One (the only?) nice byproduct of the closed Mongolian border is that we pass by Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake of the world (with a volume of 23600km3, just for comparison, lake Balaton has a volume 2km3). Its also the deepest lake of the world (1642m), and its size is bigger than Belgium.

Yesterday I spent the morning finding a mechanic and the afternoon fixing our oil pressure issue. It was a pressure sender problem combined with a clogged filter in the oil sump. How to fix that he Russian way? You fill diesel into the engine instead of oil and let it run for a few minutes. The diesel dissolves the clogs but still provides enough lubrication. We repeated that procedure twice and then did a real oil change and the warning was gone.

In the evening we started our 3600km Siberian trip. Having done more than half of it I can say that it is a diverse experience: you see one and two lane highways, good (mainly) and potholed (rarely) tarmac, birch and pine trees, the occasional patch of fog, gas stations, and lots of reckless and dangerous driving. Yes, those YouTube videos are real.

We are approaching Irkutsk now (ok, it’s still 700km away, but hey, this is Siberia) and hope to cross the Mongolian border tomorrow.

… which is closed. All border crossings except one have been closed for 6 days because of the Naadam festival (which we wanted to visit). The small problem is that the only open border crossing is 3500 kilometers away. The bigger problem is that our oil pressure light came on when we started the detour. We spend the night in Kosh-Agach and try to find a mechanic tomorrow.