After crossing the lake from north to south in a speedboat yesterday, we're back in Irkutsk to prepare for the second part of our trip : the Kitoy river.

Once again, we're preparing to stay for a long time in autonomy. We plan to spend 11 days on the river this time, so everyone's making sure to have a good stock of films, tapes, batteries... and food of course ! We're bringing about 45 kilos of lyophilized food, to share between the 5 of us. That includes main meals (mainly pastas and rice), mueslis, energy bars, soups, desserts (the lyophilized "mousse au chocolat is actually pretty good !)... We're using convenient filtering bottles for water.

The rest of our "luggage" includes a satellite phone, a gps, maps from the US Air Force, fishing, sewing, repairing and cooking kits, plus many other things which would be too long to list here !

We're also enjoying the russian way of life as much as we can while not on the water. Jens and Sebbi in particular had a pretty interesting experience with vodka in Severobaikalsk, which two days later they're still trying to heal with liters and liters of mineral water. We're also trying to get used to have fish for breakfast - not an easy task, especially during our last breakfast in Severobaikalsk, when the fish was served raw at 8:00 in the morning... But after our stay on the Tompuda, we could have eaten anything that wasn't lyophilized ! And our Russian hosts are so nice to us that it's hard to refuse anything - fish and vodka are no exception.

So, I should be able to post news here in about 12 days, if I'm not being eaten by a bear in the meantime. Stay tuned !