Day 15 – Fri 15th Aug – A long boat ride back to Mukhrino and a Russian party!

Today we are visiting Mukhrino field station for the final time in our trip. We left Shapsha and headed to Khanty-Mansiysk for the boat trip out. Instead of going to the previous pick up point across the Irtysh River, well out of the city, we went with Yaroslav to the city marina where the University boat was moored. We left here and headed out onto the Irtysh River, giving a pretty view of Khanty-Mansiysk and then headed up a small tributary onto a larger one and sped along to Mukhrino. This was about an hour in the boat in the sun and approaching Mukhrino, the water level was even lower but our captain skilfully navigated the shallow channel. After a lunch at Mukhrino we went to our field sites and put out another batch of passive samplers to be left collecting BVOCs for 1 month. The weather was again sunny and mosquitoes were low. There was also time to use the sauna before dinner. Late in the evening we were joined by Yaroslav and some of his colleagues who had come for the weekend to do some work at Mukhrino and some hunting and fishing. We had a party in the field station with Russian vodka and music into the early hours…..