The last days have been eventful. Nipu had been acting out, but I will come to that later.
We spent the weekend on the jewel of Siberia, lake Baikal. We heard that Putin had went there for a swim a couple of months ago, so we thought we need to do that also. The thing is that the water isn’t as comfortable this time of the year, and neither was the weather. Under the clouded sky we turned our jeep into a diesel-powered sauna and even whipped ourselves with a birch whisk before dipping. Very refreshing. The Baikal area was very nice, we camped in the woods next to the lake, grilled and drank beer.
We were circling the area with the cars when Nipu started leaking oil. I blame myself for this one since people had been telling me to fix the bottom but I had left that for later since it wasn’t leaking much before. But now it did really leak. We fixed it with the help of a gold-teethed villager. In a few moments the bottom was like new and the price was only a few euros.
After packing up we passed by Ulan-Ude towards Chita. It was a 750 kilometers away, and the beginnig of the road was spent looking at the scenery of Siberia. It is emptiness, forest, steppe, rivers and hills. Eighty kilometers from Chita Nipu’s engine died suddenly. At that point it wasn’t funny anymore. The ignition was fucked up again. The same deal again, patrol had to drag Nipu once more. When we got to Chita there was no spare parts anywhere, everyone was saying the same, “Niet nada”. Even finding a place to sleep proved difficult, three of four hostels had bankcrupted and the last one had raised it’s prices. We found a smaller place in a ghetto alley but they didn’t want to take tourists in. At eleven o’clock in the evening we managed to find a hotel that accepted us with an ok price.
In the morning we went out hunting for the part and because of a few setbacks spent all day on this mission. In the evening we took the car to repairmen since we didn’t have the part. The whole shop was wondering about this old machine. After a while they had bought a new ignition coil for a Moskovich, put it in Nipu and voilá, it’s moving again. I hope it keeps like that since we met a local guy who told us about the road we are heading for. It isn’t in the best condition, and he expected Nipu to have troubles there. The road is not even on the maps, so we’ll have to see how it goes. We were told that people driving on that road break five to twelve tires on the way. Sounds lovely. Roads till this far have been in russian way “normalna”.
The motivation is high though, since we were visiting the local Balalaika master drinking moonshine, eating and listening his playing. After that we got to spend the night at a local guy. Today we’ve been getting ready for the task ahead. It will be three thousand kilometers through Siberia, we should be in Vladivostok next Monday and on the boat to Japan on Tuesday. Let’s see what’s on the road and hope we can make it, nights at least in Siberia are below the zero…
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