Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

Day 1

Early morning my train arrived at my destination, Irkutsk. After a transfer to Listvyanka village I was introduced to Olga, a friendly Siberian women who I will be stayed with for 3 days. She lives with her husband and son, though I never met them. The house is a traditional Siberian 'Izba', best described as a log cabin. At the centre of the household is a square brick structure that doesn't quite reach the roof. This is the heating structure and all the rooms are built around this to keep the house warm. It's kinda of hard to describe so I took a picture.


I was expecting only very basic amenities for a log cabin in the middle of Siberia. These expectations were reinforced when I was driven down the road off of which the house is located and saw what would best be compared to a ghetto back home. To my pleasant surprise, however, it was very comfortable and cosy. They have satellite TV,
a computer and everything much the same as you would expect from somewhere in the city. The toilet is an outhouse which is simply a house in the ground so that left something to be desired and they were missing one other basic amenity but apart from that it's a very nice place, somewhere you could certainly call home.

Russian cuisine left me with something to be desired. I ate street cendor foods, hotel buffets and on the train but nothing stood out as distinctely Russian; all I ate was rather bland and generic. Thus it was especially nice to be greeted in my Siberian homestay with a homecooked meal. Breakfast was a homemade spongecake with something like a sweet rhubarb relish, along with bread and cheese.

After breakfast a local guide took me to the Limnological museum, which is very popular with Russian students judging by the amount of tour groups that showed up throughout the day. The museum was all about the local lake, Lake Baikal, the biggest freshwater lake in the world and home to thousands of species of animals, over 75% of which are unique to the lake. It is in extremely clean lake too; water can be drank straight from it without filtration and the museum was keen to point out that some bottles of Baikal water it had bottled in 1992 were still drinkable to this day.

My guide next took me on a hike up the steep mountain overlooking the Angara river and Lake Baikal, which offers some amazing views of port Baikal.


It is distinctly clear where frozen Lake Baikal ends and the Anagara river begins. Apparently the Angara river never freezes because it is too shallow.


Siberia, far from being a frozen wasteland, offers some truly beautiful scenery.


This is the Shaman Rock. Shamanism is very popular around here, in fact the word Shaman comes from a local native language. Each of the lakes 363 (or there abouts) outlets was considered to be a living god. All were male bar one. Old man Baikal wanted Angara to marry one of the feeble tributaries but she ignored him and ran off with the mighty Yenisey river, the biggest in Russia. Old man Baikal was so angry he hurled a rock at her, but she managed to escape. There the rock remains.

Back home for lunch after cabbage soup with sour cream I had fried Omul, one of the fish indigenous to Lake Baikal, found only here and in one other lake in the world. It had a light batter and was very tasty. It didn't have a very strong flavour but it's definetely unlike fish I've tried before. If anyone ever visits Lake Baikal I reccomend it.

The other missing amenity I mentioned earlier is any sort of bath or shower to wash with. Instead, what I got to experience was a Russian 'banya', sort of like a sauna but the Russians feel theirs is superior as there is no steam, only dry heat. A furnace sits in the corner with a tap coming out of it housing hot water. You can increase the heat by opening a vent in the furnace and pouring water over the stones inside, though it can get VERY hot. A unique experience, but I'll stick to a shower.

Dinner was like raviolli but filled with potato and salad which, judging by the allotment outside, was homegrown.

Day 2
There's only one way to get across the frozen lake.


The snowmobile and my instructor, whose instructions were, in whole, "Right accelerator, left brake. Distance 10 metre'. Simple enough.

We drove out on to the lake, which was a mix of ice with intermittent snow mounds. Between the bigger gaps of snow mounds where there was nothing but pure ice you could feel the back end swaying every now and then, so I thought I would be cocky and try to ride sideways. I did eventually do it, though admittedly I spun out the first couple times. After those spin outs, I was fairly far behind my instructor
so I had no choice but to go faster to catch up  The experience of the cold air rushing against your face as you shoot across the frozen ice and snow at 50mph is one I will not soon forget. Hitting some snow mounds I even managed to get a small amount of air.

I spun out once more right near the end of the journey, when my instructor chose to stop on a particularly slippery path of ice. I managed to hold it, though, and did a perfect 360 spin without stopping. To anyone watching, I did it on purpose.



On the way back my instructor took me through a small clearing along a dirt road through the forest to some huts that looked more like the log cabins I was expecting.



Here we stopped for tea before heading back.

Day 3

I lied above, there is one other decent way to get across the lake.



Experiences and excursions in Siberia are unlike what we have back home. There's something to be said for the lack of health and safety regulations. Yesterday I was expecting to have to sit on the back of a snowmobile as my instructor drove it, but instead I got to ride my own. Likewise today I was expecting to be in the seat but instead that was where my instructor sat; I had to stand at the back and take the reigns. My instructions were even simpler than yesterday: hold on.

The dogs move a hell of a lot faster than expected and as the sled went over the first snow mound it threw my feet off and so I ended up running/skiing (ice) along with the dogs. They don't stop in Siberia, of course, so I had to keep up before I could jump back on. I was a lot more careful with my footing afterwards, especially when going over/through snow mounds.

Later that afternoon I met up again with the 3 Brits I'd met on the train. They're also coincidentally taking the same Ulan Bataar bound train as I am, in the same carriage no less. We took a walk across the lake, which involved a few precarious spots. The day before part of the lake had thawed out and there was a circle of water acround the outer perimeter of the lake. Considering it had been snowing that night and all of today, it had froze back over again but only a very thin layer. In reality we were in no real danger as there was another layer of much thicker ice below it. You try teling that to us as we hear of stories of cars plunging through the ice and myself even bearing witness to the rescue operation of some vehicle below the ice and feel our feet slightly sinking into the lake. I knew there was really no danger though as I'd seen all sorts of vehicles cross the ice and had been across it on a snowmobile and dog sled myself, but it was funny to see the 3 of them worry incessantly.

We soon found a lakeside bar and stopped for a pint of beer, where we discovered out paths met again. They also confirmed my suspicions about the restaurant carriage of the Trans-Siberian. The Russian carriages are all privately owned so they can be anything from horrible to amazing. We simply had a bad one on the way here, the one the 3 of them got from Ekaterinburg was apparently better.

I also learnt Russians do not like giving change, as when we tried to pay the 200 rouble bill for the beer with a 500 rouble note we were denied and had to go back and make it up with smaller notes. I guess you can be 'too rich' in Russia.

Day 4

Right now I'm in Irkutsk proper and staying with a host family in a Soviet style apartment for the night, before I board my train bound for Mongolia at a ridiculous hour of 5am. I shall probably meet the 3 Brits once more on the station and have in fact just now ran into a Brit from Kent in this Internet cafe,
who is trying to travel the world without boarding a plane. It's amazing the people and stories you run into while travelling. The next time I'll be able to update will probably be in Ulan Baatar, which will be perhaps 2-3 days.