Blogs from Lake Baikal, Siberia, Russia, Europe - page 6

Listvyanka (Lake Baikal) Arrived in Irkutsk at 6am. Caught a taxi to from the train station to the bus station, where we waited in a little cafe until 9am, when the bus for Listvyanka was due. Surprising amount of people in the cafe also waiting for buses here and there. Lots of Mongolian looking people around - it definitely felt like we were getting closer to Mongolia. I felt absolutely rubbish, as the cold that had been building up for the last few days reached its peak! Jumped on the bus for Listvyanka and arrived an hour later, but missed our stop by about 2 miles! Luckily a local gave us a lift to our hotel. The hotel was huge, and overlooked the lake, as did the balcony in our room. What an amazing view!! The ... read more

By road it takes an hour to get from Listvyanka to Irkutsk where the Trans-Siberian is waiting for us. So do we go by road? No, we take the 13 hour rail option – the Circum-Baikal Railway. Its a well scenic route as for 89km it runs right along the shores of Lake Baikal – literally along the lake shore, the lake is never more than a few feet away. For 46 years it was an integral part of the Trans-Siberian Railway but it was superseded in 1950 when a short cut was opened between Irkutsk and Slyudyanka (the current Trans-Siberian route). Then a few years later it was abandoned when the damming of the Angara River flooded part of the line (Irkutsk to Port Baikal) and made the Circum-Baikal a dead end track. So if ... read more

Day 50 First impressions of Irkutsk were not great and was following a similar pattern to other Russian cities. Around the station area was chaotic and madness with the people, driving and buses etc. Eventually we found a tram to get us to the bus station as decided to leave immediately for Lake Baikal which is the major attraction in the area. It is some 600Kms long and 80kms wide (almost the size of Germany) and some 1600 metres deep in parts, so easily the biggest freshwater lake in the world! It supplies 20% of the words water and when we first saw the lake it was so foggy it actually looks like a sea as you can not see the other side. Pretty impressive and it is a big part of Tourism for this part ... read more

The tiny, rickety old bus ground to a halt after a 40km spin on a bumpy, pot-holed road that wound its way through taiga forests and in between mountains to the fishing village of Baikalskoe on the northern shores of Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake. Only myself, two babushkas and a teenage girl had been on the bus that had left Severobaikalsk at 8am. A few more people seemed to be getting on here for the return journey but it would still be far from full. The inhabitants' faces were noticeably more weathered by alcohol and the elements than people in Severobaikalsk, their clothes plainer and older. I got off the bus and stepped around a burly man in terminally faded camouflage gear, his perhaps half-Buryat face red, lined and covered in stubble, who was ... read more

Now, I’d never admit to being a train fanatic, far from it, but the prospect of a ninety-hour train journey across Russia and in to the deepest darkest depths of Siberia is something that has made me quite moist for many a year now. As we walked to the train station in Moscow for the night time departure, I still couldn’t believe that I was finally getting the chance to ride on ’The Trans-Siberian Railway.’ Just as we were boarding the train, the words, “there’s a small problem with your train ticket,” weren’t really what I was wanting to here. For a moment I thought I had somehow been given a ticket for a different train. It was worse. I’d been given a separate compartment from my wife and I would have to share with three ... read more