The Steppes of Siberia and Dr. Zhivago

Sunday comes with a more relaxed pace. After last night’s “relaxing” sauna complete with birch twig beatings, I am ready for relaxed.

These are marks on my back three days later from the birch twigs

After breakfast, more ice fishing. I catch three small fish and actually remove the hook from the mouth of one—it doesn’t sound like much, but the fishing I’ve done in the last few decades has been on charter fishing boats and very little of that. The twin driving forces for the day’s schedule have been “We’ve got to be out of the rental house by 2PM” and Jim saying he needs to work on tomorrow’s classes. It is 2PM and we are still fishing. By 3PM we stop and have lunch. Finally, at 4PM the five of us are in the Land Cruiser and packed for Irkutsk. The 2PM deadline had some apparent flexibility. Andrei asks us if we want to drive back to the road by land on rutted paths or bounce along the ice some more. Ice is, of course, chosen. He spins the vehicle 720 degrees on the ice twice in the first two miles when the studded snow tires lose traction. 5PM finds us on the road to Irkutsk through the steppes of Siberia made famous to many Americans in the 1965 movie of Boris Pasternak’s book, Dr. Zhivago. The terrain reminds me of eastern Montana, but Jim says northern Manitoba. You get the idea. Rare signs of humans, barren plains and hills, rocky outcroppings and the occasional Buriyat “temple”. The pace of the journey changes when we stop to leave cigarettes alongside the road as thanks to the gods for the fishing success, then turn down a dirt road to ask a young Buriyat boy if this is the road to the sacred mountain where every four years the Buriyat equivalent of the Olympics are held. He overcomes his shyness and says yes with an apple being his reward. He bites in as soon as it touches his hands. The dirt road is mostly mud and ice, so we angle up the incline a little and travel cross country. We can see the sacred mountain after a few miles, but cannot practically get there so we retrace our route past some abandoned red brick buildings with some windows still intact. It is what’s left of a Soviet era collective farm. It is unimaginable considering a commune here trying to make a living off the harsh land. We pass horses roaming free, sometimes on the road, long-haired, horned cattle also sometimes on the road and reach Irkutsk before 9PM. The police have set up a traffic stop “to check papers” our hosts explain, but our vehicle is not selected. Jim has gotten some work done during the ride. He is a bit anxious how tomorrow’s first classes will play out. We marvel at the events of the weekend and crawl into our dormitory style twin beds for the night.