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Published: October 10th 2008
Day 16: Lake Baikal
The famous smoked Omal fishOhhh sooo tired. I am sure if we had the choice - Tim and I would have spent the day in bed. But as always - check out time is in 15 minutes and today is probably the only chance we'll ever have to see the world's largest lake - Lake Baikal.
We made it to the drab and dingy bus station, and knowing full well that we had already missed the 8am and 9am bus, we attempted a cab ride, which some out of date blogs told us would only cost $15-$25. Inflation hits this place hard - as the best we got was 1100 R - ONE WAY (about $50.00) - so "NYET" to that.
Armed with the town LYSTVYANKA written in Cyrillic in a scrap of paper, I braved the ticket office, and was saved by this wonderful old Siberian woman and husband, who spoke no English - but saw where we needed to go and dragged us to one of the mini-buses that also operate around this country. 100 Rs later and we were hurtling towards the lake at 140kmh.
Arrived 40 mins later, and like some kind of weird beach side town,
Day 16: Lake Baikal
Chloe eating the omal. we embarked to a mix of crappy souvenir stalls, beautiful wooden houses and a massive lake. Unfortunately it wasn't beach weather, but we braved the cold and bought some warm smoked OMAL fish (from the lake) and ate it on the beach.
Found another mini-bus home but it broke down somewhere on the edge of Irkutsk and we then struggled to figure out how on earth we would get back to our hotel. I think we over paid a taxi driver for the privilege of driving us back.
Killed 30 minutes going to the Irkutsk Art Gallery (worst art gallery in the world - more like a school hall than a major gallery), though the one section on Asian and Mongolian art was worth the whole visit.
Arrive at the train station later that night - and are on TRAIN HEAVEN. Not only have we scored a more modern train, we seem to have our own cabin too. Bring on the ride to Mongolia!
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