October 3, 2026
The lesser-known Oká – an exclusive waterpark in remote Buryatia!
The Sayan Oka River‘s raftable stretch is roughly 280 kilometers long! Yes – that’s one heck of a lot of jaw-dropping views and meditative-&-briefly-adrenalized R&R; there’s fishing too. Most of it is perfectly harmless fast-flowing water, interrupted only once (well, twice, but in the same place) by rapids; the rest is up to you…
You can get around the standing waves and “holes” in the riffles by staying away from the main current and hugging the bank on the right or left (if you don’t feel like taking a dip). But we preferred the “water park”, of course! ->
The scenery in places is truly unique! It’s a shame you go sweeping past on the water without enough time to contemplate landscapes like these properly.
All the same, unhurried travel along gently flowing waters is just simply delightful: contemplative, self-soothing, denial of and reconciliation with the self – the main thing is not to mix those two up! – and generally a fully reset of your ego-identity. // You can forget your passwords too and not worry about it: later on someone will remind you of them.
Yes, this is precisely how genuine hard-workers should unwind – the kind whose brains, come evening of every day (weekends included), start smoking through their ears and melting out through their ocular searchlights, while their arm and leg muscles twitch not in time (as they’re supposed to at the gym) but all by themselves and at random. This is the place for you!
Occasional jolts to the resetting sessions add the necessary… spice! ->
Now for a little technical information about the route. Where is it? It’s roughly 300km west of Irkutsk:
From start to finish it’s roughly 150km as the crow flies, but on the river you cover almost twice that. The river cuts through the Sayan Mountains, twisting and turning like crazy – but that’s a good thing: it makes the rafting all the more interesting!
The weather was mostly good and sunny – we even got sunburned in places – but there were rainy days too. The very first day – when the helicopter dropped us off at the start of the rafting route – was one of those gloomy, overcast ones:
And here’s the village of Orlik ->
We pitched camp in a little clearing where the helicopter could land, and got rained on a bit… but by morning the weather was perfect!
Getting kitted up and ready to set off:
And we’re off! ->
The pole on the bow is for mounting a 360° camera – for the sake of some great action-content:
The river carried us along at 10+km/h, so there was no need to paddle at all – you could just sit back, relax, and meditate on the passing scenery:
On the right is the same village of Orlik:
The rocky scenery began – though the riffles and rapids were still quite a way off.
These were the last traces of civilization – where the river cuts through the Sayans there are no roads whatsoever.
Every now and then we came across other rafting groups heading the same way:
And somewhere on a distant hillside…
“Thank you, Granddad, for the victory!”
The first day of rafting treated us to a good-looking, rushing tributary (I think it’s called the Zhom-Bolok), which, apparently, even takes catamarans:
We were also shown this cute waterfall! What’s more, you can take a dip both in the lake and right under the waterfall itself.
Evening was coming on, and it was about time to park up for the night… Here was a pretty nice spot ->
This is where and when our guides told us that, since the day had been a long one, the following one would by a rest day, with lamb on the menu and a banya for added relaxation. Surprise! I’d never rafted in such a laid-back mode before :)
Only later did I figure it out: the weather here is unstable, so some leeway days had been built into the schedule to account for the rain; but the forecast was a good one, with clear skies all the way ahead – so there was simply no rush. At a moderately easygoing pace, the Sayan Oka (the interesting stretch of it) can be done in a week – whereas we had 10 days scheduled. So three days had to be spent doing non-rafting stuff. Like this, for example:
Now for something funny. Our Chief Technology Officer (aka CTO), A.I., had never been on a camping trip of any kind before – ever! Accordingly he was really nervous, ordered himself all sorts of camping gear, and when buying a tent at the store, asked for the simplest one – one for “dummies”. Well, it looked like the salespeople in the store had decided to troll him a little – for the one they handed him was a tent that was clearly the trickiest to put up of them all!
And that’s how the rafting leg of our summer vacation got started! More trials and tribulations – but mostly meditations – coming up shortly!…
