15 Aug Crossing into Mongolia
Soon come: Crossing into Mongolia
Early start to our goodbye to Baikal and nice cool weather and bright sun to set us on a course for Ulan Ude and the Mongol border. Our travels took us all along the southern shore of the inland sea, making us appreciate its size even more.
We had a nice stop at a roadside cafe where we tasted fresh-baked pastries with wonderful fillings and picked up fresh mountain blueberries, our first fruit in a really long time.
Another highlight of our travel day was the brief stop in Ulan Ude, where we snapped some pictures of a giant Lenin head (though sadly we couldn’t get the bus parked in front of the statute) and also found some wifi at a Subway shop. Random.
Also we saw a guy passed out drunk, and when Sarita went up make sure he was alive, a random passer-by rushed over and slapped him hard in the face and shouted what we imagined was the Russian equivalent of “get up, you are embarrassing us in front of the tourists!” The guy sprang to his feet and literally ran down the street.
Later in the day, we were passed by a carload of folks that shouted “South Carolina!!” as they went by, then pulled over. It was a guy and his daughter, John and Keri Penick, who were touring this part of the countryside together. Amazingly, they were from Roanoke, Virginia so we had an enjoyable few minutes chatting about life back home, and he’d even been to Floydfest. Nice meeting! Of course, while Don, Tommy, Will, and I were enjoying our chat, the miscreant foreigners aboard the bus were shouting “free us! help! we are captives! we are chained!” None of us paid them any attention.
Our final night of camping in Russia was spent in a nice lay-by with beautiful rolling hills and nice pine trees. It was here we had our much-anticipated proper Italian pasta dinner cooked by Stefano and Pietro. We all agreed that the meal was definitely worth the hype. I will never again doubt the capacity for cooking by Italians, especially while wild camping. Simple ingredients, but wonderful outcome.
