A Day in the Life Ivan Lloyd

Day 104 Thursday 14^th July 2011  

We had a lie in this morning and got up at around 8.30am and made it in time for breakfast. I managed to find the Russian word for pancake and so we managed to ask the cook to leave them off the menu today which she managed to do. We had planned to meet Dmitri at 4pm so we got to work straight away and spent most of the day catching up with emails and blog postings.

Dmitri turned up an hour late but we were not phased by this.  He took on the road towards Yuri’s house but we made a last minute detour to the aerodrome where Dmitri’s friends were flying microlights and hang gliders. 

Arriving at Yuri’s we were welcomed by the firm grip of a Russian huntsman and Yuri invited us in to his compound.  Yuri showed us into his garage where he produced a whole array of guns from sniper rifles to a Kalashnikov  and Mark and I posed for a couple of pictures.

Men Playing in the Garden

Time for a game of Russian Roulette

Fight to the Death !!

We then went to an outhouse and had a beer or two as Yuri prepared shaslick  over an open charcoal fire and then we sat and talked for a while.

The banya was stoked with extra wood from time to time as we sat and ate and drank together. To save her blushes Juliana made her excuses and left the men to the sauna – and Christ was it ever hot in there. The guys took turns to whip us with birch twigs and then we were doused with buckets of cold rain water but the whole experience was really quite pleasant. I have had a sauna before of course but never a rustic one. More beer and more talk – Russian becomes easier to understand the more beer you drink and we ended up coming back to the hotel at around 1am with an invite from Yuri to stay at his house tomorrow, an invite which we accepted.

In the hotel car park we found an American registered BMW GS 800 so we left our cards on the tank in the hope that we might meet the rider tomorrow

And very tasty they were too.... Shashlick

Tending the Samovar ready for Chai

Mark cooling off after the sauna

This day will be forever a wonderful memory for us both - here we are just a day or so after meeting these great guys sitting in their house- all of us totally starkers having just whipped each other with birch twigs - can't imagine that happening back home. I truly hope that someday we can repay this in some similar way. I must admit it has had such a profound effect on my stance regarding stopping and talking to strangers and offering them help.