International work and study at lake Baikal

There are a lot of international activities going on at lake Baikal. I've met an interesting person: Alexander Kolosovich, who lives in Ulan-Ude for now. He is from California and he has had some great and interesting experience at the lake. Here are his photos that he took while his research and study:





You can find the rest of his photos here.

Similarities

Mysterious (to me, anyway) stone structure on the banks of Baikal near Kodil'naya Valley. Doesn't it look quite similar to...
...Stonehenge?

Я Люблю Иркутск

Kind of cute, but a bit pricey. I obviously have too much free time to stumble across websites like this...

http://www.cafepress.com/xkluziv/3796032

Additional Portion of Art.

Baikal and taiga video with music and comments.

Online tourism

There are many online tour agencies that offer sevices and try to sell them on Internet. Recently I found an intresting company based in China which offers interesting tour packages to anywhere from Vladivostok and Beijin to London. Can you imagine what a big market they are covering?! They really work hard, and they have a good website. Monkey Business is the brand .

And it really seems that they can attract people to Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk.

Website about Baikal

There are a lot of pages of information online, but it is so hard to find a good website in this trash. Sometimes good websites just come to us. When I was searching for websites about lake Baikal, I found this one long time ago. Baikal Web World is still working and information on this website can be a good start for a book.
If you are interested in Baikal and don't want to loose many time wondering online looking for information just visit this site and you will get a good image of culture, nature and other stuff.
I liked Baikal local terms and geographical names very much.

art work

More art from the streets of Irkutsk...

What you may never see, but its there.

It was quite impossible to imagine any underground art activity in Irkutsk a couple of years ago. Nowadays you can see graffiti art when you enter the city by railroad or air. There are a lot of art pieces near airport and along railroad. Downtown is full of graffiti art today, but you cannot see it from ‘outside’.

You can see how this international underground culture came up to our Siberian stage. A year ago it was like a plant, but nowadays it is a big tree, a common thing, all of it is good yet.

The whole art activity is supported by a very small group of people, but they are making a huge trend. Graffiti arts are getting better. There are even some shops which sell special paint in cans with special caps that artists can use.

Also, there are art competitions and festivals, where managers try to gather lots of artists in one place so that they can draw freely. These competitions are usually related to others with extreme sports (bikes, rollerblades, skateboards) and rappers. So, if you are an artist you can come up to Siberia to try out your skills and compete with Siberians in art.

Eco-Tourism in Wales and Russia

NB: This is not a well-researched academic article, just some observations from my travels.

After the closure of coal mines in the UK, Wales was forced to revamp its economy, and find other sources of income. One of the methods of so doing has been to develop the country's tourism industry, including a large eco-tourism sector. With the natural beauty of the lush green mountains and hills, and the picturesque ruins and flocks of sheep that dot the countryside, and its relatively easily-accessible location (approximately a 3 hour drive from London) Wales is ideally situated for a tourist industry. Some creative Welsh groups have even taken Wales' industrial past and used it to attract tourists. For example, at Pyll Mawr (Big Pit), visitors can visit a coal mine and see it's inner workings. The Museum of Welsh Life in St. Fagan shows architecture from many periods of Welsh history, from a Celtic Village to a Coal-Miner's home in the 1980s. My impression was that the locals were glad to have tourists, and didn't mind sharing their stories and histories with visitors, as long as you didn't call them English.

Image 1: The Wye River near Tintern Abbey.

Russian eco-tourism, however, has a different feel to it. It hasn't developed as an industry from a previous industry, but has developed on its own. The populace seems less responsive to eco-tourism, mainly because it seems that it will do more harm than good to the environment.

Image 2: A Russian Conservation sign at Shaman's Rock on Olkhon Island.

I see three main differences between the Welsh and Russian eco-tourism industries that have allowed the Welsh industry to be largely integrated, while the Russian industry remains on the fringe. The first of these is the previous condition in the area. With Wales' industrial past, much of the country's national beauty was in danger, so eco-tourism was a boon which saved and preserved many of these sites. A poster I saw in Wales said "Protect the Best, Restore the Rest" (or something along those lines). In Russia, though, because of the vast size of the country, many areas had been minimally effected by industry, and were not screaming to be saved and protected. To many people it seems that eco-tourism will harm the environment, rather than save it as it did in Wales. The second difference between Wales and Siberian Russia which effects the effectiveness of eco-tourism is the comparative degree of infrastructure in the countries. Again because of Wales' industrial past, it has well-developed roads and bridges which can support the tourist traffic. In the Baikal area, however, the main source of transportation is boating, which can be a difficulty for tourists. The third difference between the two countries is government regulation and support. Wales, as part of the United Kingdom, has a strong and effective centralized government which can reasonably effectively enact and enforce environmental protection regulations. Russia on the other hand, although it has a strong central government, is less effective at enforcing environmental protection regulations. Because of this difficulty, eco-tourism can become a can of worms in Russia, where tourists could destroy the national beauty because laws are not enforced.

How does Irkutsk look like?

I found a great website about Baikal region with a huge collection on real-life photos. It is about Irkutsk mostly. Actually this website existed for a long time, but I've just 're-found' it. It is in russian, but english speaking people can use some of the features available on this website, like dayly-updated photo collections.



Photos showing Irkutsk city;



people, who live in Irkutsk and around Baikal;



Baikal, for shure.



NOTE: There is a navigation tool on top of each photo. You can use it to switch to different photos.

Bad News and Good Publicity

The Wall Street Journal's article which discusses Russian Envrionmentalism and Lake Baikal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119341597493473033.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone

Green Mountains

View looking south from the mountain north of Bol'shiye Koty.

Getting to Baikal

In my Russian History class, the professor said "Can you even imagine how long it would have taken to get to Irkutsk in this time?" My mental response was, "Actually, I can, because I can tell you with complete certainty that even now it takes forever to get there." To reach Baikal we flew to Yekaterinburg, and then took the Trans-Siberian Railroad across the vast expanse of Russia to Irkutsk. The Trans-Siberian Railroad is relatively famous (perhaps infamous?) and romanticized as the last great railroad in the world. I confirm that the train journey is certainly an experience.


We travelled in "hard class" so we were grouped four in a cabin. Our furnishings were two bunk beds with a small aisle between them. In this aisle was a small table which we used to eat, or more frequently, play Scrabble. The journey from Yekaterinborg to Irkutsk was to take fifty hours, so it provided an excellent opportunity for us to get to know our travel companions very well. In addition to socializing with our travelling companions, we met many other travellers on the train. Some got to know the man in charge of the dining car, and from him procured many a Choco-Pie. We also met a young Australian couple who had recently been living in London, who were moving from London back to Australia, and taking trains as far as possible. Also on our train were a group of young Russian soldiers who were being re-assigned to the Far East. We also spent a great deal of time sleeping on the train, and writing in our omnipresent journals. After fifty hours spent thus, we were glad to arrive in Irkutsk, although our journey was still not over.



We were met in Irkutsk by our Russian companions, and loaded onto a bus to drive to Baikal. The drive took approximately an hour. When we reached the shores of Baikal, amazed by how beautiful it was, but too disoriented to properly process where we were, we had a one hour boat journey to our final destination. When we arrived, we were greeted with breakfast, and were glad to have a place to stay and call our home for the next few weeks.

Photographs:
top: The view out the window from our car.
bottom: At Krasnoyarsk, an historical train commemorating the Great Patriotic War (WWII)

www.trans-siberian.co.uk

Lonely little island.

Buddism? Shamanism?

This statue stands on a very small island in Baikal.

Experience Collection

It is so nice, sometimes, to find something that is really worth of seeing. Take a look at this photo by Oleg O. Moiseyenko. His collection of photos can tell a little bit about culture and society of Irkutsk city, AND (of course) Baikal...

Siberia (Ulan-Ude): Bears, Vodka, Gipsies.

There are a lot of stereotypes about Siberia and Baikal. If you haven't been to Siberia here is a collection of photos that may give you a little impression about Ulan-Ude.

Photos by Tiamat.

Enjoy.

Thats what they say!

"<...>All in all though, we agreed that Lake Baikal lived up to expectations and ticked all the right boxes.<...>"

Visit Leaders of the Free World

:-)