It continues until we finally reach the street on Sakkyryr, which leads to the village of the same name. But we have a problem lugging all our things to Sakkyryr, which is called Batagay-Alyta in Russia. That is still five kilometers. The moment we are packing, a monstrous Ural comes by and stops.

It’s like a steel monster that rolls everything flat. The monster stops next to us and a plump man in blue overalls gets out. He introduces himself as Viktor and agrees to take us with him. How we get our stuff on his truck is our problem.

The boat is still built and its vehicle of all things has no cargo area, but a large tank. I climb up and after some inspection I have a plan on how to transport the boat. Uli hoists the thing up, I turn it upside down on the two fuel caps and Uli secures it with a rope. We pack our backpacks to the side. When I want to secure this, Viktor thinks that it will last. It even gets angry when I still want to attach it carefully.

We squeeze ourselves into the front seat with our little things and his cat and the journey begins. With sweat running from my forehead, I watch our luggage in the. Rearview mirror. But Viktor appeases that, I tell you. There is a sip of his hip flask at each departure – this time a sweet liqueur.

Russian hits accompany us on the trip and Viktor tells us that he lives in the truck. He drives us very slowly into the village. It’s still raining when we unload our things in the center. We are immediately discovered by a group of children who, like the rest of the village, wonder what these two guys are doing with the bright red rubber boat in the middle of their place. They come and honor us with small motif stickers. When they see how we pump the boat they want to do that and take turns while we pack the rest of the stuff. Only when the boat is folded in the bag are the children satisfied and say goodbye to us.

We decide to set up our tent in front of the hut where we were allowed to stay overnight. Simply providing access to it would not be appropriate. Constantine did not answer our question where we can camp. We are in civilization, but here we suddenly have the problem of finding water, firewood and a toilet … things that are freely available in nature.

When we have almost finished the tent, a few women arrive from the barrack in which there is a small administration and ask us in and offer us tea. When we thankfully sipped it out, we were invited to the hut that we could set up and spend the night there. This solves our problems. The women are still tidying up there and bringing us tea, cookies, raw fish and an electric stove. We are more than happy about the help.

We will spend the next few days drying and repairing our things, exchanging our plane tickets with the help of the ladies, playing the guitar and going fishing on the river. It is a very relaxed time in which we can recover from the hardships of the previous weeks.

We explore the place and find some small shops (Magasin) and a bakery where a couple laughs happily in front of the oven and gives everyone a box bread for a few rubles.

The village resembles an era in which the zombie apocalypse has already begun. The small wooden houses are crooked and crooked, there are pedestrian walkways made of broken boards and there is no trace of asphalt on the gravel over which the wind blows up the dust. Not many people are on the streets. The zombies all come out of their holes at five in the afternoon and hike to one point: the local liquor store. Suddenly something is going on in and around the small shop and the mindless human envelopes have a scent of vodka ready to be used even before fighting for new alcohol.

With our vodka, which is not cheap here, we are the target of moderately weak Schnorrer zombies who want to get a sip from us. We are considering preparing security measures for our hut. I still have a bear defense system in mind …