My boyfriend came to visit me for 2 weeks and last week we made a 3-day-tour to the island Olkhon. Olkhon is the biggest island on the Baikal, with a length of 72 km and average width of 10 km. Not far from the island there is the deepest point of the Baikal - 1642 m.
5 years ago I already spent 1day on the island and I was so stoked that I wanted to come here again.
Olkhon is located 250 km away from Irkutsk and to get there there is a high amount of marschrutka (microbuses).
From a small village Sahurta at the Baikal shore there is a ferry connection to the island available. From there it takes 1 more hour to get to the administrative capital of the Island, Khuzhir. The population of the island is approx. 1500 and the most of the people live in Khuzhir. It's also the touristic centre of the island. Despite it is just 35 km to get to Khuzhir, the journey takes 1 hour, because the main road is like a wash board, bumpy and holey. There are also many side roads but also there are full of holes so that it is not possible to drive fast. In total it took us 5 hours to get from Irkutsk to Khuzhir.
On the ferry
We rented a room in a guest house not far from the beach. Here is the beach:
A mobile sauna on the beach
On Olkhon the population is approx. 1500 people and the most of them are Buryats. Buryats are native people of the region around Baikal and are related to Mongols. Traditionally they were nomads but nowadays the most of the Buryats gave up the nomadic way of life.
The most famous place of interest on the island is the Shaman's Rock. It is a holy place of the Buryats and formerly it was not allowed to enter there. Nowadays it is the symbol of the island and you find it on many postcards and souvenirs.
And here some more impressions of the island:
On the day after our arrival we decided to rent bikes and to explore the surroundings. We rented the bikes at a price of RUR 80/hour or 300/8 hours (at other places you could get them for RUR 100/hours or 500/day).
Firstly we wanted to ride to the north of Khuzhir, but the guy who rented us the bikes, told us that there is no road but only sand so that we wouldn't be able to ride the bikes. Instead he suuggested us to go to the lake Khankhoy, the warmest lake on the island. It is located at 11 km south of Khuzhir. You can take a longer way there via hills around, that is approx. 4-5 km longer than a direct way and take the shorter road back. We accepted the suggestion thankfully.
At the beginning we went onto a hill not far from the village, with an arbor on the top and a great view on the surroundings.
There we met 4 young people, who also were doing a bike tour. A couple from Kiel (North Germany), that, just like me, have been on the way through Russia for 2,5 months and after wanted to travel by train to Mongolia and China. In total they plan to travel during 6 months. And a young man from Saarbrücken (Southwest Germany), who was there with his Russian girlfriend. He told us that he is travelling a lot due to his job and soon would visit a place near my home village. I wanted to know what is his job and he told us that he is "one of the few famous foreign DJ's in Russia" - DJ Vincent Vega. When I told my relatives about him, the girlfriend of my nephew said that she knows him and his music.
After we finished our interesting and friendly conversation, we continued our tour to the lake.
Here, finally, we arrived at the lake. The lake is separated by a narrow sand bank from the Baikal and is hardly warmer than the Baikal water, contrary to what we have been told by the guy at the bike rental. There we had a break and afterwards went back to Khuzhir.
I must admit, the tour became a small challenge. I haven't ridden a bike for at leat 15 years and was happy that I didn't fall down. And the landskape here is mountainous and hilly, so that the half of the time we had to push our bikes upwards. Besides that the roads are like wash boards that also made it difficult to ride a bike. Anyway the tour was fun and after almost exactly 8 hours we brought our bikes back to the rental just in time.
Here some pictures of the village:
Formerly, this was a fish factory. Now the buildings and boats are abondoned. Only the port is still in use.
This is our hotel complex "Nomad Star" (Zvezda Kochevnika), that is located at the random of the village and not far from the beach. On the territory of the complex there are 2 buildings with rooms, simple and comfortable, a sauna, a kitchen, a hall with table tennis, a children's playground and a place for tents. We had a simple room, with shower and toilette in the corridor. The island is not cheap and such a simple room costs RUR 1000/person and night (approx. EUR 22), incl. breakfast and dinner. A comfortable room, meaning with bathroom in the room, costs a double price. Since we were outside during the whole day anyway, we didn't need any comfort. But there was a problem with water in the morning and evening time. When the most guests wanted to take shower and use water there was not enough pressure to deliver enough water for everybody, so that on our floor there was no water at all. On the second day we checked it on the ground floor and were lucky, there was water in the shower, while only one shower were working. On the third day we had a bath in the Baikal. It was very annoying when you couldn't wash even your hands because there was not even a drop of water... Besides that it was a nice complex.
Some more pictures of the island:
On the way back to the continent:
