August 24, 2014
Lake Baikal: With a Czech mate... for a bit
The hills continued the next day and it was still a wonderful road, but then it got even better when I crested a hill and saw Lake Baikal below me. This huge lake was really a beautiful sight, surrounded as it was by mountains and glistening in the sunshine. I whizzed down towards it and the road then followed it's southern shore, although the road was certainly not flat, with the railway line claiming the land closest to the shore and the road forced to rise and fall over the terrain. The plus side came with the great views.
Keen to give the 'Russian-hostel-receptionists-are-the-most-beautiful-girls-in-the-world' dice one last throw, I had booked myself in for a night in one in Ulan-Ude for the 26th. That meant I had to put in a couple more really long days, but the scenery was so nice now it was a real pleasure to cycle. I felt strong, I felt healthy, I felt happy and completely on top of things. I was zooming towards another 150 kilometres with seemingly nothing to stop me when I came across a touring bicycle parked up outside a cafe. And no it didn't belong to Rod Hull and Emu.
Petr wanted to ride on together. In fact he wanted to ride together all the way to Mongolia, and across it. I wasn't entirely sure it was going to work. We seemed to have very different styles and I also wasn't 100% sure that he wasn't wanted by Interpol. It also seemed a little strange that the man would cycle on ahead of me without waiting for several days, and then say he wanted to ride together. But one evening couldn't hurt, could it?
A series of interruptions held us up that I won't go into, but I was still more then ten kilometres short of 150 when Petr decided that we absolutely must go and camp by the lake (so he could swim before bed obviously.) And where we went down to it was an absolutely beautiful spot, a beach littered with driftwood. I got my tent up first and decided to go in for a dip too. The water was incredibly clear. It wasn't deep enough to swim but I knelt in it and the waves rolling in hit me full in the face and it was a glorious moment. I hopped around screaming from the cold. Petr was still busy with his tent and paid me no attention whatsoever. Later I saw him splashing water on himself in the surf like a madman. It really was a beautiful lake, such clear water. In fact Gayle had told me you could safely drink the water out of the lake, although I wouldn't recommend that now me and Petr have had a wash in it.
Today's ride: 139 km (86 miles)
Total: 26,582 km (16,507 miles)
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