China post # 11 - Lake Baikal

Arrived in Irkutsk after nearly 40 hours on the train - a welcome relief. Irkutsk is one of the biggest cities in Siberia and it still feels like a frontier town with big puddles of water everywhere and old sunken wooden houses. The new Russia is here too with fancy high rise apartments, nice cafes and sushi restaurants. It's easy to forget that Siberia was only colonised by the Russians after America! Little remains of the indigenous peoples, if they are not mixed in with the colonists then they live in poor isolated communities with unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence as big problems.

Anyway, we didn't experience any of this until later, as we were whisked away to our homestay in Listvyanka, a village on the shores of lake Baikal. This lake has the purest and clearest water known and holds 20% of the worlds freshwater. Not to say that it isn't pollutated by a large soviet paperworks since the 70's. The homestay had other guests - 2 older english couples y dos mozos muy majos de Tenerife! Despite a huge electrical storm over the lake we braved the mile walk to the strip of bars a mile away that night ..... and then the heavens opened. Luckily we were just inside the door and then the power went ... I commented to Agnes that a group of Russians beside us were fortunate enough to get their food just in time, one of them heard us and immediately put his plate on our table "You hungry, we sagre, we share!". We assured him that we had just had dinner and later when we tried to order another beer the bar staff said "Bar closed", even though Russians were being served. Then Agnes wanted to go to the restroom before leaving - "No toilet!" she was told. Another example of the contrast between officialdom and ordinary Russians. The rain eased and made it home with our torches without being struck by a car nor lightning!

Next day was our hiking trek along the lake and overnight in a tent. Our guide was a local Russian in his late 40s-early 50s who could only be described as terse, dour and unfriendly. Once we got to know him Sasha turned out to be a very interesting and amiable fella - a former maths teacher now firmly involved in the tourist industry. He led us along the beautiful scenery, made us lunch over an open fire, found a great spot for our tent and after dinner we talked with him by the campire well into the night. We had such a good time that we didn't even notice the 30 mosquito bites we got until the morning after. The next day it was a short hike to an isolated village where we caught the hydrofoil to Irkutsk.

Lake Baikal is a precious spot, but tourism is coming and the Russians aren't too particular where they throw their rubbish - reminds me of how we were in Ireland 30 years ago - they don't realise what they have. We met foreign volunteers who pay to work on improving the hiking trail along the lake - www.greatbaikaltrail.ru

Oh, the photos of me with various parts of my body in that very cold lake is not to show that I have failed to lose any weight on my travels (quite the contrary), but because the locals say that dipping the hands in means a year extra on your life and a swim 5 more - I guess that I got 2 and a bit then ...

One strange thing we noticed some locals with in SP, Moscow and now in Irkutsk - Dunnes Stores bags! Have they branches in Russia already? Irish globalisation starts with the brand you can trust.