Listvyanka and Lake Baikal

The next day we got up early and enjoyed a home-cooked breakfast of a baked cottage cheese dish with warm, runny strawberry jam and hot tea and iced water. We felt so luxurious sitting in the spacious dining room, using china and silverware, and eating fresh, hot food. After breakfast we caught a cab and then a bus toward Lake Baikal, and I wanted badly to sleep, but I couldn’t help watching the villages and trees and snow and sky roll by.

We arrived in a village called Listvyanka a couple of hours later, and we disembarked and walked straight down to the foggy, clear, cold, slate blue Lake Baikal. Everything was overcast and grey, and we couldn’t see through the fog to the other side of the lake. The sand along the banks was frozen solid, I realized as my ass hit the rocks. We put our hands in the cold water and tried to skip rocks a little. Then we stood up and looked at each other. Yep, it was a big cold freshwater lake. So… what now?

Just then a girl about 12 years old in animal hide boots and a fur-lined hood appeared at our side and introduced herself as Lyuda. She asked in an official voice, “Kak zdorovya?” (How is your health?) and gave us her hand over the treacherous frozen sand. She followed us around and answered questions like she was a tour guide. She seemed to be an expert at working tourists, and I think we were the only non-Russian people around for miles. She led us to a little general store where we could buy some souvenirs and warm up a bit. Waiting outside the door was a young boy around ten years old. “Hello,” he said in clear English. I was impressed. “Hi,” I said. He said, “Give me please one dollar.” I laughed. He didn’t. “Give me please one ruble?” he entreated. Those are the only two things he said the whole time he was following us around. I bought another warm hat because my other one didn’t keep me warm enough. It was another imitation Adidas product (they will put an Adidas logo on anything over there, and I figure if they’d put as much money into actually making a decent product instead of trying to fool people into thinking it’s Adidas… but I guess that’s not how things work). They bought some post cards, and we gave both of the kids a little money for their trouble even though Lyuda seemed like a little huckster-in-training, and the boy was particularly shameless. He didn’t even pretend to offer a service, he just got straight to the point.

Then we decided to take a short bus ride to Lake Baikal’s limnological museum. The museum consisted of two rooms full of stuffed fish and nerpas (the only freshwater seal in the world, which lives only in Lake Baikal) and charts and graphs about the lake. A local grade school was there on a tour listening to a woman lecture as she pointed at the charts, and we listened in.

That got old after a while, and we decided to hike uphill a kilometer or so to the Hotel Baikal. It was built, along with the road that goes from Irkutsk to the lake, for President Eisenhower’s planned visit to the region in the early 1960s. Apparently he had some Russian ancestry. His visit was cancelled, however, after Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane was shot down over Russian soil. But the nice road and the big empty hotel remain. We found our way to the hotel’s restaurant and ordered omul (a big lake fish and Baikal’s distinctive delicacy), seaweed (or lakeweed) salads, fries, and Baikal water. We also enjoyed a magnificent view of the lake. As the fogs finally lifted, we could see mountains faintly outlined on the other side.

We walked back downhill and down the road to a little lakeside village. We explored a little and found a small cathedral with some surprisingly beautiful artwork and icons inside. We got barked at and sometimes chased by giant furry dogs, but most of them were on chains. We saw a lot of frozen laundry draped over fences around dilapidated wood cabins that looked like they couldn’t possibly keep one warm on a day like this, and we spotted the occasional American or Japanese sport utility vehicle.

As we walked down the frozen road by the lake we met a few folks out on their bicycles and saw a house that advertised a bear inside that you could look at for a fee. (I sneaked a peek but wished I hadn’t because the poor thing looked so miserable.) On a frozen river tributary, a gang of young men skated around on little steerable sleds that they propelled using ski poles. It looked like fun.

We finally got back to the little main square of Listvyanka, and Lyuda was there waiting for us. We hung around the omul sellers and souvenir tables until our bus was supposed to leave. I was buying a little rock carving of the Lake Baikal god five minutes before our bus was supposed to leave, and then for no reason at all our bus decided to leave five minutes early. It was now 3:56, Rob’s train left in a few hours, and there wasn’t another bus to Irkutsk for several hours. Rob and Liz panicked and flagged down a car heading into town to help us catch up to the bus and yelled at me to hurry. I threw the money at the woman and grabbed my rock and ran after the car. We got in and caught up to the bus and boarded with great relief, but somewhere in the confusion my wallet got lost. I lost a debit card, credit card, about $20 worth of rubles, and some business cards and souvenirs I really hated to lose. But we phoned the States later and got the cards cancelled (it’s not like there were ATMs around anyway) and life went on.

We went back to our hotel to get Rob’s stuff and then headed to the train station to see him off. He had an earlier plane connection in Vladivostok so that he could spend Christmas with his family. As his train pulled away, so did our friend and best translator. Liz and I went back to the hotel, ate some, and slept hard.

More pictures of the Lake and surroundings

Day 6--Irkutsk

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