Baikal is the most spectacular lake in the world. The view in the photo above could rival Scotland’s finest lochs. But that isn’t even Baikal. It’s the Angara river, draining Baikal and flowing towards Irkutsk city.
We had planned a hike today to celebrate my birthday but the girls decided that it would be too muddy and slippery given the torrential downpour. So we’re at the Taltsy Architectural-ethnographic Museum. It’s a collection of wooden colonial cabins from all over Irkutsk Oblast (county). There are farmsteads, a schoolhouse, churches, a jail and even a reconstructed Ostrog: the palisade fortresses built by the Cossacks when they first penetrated Siberia.
The group is me, Anya, her friend Marsha and her friend Dasha. Anya is being my guide in exchange for English language practice and I’m very grateful to her, and to Masha for driving us here! They even got me a birthday present! A fridge magnet and a plush Nerpa – the world’s only species of freshwater seal that live in Baikal’s icy waters.
After the museum we head to the lakeside town of Listvyanka AKA the Baikal Riviera. We make a B-line for the open-air market for smokey grilled omul, a fish unique to Baikal. As we drive down the front I get my first view of Baikal. Across the pebble beach, behind the lines of moored boats the lake looks exactly like a calm sea because the far bank isn’t visible. Anya tells me that it isn’t visible even on a clear day. As I step out the car I expect to hear guls but can only hear traffic.
Yesterday evening we’d gone for a fancy dinner at <name> in The Quarter (A pedestrianised area of Irkutsk city full of cafes, restaurants and bars) The restaurant is retro style (retro is definitely a recurring theme in Russia). The food was great, I had soup from a bread bowl, potato fritters and a russian salad. We had a selection of fruity infusions from rather nice glasses which the girls say are “railway style” because they are available to use on the transsiberian.
Eastward Ho! 