I was told it was started by the Buryats (the natives to this land). However, that part of the story just didn’t add up… Somehow I’m thinking the Russians ran out of ribbons to tie and felt compelled to leave something else instead…

There actually was a lonely bottle of Vodka placed in front of one of these that we passed along the way

Anyway, the drive was good, about an hour to get to the first main village where we would turn off onto another highway and continue onward to Lake Baikal at Olkhon Island. On this last stretch of highway, the landscape was changing again, from open fields to more of the traditional Siberian forest with its plentiful white bark trees. However, the drive along the forest hills had changed yet again and as we got close to Lake Baikal, the landscape was starting to resemble more of that of Mongolia with rolling hills, rock, and sporadic trees here and there. It was both beautiful and desolate. And for those not familiar with Lake Baikal, it is declared a UNESCO world heritage site and rightly named so due to its size (contains 20% of the world’s freshwater), its age (oldest in the world) and its diverse ecosystem. As an example of just how diverse, Lake Baikal has an abundance of freshwater seals living within its waters. They are highly intelligent too I might add…

It just wouldn’t be a proper road trip without some cattle blocking your route every now and then…

We did see quite a lot of wild horses on the way out which seemed random but cool nonetheless. Eventually we reached Lake Baikal and a nice overlook before reaching the ferry that would be taking our car over to the island.

I guess this was meant to be the gatekeeper over the island. Unfortunately, I didn’t bother to try to translate the Russian info posted but he is standing quite tall on an overlook…

When we parked to wait for the ferry, the entire area seemed devoid of life. There were a couple of lonely looking cafes when we got out of the car and once we got out, I realized just how quiet it was, it reminded me of Mongolia… again. So quiet you could hear a bird a 1/2 mile away just flapping its wings.

This was one of the most interesting wood burning stoves I’d ever seen. Said it was German-made on the side… Looked ancient but did the job.

So we made our way over to the little cafe for a quick-lunch while waiting on the ferry which was to come about every 1/2 hour. I had eaten some ‘Pozi” which is a classic Russian dish along with some tea, another staple complementing Russian cuisine. Eventually the ferry turned up, about 5 vehicles had made their way on and then we were off for a short 15 minute journey over to Olkhon Island.

The ferry ride over to Olkhon Island by car

One of the interesting facts I learned while en route was that this island had just gotten electricity run to it under the waterway just 8 years ago. In the decade prior to that, the locals living on the island had used diesel for power and before that…. nothing. Needless to say, I’m sure the past few years have seen a decent amount of change when compared to the past 100 before that. As soon as we crossed over to the island, we were on our way, about a 40 kilometer drive on a dirt road that was quite rough in places to say the least. We were headed to the main village called Khuzhir.

One of the wild dogs we saw en route out to the village. The picture is a bit fuzzy as we were trying to drive in reverse and take a picture of him while it was running in the opposite direction with some type of squirrel in his mouth

We were averaging only about 20 km per hour (maybe 13-15 mph for a comparison) so you can imagine how bad the dirt road was in places. But, we eventually made it to the village of Khuzhir which is about the half way point on the island’s west coast … now, to find a place to stay, another feat which we were about to undertake. More to follow….