On the road (Tuesday, July 9, 2002)
"Was it gunshots?" I asked our guide, ornithologist Andrej Bajkalov.
"Maybe poachers," he shrugged his shoulders.
As we soon found out, the shots were fired by lieutenant colonel Sergey Luckiy, the commander of the hunting supervision of the central-Yenisei region.
On Sunday, we thought that we had very little chance of succeeding on the island of Gornyi and that we had better try to catch storks in the Novosibirsk region. That would mean for us to get out of the island, travel to Yeniseisk, from there to Krasnoyarsk and then to Novosibirsk. However, the boat that took us to the island continued down the stream, so Sergey came for us in a heavy Ural truck. He somehow managed to drive it to the bank near the island and tried to draw our attention by firing his Makarov gun.
Herdsmen (or fishermen or poachers - whatever the best description) ferried us to the riverbank in their motorboats. We loaded the truck and planned to set off for Novosibirsk the same evening. After two kilometres, Ural got stuck, axle-deep in mud. It took more than fourteen hours to get it out. The night we spent in company of gnats was horrible...
Now, at 2 p.m. local time we are in Yeniseisk and we will try to get to Novosibirsk via Krasnoyarsk. To be on the safe side, we have no plans as to when we can get there...