Lake Baikal is definitely an adventure all by itself. Its the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water. It contains more water than the North American Great Lakes combined. With a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft), Baikal is the worlds deepest, clearest, and oldest lake. It is the 7th largest lake in the world by surface area. Baikal is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, many of
which exist nowhere else in the world. The lake was declared a UNESCO site in 1996. It's impressive! It would have been even more so if the weather had co-operated.
It would be very easy to spend a couple of weeks mooching around,
exploring it by boat and bus and train. We got one day, so now we are
experts!
Well, certainly experts in hypothermia survival anyway. The
weather in Irkutsk has been good, the best we've seen in Russia so far,
and we're really looking forward to a beautiful day on our boat tour of
Baikal. Just in case - you never know when things will go sideways - we
brought along a couple of very light sweaters and one filmy
windbreaker. Pro tip: Baikal is a gynormous blob of water, which is
like 2 degrees. That means it warms up the surrounding countryside in
winter, and cools it off in summer. Like REALLY cools it off in
summer. After a beautiful one-hour bus trip through the countryside to
Listvyanka, we arrived at - a really cold fog bank.
Could the bus have
taken a wrong turn and ended up in Newfoundland? Hard to tell with all
the fog... It's now 10 AM, no one seems very excited by this, and our
boat doesn't leave until noon, so we wandered up and down the town which
has lots of little shops and a cool market and boats to look at if
you're into boats. Noon comes, we get onto our 40' boat with a
half-dozen other people, and we stumble off into the fog. It's cold,
it's wet, and visibility is about 100 meters for the next hour. Then we
get to where we are going, which is an old-defunct railway line with
some tunnels, and voila! the fog lifts and it's a beautiful day.
Apparently these guys know what they're doing and this is the daily
routine.
So, now we get an hour or so to walk along the
tracks and check out the tunnels. It's actually very cool as the lake
view is wonderful, the railway is a mass of wildflowers, there are
butterflies everywhere, who doesn't like tunnels, and it's just
generally a good day to be alive.
Of course there's the getting-off-the-boat thing, which is accomplished off the front of the boat on a flimsy wooden ramp, and it's steep and wet from the fog and there's rocks and water and the gravity thing, but nobody dies so it's all good.
It was a steep climb.
I tried to do the 'Titanic' scene on the bow of the boat, but it just didn't work. go figure
Heading back in..yes, yes, that is a big cloud bank
I could just barely see that little white thingy sticking above the 'mountain'. It's a telescope..the Irkutsk Planetarium
This is it..but, regretfully, we didn't get over to see it.
On the boat was this young couple who were on their honeymoon from Manitoba. Their quest and their whole point of coming to Russia, was to go to Lake Baikal and see the seals. The Baikal seal, or nerpa, is a species of
earless seal endemic to Lake Baikal. The Baikal seal is one
of the smallest true seals and the only exclusively freshwater pinniped
species. They were pumped! Excited! And after getting there, they had no binoculars...what's with that? So, I let them use mine. For 3 hours they scoured the lake, the shoreline, ..nothing. Then, just before we docked, we were actually back in the harbour, and voila! There's a seal. Quick, take a photo.
We see it for maybe 3 mins and poof..it was gone.
Once we docked, we hit the market. There are white fish, Baikal Black Grayling, Baikal White Grayling and Baikal Sturgeon
Omul, a white fish, is one of the deepest living freshwater fish in the world, occurring to near the bottom of Lake Baikal.
Notice how everyone is dressed warmly? Then there are those local Russians, in Siberia, on the beach, sunbathing while his wife & child are dressed. But, isn't there always that 'one' who just wants to be 'me'...kinda like the Penguin in the herd, singing the song, "I just wanna be me".
Lots of really interesting crafts..but, when you are travelling with a backpack and a little tiny suitcase, it limits what you can buy
The food and drink carts in all of Russia are pretty cool. I find ours so boring after seeing theirs.
Now these places for eating, no idea what you call them, but boy, they know how to cook noodles and satay.
Some are not too fancy, but the tables were full..where as the one above was ..not so much.
Here's some sobering facts about Lake Baikal: 1,000 species of plants and 2,500 species of animals: Birds, 236 species; Fish, 65 native species; Sponges, 18 species, Aquatic worms, 200 species; Leeches, 30 species (nice).
We had a couple hours left before catching the bus back to Irkutsk, and it was the best part of the day (which wasn't saying that much...), so we decided to go up the chairlift which is a great place to take in the scenic vista of the lake and surrounding countryside. The lady that sold us boat tickets lined up a taxi for us as ride-hailing doesn't work outside the cities, and off we went.
There's a chalet-thing at the bottom, and a chairlift with open chairs, and a trail up to a snack shop at the top. Most people we saw actually walked the trail up, but the chair seemed like a much easier way. Did I mention that it was colder up on top of the mountain? It's a Mister Science Thing, apparently.... The chair is not what you would call 'fast', so it took about 15-20 minutes of in-the-wind, no-sun, maybe 15C to get to the top - just in time to have the fog roll back in and the scenic vistas were all safely hidden for another day.
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| These were the toilets..and yes, you are literately over the hole, squatting, over the bank. |
By the time we get off the chair we're pretty much frozen solid, bummed out about the fog, and just want a hot drink in the snack shack and head down the mountain. But first we went for a bit of a walk, and found out that the mountaintop is full of really beautiful flowers, which is very cool. Then on to the snack shack where we managed to secure two cups of very dubious coffee from an unfriendly hostess, and after choking it down for the heat we were ready for the trip down.
We should have walked. Now the wind is right in our faces, it's wet with fog, and the temp has dropped to maybe 10C. And we're in shorts. So, THIS is Siberia! Being Canadians we survived it, mostly based on the promise of hot food and drink in the chalet at the bottom. We stumbled off the chair only to discover that the restaurant was closed, there was no public phone, cell coverage was very spotty, and we wouldn't be able to get a cab to pick us up. So. The 3 km walk down the mountain was no big deal, at least we were warming up!
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| Ziplining was one way to get to the bottom..notice the clothing..no shorts |
The junction of the ski hill road and the main highway is about 5 km from the boat dock where the bus starts its run into Irkutsk, but luckily there's a bus stop only about 1/2 km away, so there we were with a dozen of our newest friends, trying to find shelter from the worst of the cold wind and waiting for the bus. Which eventually shows up and is absolutely jammed, there is no way we were going to get any more people onto that bus. So about 8 of us got on in a gargantuan shoving match, Debbi got in the back door and Steve got in the front, and we waved happily to each other because we were going back to Irkutsk and IT WAS WARM.
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| Advertising a hotel..pretty cool |
Pro tips:
- light sweaters don't cut it. Decent sweater or jacket, and something to break the wind.
- walking shorts are Simply Not Appropriate. Long pants!
- the bus is a good way to get to-and-from, but catch it at the first stop or you'll be standing up for the one-hour trip AT BEST.
- go there. It's worth it.
