Today we walked down to the village centre, about 1 mile, to get the hydrofoil up the lake to a village called Boshoie Koty. The village is only accessible by boat and our plan was to walk back to Lystvyanka .
The hydrofoil (raketa) eventually arrived 1 hour late, good job we stuck around, the girls at the info centre tried to phone for us, but the line was constantly busy. It was a rough 20 min ride to Koty, on the way we tried to survey the path, but it was difficult to see in some places due to the trees and the steep hills descending to the lake.
We had a quick walk around the village, horses roaming free, wooden houses, open spaces and rough muddy tracks, not unlike a Mongolian village.....then we set off. We had been told that the walk was 20km/6hrs.....and that is all we knew! Contrary to our usual ha it we did not have a map......
We walked for two hours along the lakeside, up and down ravines, through lovely woodland and more open areas. There were lots of flowers on the way, asters, dianthus,delphinium, a type of sedum I think, and ? gentians......I will post a photo so that maybe Bill B will identify it for me.....if he is looking at this blog .... We stopped for lunch on a pebbly beach which which happened to have a tree trunk just right for sitting on. After our picnic of oatcakes, sprats, Christmas cake and some trail mix ......and the dip and paddle.....we set off again.
The first hour was similar to the previous two, although we did negotiate an fairly exposed cliff, then the path turned inland away from the lake. Initially we thought that we were just detouring up a ravine, but the path went on, following up a valley through birch forest and then climbing .....and climbing ....and more climbing! Even Michael commented that we had climbed a few feet!!! We actually climbed for an hour and half, the path zigged and zagged, we kept thinking we were going to come out at a col, and then it would turn again! It was so difficult to judge as we were in trees the whole time. Eventually we came to the top which was marked by two empty yoghurt pots hanging on a tree branch! The only way marking was slashed marks on tree trunks. Going downhill was a great relief, I had found the climb very taxing, at one point wishing there would be a Sherpa round the corner ready to hand me a mug of hot lemon! ....I think that is the first time I have felt like that since were were in the Himalaya in 1999. So we continued downhill, still in the forest with occasional glimpses of the lake in the distance and eventually we came across cow pats then a track, both indicating that we were coming to some sort of settlement, but we had no idea where we were! As we descended further we heard dogs barking and we emerged into one of the Lystvyanka valleys, although we were not sure of that until we reached the lake.....we were right in the centre of the village! We had walked for 5 and 3/4 hours and I was kn......d!!!
It was time for a well earned beer! I then logged on to the wi-fi at the Mayak hotel to download emails and we walked the remaining mile back to our hotel. M reckons we walked 15 miles altogether. Another beer, a shower, a meal and bed was all I could manage after that!
In due course I will try to find out if there was another path which would have taken us nearer to the lake on the second half of the walk, but the path we took was well constructed and appeared to be the main route.
This walk goes down as 'epic' in my book!
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