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Published: February 28th 2008
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After a very long day in Ekaterinburg waiting patiently for our late night train we were finally off at 2am on what is to be our longest train leg of our journey (50hrs). We were both happy and a little sad to find we had only one travel companion in our berth, who happened to turn out to be the quietest man in Russia (so much for vodka induced wild train trips) , slept most of the way and seemed to eat nothing. Oh, he also had some pretty nasty BO going on to boot which matured as our journey progressed! Despite this he seemed very nice.
Anyway the trip was surprisingly not too painful and we managed to not get too much cabin fever aided by the few books, games and cards we have brought along. We arrived in Irkutsk at the ungodly hour of 5am, three time zones later, and checked in to the rest rooms at the train station for a few crappy hours of sleep with more snoring Russians before being picked up by our tour guide for the day. We wandered out of the train station to be welcomed by the -20 temp, snow
and freezing nostrils (yes, at this temp the hairs in your nose freeze!). Finding it hard to breathe outside we did a brief tour of the city with Jack our guide then headed the 70km's or so to the reason we came to Irkutsk- Lake Baikal.
Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake in the world - 1.6km deep. It is ecologically quite unique with many species endemic to the lake such as the tasty Omul fish and the world's only freshwater seal, the nerpa seal. This time of the year the lake is completely frozen over (except the mouth of the river) with around 70cm of ice.
The lake looks spectacular in winter, an endless sea of white. The ice tends to split, crack and upheave shards of glass-like ice which are amazing. We got dropped off here at a cute old apartment decked out with seventies decor. The first night we shared it with the owner but had it all to ourselves the second night.
The lake side village was quite cute and very peaceful. We spent the couple of days we had here wandering around on the ice taking in the amazing views and
marvelling at how we could walk over such a vast body of water. Fortunately our guide warned us about the ice cracking frequently and being able to hear it. He assured us it was totally safe to walk about, cars drive across the ice all through the winter! Despite this, we still nearly died of fright the first time we heard the spine chilling sound from below our feet with visions of an icy death. We spent several hours right out on the ice on our second day until a large crack unnerved us too much and we hurredly walked back in. We realised it was still pretty cold when our water bottle had ice shards in it by the end of the day!
We sampled the tasty smoked omul fish and climbed up past the very small ski slopes to a great view point before scrambling/sliding back down the mountain. We also managed to line up our very own 'banya' (Russian steam room) and sweltered for an hour (a nice change to the cold) and whipped each other with branches which is apparently all part of the deal. After spending so many days with only each other to
Kirstyn pondering if it really is safe
There were huge long cracks everywhere, some fresh with water welling up. talk to, and couped up in a train, the whipping proved to be quite a good therapeautic tool and we left there feeling as though we had resolved some of those unspoken issues!
After our two night stay in Litsvanyanka we had to head back to Irkutsk for a night before a train to Mongolia and the end of our Russian experience. We didn't get up to too much in Irkutsk having seen the main sites on the first day. We caught the train that night at 8pm, and so began the next chapter of our journey!
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