Day 286 - Not Quite Val d'Isere

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The town for disembarking the train was Irkutsk, which we reached at 5:40am local time or 0:40am Moscow time. Our Russian travel agent was even prepared to phone us to make sure we woke up for it, and had briefed the local guide who was meeting us from the train with orders to board it and find us if we didn’t appear. As it was we were up and ready in good time but at a pitch black Siberian station in a snowstorm we were relieved to see the guide (Sasha) and driver (also Sasha) waiting for us. Because of the snow we had a slow drive (and the driver stopped a number of times to offer help to cars that had come off the road) from Irkutsk to a settlement called Listvyanka on the shore of the main attraction, Lake Baikal, settled into our hotel, ate some breakfast and then went to sleep for 3 hours whilst the poor guides waited in the car.

Refreshed and raring to go we had a tour of Lake Baikal’s museum. This is a really interesting place with some facts that stand out: it’s the deepest lake in the world at just over a mile, it contains a fifth of the world’s freshwater and it freezes over during the winter months (and is still frozen over now). It has plenty of fish unique to the lake and hosts weird events like a marathon on ice. It is also famous for one fish in particular, the omul, which we tried at a market stall down the road which was an experience in itself in sub-zero temperatures. The market had about 20 stalls with 10 selling smoked omul and 10 selling identical selections of tourist-style stones. Anyone with an ounce of innovation could make a killing here.

Next we went to the ski ‘resort’ which was basically closed for the summer but which had a decent covering of snow from recent snowstorms. The ski lift wasn’t working which would have scuppered our plans for a look around from the top, but they started it going just for us and it was quite a bizarre sensation being on a ski lift with literally noone else around and completely empty slopes. The views from the top, 500m above the lake, were incredible, with a vast expanse of frozen lake stretching into the distance and the mountains on the far side just about visible through the cloud.

We had lunch (smoked omul starter, fried omul main) which gave us a good chance to talk to guide Sasha about the area and its history, in particular about the Siberian labour camps. It also turned out that driver Sasha is actually a doctor - a profession that isn’t very well paid here apparently - and drives tourists around to make some extra roubles. Then before we know it it’s time for dinner and we’re not really hungry enough for anything more than a snack, but we do find room for a couple of bottles of wine and some local beers. We also find time for a bit of a pub crawl through Listvyanka’s mostly quite empty bars including watching some incomprehensible Russian pool in Last Century Bar.

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