Day 24: Lake Baikal

We thought it would be a good idea to take a detour, and instead of heading south into Mongolia, we would go Northwest some more and visit Lake Baikal, the largest lake in the world

To give you some perspective, you could pour all the Great Lakes into Baikal, and it wouldn't overflow it's banks. It contains 1/5 the freshwater in the entire world.

For sure it was something we wanted to see. So we headed out, straight into a massive rainstorm, worse than anything we had seen so far. Every time it started to clear to the east, we would head west, into the darkest part of the storm. What started out as a nice 200k ride to Baikal, turned into 350km of pain.

Once we "got" to the lake, you would think the road would go down by the shore, so you could see it. Nope. This is Russia. The train runs by the lake. The road runs about 100 yards inland behind a nice bunch of bush and trees. So every 10 km or so, if we stood up on our pegs, we could catch a glimpse of the lake.






Overlooking lake Baikal

So, after riding in the rain forever, we finally stopped and asked where the nearest hotel was. 100km away, was the answer. This is Russia, we've come to expect this. So, since it would take us longer to turn around, than keep going, we drove another 100km (actually it was 130km), until we saw what we thought was an access road to the lake (this would be the first one)

It was a vacation complex, complete with a couple old hotel buildings, lots of kids, and tons of people. We got mobbed at the gate. I went in to negotiate security for the bikes, while Cory and Petar stayed behind to fend off the crowds.






She liked the bike. :)







Today: 343 km