Olkhon Island + Ulan Ude

We decided to go and visit Olkhon Island, which is an island in the middle of Lake Baikal. If you imagine the Ibiza of Siberia you’re pretty much there....
We had a 6 hour journey to get there from Irkutsk, and this was a shot from the ferry we took to get to the island. It was a beautiful sunny day, which was a contrast to the overcast days we’d had recently.



One the second day we took a 4x4 tour round the middle, checking out the west, north and east coastlines. A guy in our group kindly let me use his 10-22mm lens, with this and a couple of other pictures being the result. If only I had a spare £500 quid knocking about to buy one....



This is another picture of the lake from the east coast, with this showing the full coast line. A very surreal place like nowhere else I’ve ever visited!


Ulan Ude was our next city, and was quite a quiet place. After the stress of trying to find our hostel for about 3 hours in sub zero temperatures we were just happy to have a bed for the night! The next day was spent visiting a monastery out of town, which was an impressive spectacle, more like a small town in the middle of nowhere.



This photo shows lots of ribbons tied to trees behind the monastery. Different coloured ribbons have different significance as offerings. Green represent thanks for grass, red is everlasting fire, and white is thanks for milk.



We got on our train heading towards Mongolia the day after, and this was the first journey where we started to see real changes in the scenery. This photo was taken just as we circled round the bottom of Lake Baikal.