Today we needed to move on so the plan was to explore Baikal's east coast by following the road north until it headed away from the lake. Fortunately the day was sunny and warm and the exploration was both pleasant as well as producing some great views (and we hope photographs).

With the exploration finished we turned around and followed the road south beside the lake before retracing our route from Ulan Ude. We spent no time sightseeing in Ulan Ude as our next milestone is to get to Irkutsk and start the visa applicaton process for Mongolia.


After leaving Ulan Ude we drove for a while before finding a nice grassy area beside the road that we thought would make a good camping place for the night. However after about an hour a police car and a civilian car pulled up beside us and the civilian (who spoke a little English) told us that this was a bad spot for us "criminal territory", and that we should drive 11 kms further down the road to Кафе М55. Having followed these instrutcions we spent a restful night with 20 other trucks.

It was certainly very thoughful of the police/civilian to take such an interest in the safety of a couple of foreigners.