Super cheap trip, or 3000 km to lake Baikal

in #travel7 years ago (edited)

I'll write about the trip to Baikal by car. I'm a bad writer , so there will be no beautiful words and winged phrases. So, the route Yakutsk-Baikal (about 3000 km or 1900 miles) by car Nissan AD from 6 to 20 (21) August, 2015. Yakutsk is the small and very cold town in the Far East of Russia, Baikal is the biggest lake in the world. A few words about the car: estate, front-wheel drive, a large trunk and cargo tires, and a big plus is a low fuel consumption. Before the trip, the car was certainly inspected and malfunctions were repaired. We decided to go slowly, stop to swim and just relax in beautiful places and not to go in the dark. And we had money limit in 500$ so we didn't stop at hotels, tried not to eat in cafe and we didn't have paid entertainments.
We bought a tent in advance: the most common, 2-bed, costs about 25$ and decided not to take the sleeping bag and ..... regretted it.
our team - 3 people: driver (Max), driver's wife (this is me, Rubra) and driver's brother Dan (just in case the car gets stuck somewhere and has to be pushed). In the end, I will quote the sum of gasoline and food expenditures.

The first day
We departed from Yakutsk closer to dinner on August 6, 2015. Crossed to the other shore of river Lena by ferry.
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We are waiting for the federal road Never-Yakutsk. Roads in Yakutia are something terrible. The roads are very, very bad, like the worst roads in Russia, and in Russia one of the worst roads in the world. But here the M-56 is a new road and it's in good condition. We reached the river Amga around 5-6 pm. Amga in comparison with Lena is very narrow. The bottom is shallow, stony, and of course the water is very cold, as in almost all the reservoirs of Yakutia, sowe didn't swim.

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In the village near the river we took a bite, rested and went on. At night, passed Tommot - a small town on the bank of the Aldan River, about 400 km from Yakutsk. Tommot in Yakut language means "not freezing." Unfortunately, it was already dark and we didn't see anything. At night we decided to stay behind Tommot. The tent had to be laid out in the dark, and this is very inconvenient, and later we tried to settle for the night, when it's still light. That night I froze like never before! Despite the fact that in my hometown minus 40С in the winter, the usual thing. It was a very harsh night. I don't remember the exact temperature , but like degrees 5-10 heat. We didn't think that we would be so cold: a tent, a sweater, pants - that's enough, we thought, all the same it was the first trip with an overnight stay. I didn't sleep all night, I was shivering from the cold, I fell asleep for half an hour and woke up again. And the place for the night we chose was unsuccessful, windy. At 2 a.m I couldn't stand it and crawled into the car. Due to the spacious trunk, the rear seats in our Nissan are close, especially since Dan slept in the car. But the car was warm and I slept a little.

End of the first part