Day 41-43: Banya Chalet

After leavng Monglia, we were do for a bit of break, and we found it at this wonderful Chalet in the woods. It was run by a Russian couple, and he had built all the Chalet's by hand. They were very nice, with a main room, kitchen, couches, deck, fire pit, and sleeping areas upstairs.

We ended up staying 3 days. Part of the reason was that we had some much needed parts for the bikes (tires, electrical, tubes, etc) and they had been delayed, so we decided to stay here, instead of driving to Barnaul right away, where we would have to stay in an expensive hotel.

The other reason was the Russian Banya.

















Now a Russian Banya requires a bit of explanation (you can go to the Wiki page here, but I will give a short lession) A Banya is generally three rooms, the steam room, a Shower room, and the outer room. The fire and water tanks are in the steam room, which is the hottest. So when the room is steaming hot, you throw almost boiling water from the water tank on hot rocks built into the fire tank. This immediately cooks you. Literally. It feels like you are being cooked alive it is so hot.

But the shower part is glorious. It has two spouts, one from the hot water tank (heated by the fire) and one cold. The hot water is boiling hot, so you only need a little. So you mix up a nice washing tub full of hot water, and proceed to have a shower/bath/steam. Every once in a while, if you get too hot, you turn on the overhead (cold) shower to cool off.

I sat down with the innkeeper, and he drew me up the plans for it. I have every intention of building one someday. They are fantastic.

We would walk into town (it was a small resort style community with a couple stores), buy some chicken, pototato's, rice, corn etc. every night, then have a nice charcoal or Wood BBQ.

We didn't want to leave, but the journey must continue, so we took off for Barnaul.