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Published: October 15th 2007
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The hills are alive...
with the sound of karaoke. Our swiss chalet overlooking Lake Baikal Exhausted, tired, knackered we disembarked. The friendships forged were replaced by utter miserable tiredness and we didn't want to even look at one another, Russia, a pot noodle or anything except a pillow.
'Velcom to Irkutsk' beamed Anatoli, our pudding-bowl haircutted cheerful honcho.
'Blah' 'grrr' 'whatever' and 'helllo' greeted him (the latter from the ever cheerful Aussie).
He bundled us into a dodgy looking miny bus, the driver smoking all the way, and we trundled and bumped through Irkutsk, which looked like a cross between Ballymun in the early eighties and my previous notions of soviet russia prior to my arrival there. As I was equally familiar with both, I felt at home. One of the group compared it to their previous experiences 'my God it is like Gambia.'
Yeah yeah I said inwardly, you've compared everything thus far to Gambia, so no surprises there then. And then I felt bad, like I needed sleep so I uttered a prayer upward and hoped that fate wouldn't hit me on the head.
A few minutes later we were in the country side and all my anger melted away as the silver birches spotted off the train were
The lake
Beautiful and blue almost within my grasp. And the lake, glimmering and glittering we spotted it in brief glances only to disappear behind trees, endless trees.
Finally, there it was, in all its glory, twenty percent of the world's fresh water, in a lake. Blue, shimmering. The bus drove alongside it for a few moments before pulling up a bumpy side street, if you could call it such. Then we stop and the driver lights another cigarette before throwing our backpacks at us, muttering loudly all the time. Anatoli and he enter into a loud debate, and then Anatoli smiled at us, 'now we walk' he said.
A vertical walk and we arrived at our home for the next two nights - an alpinesque set of log cabins perched above the beautiful lake. 'You want breakfast?' Anatoli asked, and I wanted to divorce Alan and marry him instead.
The backpacks became light as a feather, and the group began to smile and joke, chucking our bags in our rooms and positively romping back to the main cabin where a woman who I swore looked like my mother, or the Bean an Tí at the Gaeltacht or a favourite auntie dispensed
Us on the Boat
On the lake. T'was cold, but great fun bread while the happy hissing sound of eggs popping on the frying pan was audible in the background.
'I dae noo eat hags' my scots friends beamed at me, 'bet I can nae wait ta eat these wee lassies'
'Is there like, meat in these? Cause that won't work for me' the American veggie said
'I'm allergic to eggs' the Dutch girl said
'Toss them this direction!' the Scots, Aussie and of course Irish chorused in unison.
An hour later we were hiking up a mountain.
Two hours later we traversed the lake by boat.
Four hours later the indefatigable Anatoli translated the entire twenty page menu for all of us in a café and I got to eat Omul a native fish exclusive to the Lake - and the chips! They were obviously robbed from my mum's recipe for homemade chips, but as I didn't have the language I didn't chase the lady for royalties, just ate them all up in her honour.
The next day we hung out with Nerpa, the world's only freshwater seals, hiked again up a mountain (ok I wimped out of this and went back to the café to eat chips again!).
When the others arrived back we all met up to do a 'Banya' - a Russian sauna equivalent involving being beaten with birches in the soaring heat and then heading out to be doused in ice-cold water. The shrieks and caterwalling caused many locals to laugh out loud.
Later that night we watched Shaolin Soccer, a ridiculously hilarious chinese film and sang copious amounts of karaoke whilst drinking limited amounts of shop bought beer.
I had to be taken kicking and screaming from Lake Baikal, where the fishermen sort the nets out by hand, and there is no exploitation to the point that we were practically the only tourists in the spot and the lady in the café knew us by the end of our trip. Where the markets are basically fishermen's catch of the day, some of it smoked - they bar-b-q their catch by the shore. The water is so clear you can see its depth and the air is clean.
I liked the place, it was friendly.
And then back to Irkutsk, to say goodbye to the Scots who were heading to Vladivastok and to catch the train to mysterious Mongolia.
xx
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Helen
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Lovely pics
The addition of the photos in all of the blogs really bring them to life. They're great! I like Tallin. I see what Aoife means, it's very "fairytail" You can imagine the Brothers Grimm scribbling away in some garret there. (Not sure where he was from but it must have been somewhere like Tallin.) The little holiday in the swiss chalet sounds like it was just what you needed after the train ordeal!!