Russia - Central Siberia: Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

27 June 2009: Still on the train: 48 hours down, 24 to go. Only 2138km. The ride was smoother and faster last night – better, straighter lines. Everyone hankers to get out for a walk when the train stops. At Tyumen there were loads of people still on the platform buying stuff at the kiosk when the train pulled out – you can imagine the ensuing mad rush at the steps. Everyone was running alongside the train trying to jump on as it was moving including the army dogs. The train stopped again and everyone clambered on (including Lynda and Lloyd) – stern looks all around. We were in fact a few minutes late when we left.

Country is mostly flat farm land (although mostly not obviously cultivated) with some forests. More regular towns, still loads of little wooden farm houses. Brick houses and sealed roads are now more common.

It is all good in our little capsule as we whiz along.

26 June 2009: Train 001 – “Rossiya”: 24 hours down, 48 to go. Gosh. We have covered about 2000km in the past 24 hours. Everyone rushes outside when the train stops for any length of time. There are a load of soldiers and 3 army dogs on board (large German Shepherds) – there appears to be a mandatory dog fight every time we re-board the train. There are various food vendors on the stations which is fun – old mammas offer home cooked veges. There is a power outlet in each compartment, so there is plenty of scope to listen to music or do stuff on the computer. A couple of nice young soldiers in Lloyd’s compartment. Lynda and Hat have a bloke with his young daughter (6) in theirs. There is a little possie of 6 year old girls who traipse up and down the carriage playing games and singing songs. The dad keeps feeding Lynda and Hills and making cups of chai. The beds are pretty hard but otherwise it is all pretty comfortable. The day is pretty much made up of eating, looking out the window, chatting, reading and writing.

Loads of little villages in forests by the railway line. Incredibly rudimentary houses. No sealed roads - mud everywhere. Little vegetable gardens tended by hand. A very tough existence. Can’t imagine what it is like in winter at –40C. Some of the cities are huge. Power stations pouring out crap. Endless yards of metal junk and what appears to be industrial waste. Dinosaur industries slowly rusting away. Endless crappy soviet era high rise buildings.....

The atmosphere on the train winds up from time to time, especially towards the evening when some of the soldiers drink a lot of beer (and god knows what else). Our two soldiers are very nice and do not appear to drink at all. One is an officer and warns off the rowdy ones when they get pesky. He is reading a Jules Verne book in Russian. Sophie (14 years) was very keen to practice her English with Hilary. Andrey was a lovely electrical engineer from Krasnoyarsk.

It is hard to know what time zone we are in. The timetables are all on Moscow time (understandably). It is light for most of the night.

It was hilly for a while with larger forests. Now the country is flatter and more populated and (a little) more civilized. The occasional huge river flowing north. I can’t image how many trees we have passed so far.

We stopped for 42 minutes at Novosibirsk, so we were able to go for a good wander. This is the largest station on the trans-Siberian railway – it is huge. Almost art deco inside, very grand. Loads of lines join here. There are a couple of statues to commemorate the soldiers from Siberia that left by train from here to fight in WWII.

25 June 2009: Irkutsk: Jack provided a recommended walking route around town. Lots of lovely grand buildings, traditional Siberian log homes and churches. Many churches have only been done up in recent years since the restrictions on religion have been lifted. There were some lovely parks as well. But there are lots of parts with heavy traffic, non existent footpaths, run down and dilapidated buildings and just wasteland. You would have to say that planning controls are pretty minimal in Russia, especially the far east. We went off to catch the train and settled in for the long journey to Moscow (72 hours).

Here is a pristine house:

Here is one that needs some work:

Drainage is not too good and the footpaths are sometimes rough:

But Irkutsk is mostly a lovely city with loads of character:

24 June 2009: Irkutsk: The journey back to Irkutsk was thankfully quieter than the trip down. We had a nice home stay with Galina Tur, just around the corner from the hostel. She could speak some German and had a couple of words of English, so we could communicate. Had a great meal in a little cafe near the tram route. Not a word of English but they played Elvis, had lots of pictures and plates from Europe (especially Vienna) and the food was great. We then managed to extract vast sums of money from various bankomats to pay for the train tickets. Met a couple of likely Italian lads over breakfast who were also staying with Galina – they were a scream. They said there is not one easy word in Russian except for “da” (yes)...... They are probably right!

Nikita’s is a unique place!!

Lake Baikal on the morning of our departure - stunning.

23 June 2009: Baikal by boat

Headed down to the beach and piled onto a boat with a bunch of Russians and a couple of Germans, to visit a few spots around Lake Baikal. It’s the biggest lake on the planet (by volume), and contains one fifth of all the world’s fresh water that is not ice. We are staying on Olkhon Island, which is a wild place, and the mountain springs and sacred Buddhist island we visited today are even more remote.

Last night was the summer solstice, but there is still snow on the mountains. On the deck of the boat, our cheeks got sunburnt, but we were freezing cold. It is impossible to imagine how cold winters must be here. We travelled all day on the Maloe More (small sea) between the island and the western shore, and it was enormous. The other side of the island is steep, and plunges into the lake, to a depth of over 1600 metres.

We walked up into the forest on a far shore, and found all kinds of unfamiliar flowers.

We landed on an island where Tibetan and Nepalese monks have built a stupa in tribute to an Indian goddess. Its location was chosen for its position on the crossing point of two ley-lines. It is amazing how religion is taking off in Russia, Orthodox churches are being lovingly restored in cities, towns and villages, and Buddhist monasteries are being built all throughout Siberia.

After our very laid-back, relaxing day, we came back to the tiny village of Khuzhir and the craziness of Nikita’s hostel, a fantastic but kind of bizarre place with dozens of cabins and gers, that feels like a cross between the timberyness of the Wild West, the kids-outside-till-midnight/summer holiday vibe of Sandy Point, and the hippy-ness of the NSW North Coast. There are no streets, just rough ground that requires very slow driving. Cows and (as elsewhere in Russia) packs of dogs roam freely. It’s 11:00 pm and still very light, there is a lot of action out there, but we had better try and sleep, because it will be light again by 3:00!

See Wikipedia for more information on Lake Baikal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal

22 June 2009: Lynda and Lloyd rushed off to a “friendly” train ticket agent – these are apparently few and far between in Russia. The experience to date of the girls was that buying tickets involves queuing for hours at the station and lots of shouting by the person in the ticket office. Apparently, you have to “know” whether there are seats available on a particular train. If you ask for a seat on a train that is full, you have used your shot and you have to go to the back of the queue. Our friendly ticket lady work in the “Hotel Irkutsk”, a large soviet style place down by the river 3 blocks away. We rolled up at 9am – she waved us in and we started working. She was able to quickly work out when seats were available. She looked very stern look at all times, but was nice enough – very Russian. The only real option was 3 seats on train 001 “Rossiya” – the fancy pants one. It seems that there are just not that many spare tickets on any trains at this time of year. We also checked out trains from Moscow to St Petersburg. All looked good. Realised we had forgotten our passports, so went back to the hostel and Lloyd went back to the ticket lady. She was incredibly efficient. We got the seats we wanted to Vladimir (3 days non stop on the train), Moscow then St Petersburg and St Petersburg to Helsinki. By the end of our 40 minutes of complicated work she was almost cracking a smile. Went to pay at the end with my credit card – sorry, she said – cash only. Tickets were all printed with our passport numbers etc. Hmmm. Hard to get 50,000 Roubles out of no where. In the mean time Lynda and Marsha had organised 2 nights at Nikita’s on Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal and a late departing mini-bus to accommodate our ticket purchasing expedition – they were waiting and ready to go. Crickey! Left a deposit and literally ran back to the hostel and threw our stuff into the van – left at 11:15. We were off. Realising we had little cash left, we stopped at a Bankomat on the way out of town to get some cash for the next few days.

The countryside was quite open – rolling green hills with lush green grass surrounded by birch and pine forests. Every now and again the there were funny little villages of essentially log cabins and little yards – very very rustic (or more spartan really). The road was sealed (after a fashion) but was pretty crappy in parts – lots of undulations. It deteriorated the further we drove from Irkutsk.

The forest came closer to the road it started to get hilly. Green meadows and beautiful streams flanked the roadside with larger hills and mountains in the distance, many snow capped. There were cows and horses – no fences. There was even some snow on the ground in places that was left over from the unseasonal weather last week. Suddenly the ground became rocky and the trees disappeared and the grass became very thin. The road by this stage had turned into essentially a dirt goat track – even at 20kph it was a fairly rough ride. The road ended up at a ferry (takes about 6 cars across a narrow straight to the island – about 2km across). Then it was another 30km of pretty rough road to the town on the island.

In the mini-bus we were befriended by Alexi, a rather large, strong sort of a Russian bloke (guess he was in his 50’s). Not the sort of chap you would pick a fight with in a pub. We learned that he rode horses (once went in a race and won a car), was a “tractorist” (tractor driver we assumed) and had 2 daughters – one about 16 and on 6. Apparently one of his daughters (=doch-sha) looked like Hilary (was a copy). He seemed to work on a farm digging holes. Some of the mountains in the area are very high (2740m) and it gets to -60C in winter – so he says. It may sound like we found a lot out about him. However, you need to bear in mind that he spoke to us in Russian in a very loud voice at point blank range for 6 hours continuous and could not speak one word of English. I am not joking. In fact he had two voice volumes, loud and shouting (when talking to the driver from the back seat or giving the other passengers a hard time). Not to mention that he had consumed a bottle of beer and the best part of a bottle of vodka (wodka). We consulted the Russian phrase book on an almost continuous basis and could find virtually no words that we wanted on the whole journey. We both pretended to throw it out the window on numerous occasions.

Here is Alexi!! -

About half of people on the bus got out when we stopped at a little shrine on the side of the road which was covered in what looked like prayer flags and there was a rock with cigarettes and money all over it (coins and even notes). This is some sort of offering – seems to be Shamanism (religion) (see Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism. There was a fair bit of pointing the roof and the heavens (not idea really) but it was not Christian. I had to drink a bit of vodka and tip the rest onto the shine. Very weird.

This is real frontier land. The roads are unmade and there are little wooden cabins everywhere. Nikita’s is this amazing series of little cabins in a compound, all with intricately carved woodwork on the outside. It is sort of like a hippy love village. All fairly new and pretty impressive. They even took credit cards – amazing!! The lake here is absolutely stunning. Big mountains rising up out of the still clear blue water. It really is a special place.

It is the summer solstice – it is 21:30 at night and the sun us still blazing through the window. Better go out and enjoy the traditional solstice music festival by the lake........

21 June 2009: Lloyd arrived at the “Baikaler” hostel in Irkutsk at about 11am having negotiated a flight from London to Moscow then an overnight flight with Siberian Airlines (S7). The hostel was in the very centre of town but in a very obscure spot – located at the back of a building of flats with no signs. You walk up 3 flights of stairs (with an odd smell) to what is essentially a private flat that has been converted to a 14 bed hostel.

The girl who worked there, Masha (pronounced Marsha), was a local but spoke perfect English (a real treasure in Russia) and she was a very knowledgeable local, which was a great help. The place was clean, had a kitchen and a washing machine (boy – did I need that), had a hot shower and a toilet and free wifi – what more could you ask for?!! Went for a stroll around the streets – negotiating a purchase for nearly anything (other than items in a supermarket) is nearly impossible. Russian is so incredibly different. Met Hilary and Lynda at the train station at 18:00. We had dinner at a lovely Mongolian restaurant (Hills was missing Mongolia, obviously) and went back to plan the rest of our trip through Russia. We poured over websites for hours trying to fit in Lake Baikal, Tomsk and Suzdal before Mosocw and St Petersburg – after many attempts it appeared that one of them had to go. Tomsk drew the short straw.

Masha and Jack (the owner) were incredibly kind and generous (and long suffering of their numerous guests). What a great place to stay in the wild wild east....