Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

Our tour group arrived in irkutsk early on the 20th September. We all wanted a shower and a good meal after four days on the train from Moscow. The bathrooms on the Russian trains were very basic, cramped and only operational whilst the train was moving. 

From irkutsk we took a bus transfer to a town on the shores of lake Baikal. Lake baikal is enormous, 395 miles long at its longest, 49 miles long at its widest and just over a mile deep at its deepest. It contains 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water. The lake is beautiful up close.

The town that we stayed in was a typical Russian town of timber houses with a scattering of ugly (maybe soviet era) housing blocks. Our accommodation was basic with jerry rigged showers with hot water from a cracked (and leaking) electric hot water cylinder in rooms in newly built log cabins. It was paradise after the train however when you cranked up the oil heaters and tip toes around the leaking water.

On the train the power points were located either high up by the toilet doors (gross and requiring balancing your phone hanging from the charger cable and praying), in our cabins (not working at all), by the samovar (water heater) (prone to being flooded by over eager customers wanting water) or only outside the second class cabins (slow to charge). So, we had power in our rooms and wifi to talk to all at home which was great.

We went to the market and ate freshly caught and cooked fish with bread which was a welcome change to pirozhki. When i first tried pirozhki they were amazing, they are hot bread dumplings stuffed with meat or vegetables and are approximately thirty times cheaper than the dining car and just as filling. They are quite horrible after a few days of eating nothing but them and noodles however.

From the market we had a jaunt around the town visiting a supermarket for beer, vodka and snickers bars. A museum of metal sculptures and defunct technology and cars. Then a small timber russian orthodox church that contained a crucifix sculpture of Christ atop a skull and crossbones, these are apparently Adam's bones but at the time they suggested some kind of piracy in Jesus' past. 

Some log cabins had ornate carved windows. These looked pretty nice set against the depressingly small seal enclosures for shows involving lake baikal's native fresh water seals. We passed on setting those shows. 

We then had a Russian style sauna, this comprises various amounts of sitting in a hot room, throwing cold water over each other, drinking tea and whipping each other with birch leaves. The birch leaves don't actually hurt no matter how hard someone tries to hit you. This process is quite relaxing actually and again a nice change from the train.

That night we ate dinner in the accommodation's common room and enjoyed getting drunk together. When people think of the transsiberian railway they tend to think of massive drunkenness and partying as depicted in films like 2008's Transsiberian.

This is only partly the case. Our first few days we drank vodka and beer and become moderately drunk before, with no warning being yelled at by an old Russian man at 7pm. Now he could easily have asked us to be quiet with gestures, but instead yelled at the top of his voice about us not understanding him and being British. Kind of puts the brakes on a relaxed night of drinking. 

Also drinking isn't strictly allowed apparently. Despite selling beer on the train the police will walk up and down making stern faces and shaking their fingers at those caught drinking. Then ten minutes later they will do the same again even after being completely ignored the first time. On platforms women pushing baby carriages of hot food offered us unseen alcohol, on purchase the alcohol was produced from a hidden compartments beneath the food.

To cut a digression short, we enjoyed getting very drink and very loud. Arm wrestling and midnight swimming in lake Baikal soon followed.

The next morning we got some obligatory shots of us on lake Baikal and went on a boat ride to another part of the lake. This area was one of the oldest parts of the transsiberian line and apparently now only takes dedicated tourist trains. I think this is where the beautiful shots of the train running right next to lake Baikal are taken from. When we passed lake Baikal it was in the middle of the night so we couldn't see anything at all. But anyway we got back on the train. Here are some more gratuitous photos of some water and some rocks: