Baikal
My son Chap and I decided early on that when I came to visit we would put back-packing at Lake Baikal on our agenda. So I flew from Maui to Honolulu to San Francisco to Juneau to Khabarovsk to Irkutsk, our designated rendezvous. He took the train from Tomsk. We spent a couple of days in Irkutsk sight-seeing and getting organized for the trip which included hiring a guide. We took a hydroplane from Irkutsk down the Angara river to Lake Baikal and thence to our starting point, a hamlet named Bolshoye Koti. The three of us started off at the same time as a group of other hikers but they soon dropped off. By the time we had reached a ranger station 20 kilometers in, my body had reacted to the new fauna and flora of Siberia and I became quite sick. I could hardly walk by the time we reached the ranger station. The ranger's wife and her sister took note of my debilitated condition and brought me a freshly squeezed litre of milk and, with Chap translating, told me to drink it. It was really, really rich milk and I couldn't finish it. I handed the flask back to Chap and asked Chap to thank them and that it was too much for me. Through Chap the wife said, "A real man would have drunk it all".
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