Ulan Ude and Buryatia

Ulan Ude, capital of Buryatia and home to the world's largest Lenin head! This moderately remote city had a good feel from the time we stepped off the train. We didn't have any trouble finding an economical place to stay and it served as a good base for a bit of exploring. Just outside of town is a Buddhist complex with all sorts of temples and datsans. It was an easy excursion logistically using local transport with fixed pricing. I'm definitely getting a list of things I appreciate about Russia, the mini-bus swarms is one of them. Another is that pedestrians have rights. Another is that I have not seen a maintained lawn so far. And if it works it's left alone. Energy and resource speaking, letting something idle at 80-90 percent is so much more efficient than expending effort to keep something at 95-100 percent. Unfortunately this is the visual range and is easy to judge but if you can get by that then a lot of things are fairly equal (to the "west"), of course some being more equal than others. With the efficient datsan visit completed by lunch we had time to go to an outdoor ethnographic museum with many transplanted wooden structures from the Baikal region. I enjoyed that part, but the zoo portion was a little disturbing. Wild beasts don't enjoy the same level of "animal rights" as we're used to. I'll try not to judge as I'm not an animal rights philosopher. Some more city meandering the next day along with some "planning" yielded a short adventure that we'd attempt the following morning. We caught a minibus with our bikes(on top) and drove 6-7 hours north to a town called Berguzin and then will cycle to Uro and explore the Berguzin river valley where the mother of Genghis/Chingis Khan's mother was born. Due to communication ignorance and a need to get out of Berguzin we ended up going north instead of west and ended up heading towards a small town called Ulyun. After a bug infested but stunningly gorgeous night in a tent we ventured into Ulyun. A picturesque tiny town with wood houses, big piles of logs for the fire in the front yards(familiar to Revelstokians!), and some shy but friendly locals. We were thrilled that during the exploration of their second street (out of 2) we were herded by a local to the one of the town teachers who spoke english. It was one of those valuable travel interactions where each could relate and talk about normal stuff and be fairly comfortable in each's skin. As it turns out there are no outsiders that go there, even Russian tourists. The road to get there, as we knew, was many hours from the big city on washboard and pothole HELL...then another hour or two from Berguzin on even worse roads that we had the pleasure of biking(curses by yours truly omitted). So very lucky we took a wrong turn! The bike ride back to Berguzin was the same washboard and spiced up by cold rain and some dog chases. Thanks to who told me about the raise your arm like you have a rock trick(Travis? Cornelius?). I found that using a real rock works even better...but if you only have one rock and 3 dogs...make sure you use it on the biggest and baddest, not just the first wave of attackers. Upon arriving in Berguzin we secured a surprisingly comfy hotel and heated our chilled bones with some hot showers. Dinner was in a canteen where we stuffed ourselves with tea, soup, and super-buns infused with potato or meat. So far, the best and cheapest meal in Russia! Getting a bus the next morning involved about 4 hours of waiting, dictionary communications, and pleading to get a minivan that would take our bikes. Finally a very nice driver managed to convince another driver who had previously said no. 6 more hours of the spine-melter3000 trying not to think about the bike punishment above and we were back. Tomorrow we go to Mongolia!