Lake Baikal

It is said that if you dip your hands in Lake Baikal you will add a year to your life. If you dip your feet you will add five years and, if you are brave enough to dip your whole body and live to tell of it, you will live an extra 25 years. Maybe so...but how would you ever know?

John and I have extended our lives by one year. The water temperature of the lake is akin to melted ice-cubes so I'm not sure if exposing any limbs to the icy waters will actually add to or reduce my longevity. We did wash our hair with lake water (a 30 second rinse was all we could stand) and our necks were blue. But...maybe we'll be able to tell our great-great-great-great grandchildren about the experience.

We are experiencing a major sense of accomplishment having made it to the shores of Lake Baikal. John has always wanted to come here. Our first excursion to the lake was to a small town of Listvyanka (2500 residents so maybe village is a better term to use). We stayed in a small wooden cottage directly across from the only road in town, which had more strolling cows than cars.

The lake is beautiful with snow-capped mountains on the other side. There were still patches of snow around the village. The views from a lookup 2 1/2 kilometer up were awesome. The main part of the the village is the port where the fisherman sell smoked fish in steaming wooden crates. It tastes a bit like cured ham John thinks. (Everyone that we've met in the village smells of fish and vodka.) There aren't any big stores or markets here and we've found it tougher to get food (other than fish) to eat. We were elated the other day when we found a few tomatoes.

Lake Baikal holds 20% of the world's fresh water. It is one of the deepest lakes in the world (one mile deep) and 70% of it's wildlife is unique and found nowhere else in the world. You can see most of them either stuffed or floating in fermaldihyde at the small museum at the foot of the town.

Our efforts to plan excursions from here to other parts of the lake have left us frustrated. There is no easy way to get anywhere. Couple our language barrier with the fact that there are no timetables posted anywhere for boat crossing or buses, and we feel helpless. Tourism has dropped off here in the last five years we were told. I can understand why. Getting information is like pulling teeth.

In general, Russian travel has been hard. We've had to be mentally aware of everything, every step of the way. Until now we really haven't relaxed (read: not had to buy a bus or train ticket, or had to try to communicate with anyone). But, our three days of relaxation in Listvyanka came to a sudden end when we were told in broken English by the little boy of the owner, that we would have to leave. He didn't know how to say that they were booked for the weekend, but we figured it out.

So, we had to start being alert again. We needed to get information on the hydrofoil that sometimes, might not run, and try to plan for the circumbaikal train that runs once a day, maybe twice at 4am, who knows. And maybe catch the ship that goes to the northern end of the lake twice a week, or maybe doesn't. But someday, somehow, I am confident that we will get somewhere that we want to go.

At the moment though we feel like we are going in circles. We've had to come back to Irkutsk to get information. We've found a B&B here with an owner who speaks fluent English and she is helping us arrange some transport. Now it appears that the boat we wanted to take doesn't even run until late June due to ice still on the north end of the lake. Instead, she's arranged a driver to take us up half-way up the Western side of the lake to Olkhon island where we plan to camp and hike and hopefully see the worlds only fresh water seals.