Holiday in Siberia Part 1 - Baikal

An article by Edward on Slow Travel

Historically an invitation to Siberia came from Josef Stalin. Unlike Butlin’s it was to a rather different sort of camp, a gulag, or labour camp. Trips also tended to be one-way affairs, with many prisoners literally worked to death. The size and remoteness of Siberia allowed this barbaric activity to go on out of sight if not out of mind of most Russians. If Siberia was an independent nation it would still be one of the biggest countries in the world, and anywhere this size has got to have something special offer. And indeed it does!

We’ve just spent the last few days around Lake Baikal, the biggest single repository of freshwater on the planet. It’s awesome in scale. You could lose Scotland in it. If it wasn’t so far away some people might be tempted to try. It’s also currently frozen, covered with an incredible icy surface that creates a tempting white plain (up to 80km across) between the rugged black mountains that flank the water on either side. The ice is deceptive however, especially at this time of the year. During the numb winter months people happily drive 20 ton trucks across the surface on established ice roads. Come the spring melt it’s a different story. The ice softens unevenly and whilst it is safe in some areas, in others it becomes treacherously thin and downright dangerous. This year 11 vehicles have been lost and 9 people drowned in the deep dark icy waters when the apparently reliable ice has suddenly given way beneath them.

It was with this grisly fate in mind that we were somewhat thankful that the timing of our arrival on Olkhon Island (the biggest in the Lake) coincided with the deployment of a natty little ‘Padoushka’ or hovercraft. This enabled us to skim thrillingly over the ice safe in the knowledge that if it cracked we weren’t going through and into the depths below. And what depths. Baikal is 1637m deep at it’s most abyssal point, and as a result the water remains startlingly, scrotum-shrinkingly cold even in midsummer. It’s also terrifyingly clear with visibility up to 40m down resulting in some swimmers suffering from vertigo – not something you expect whilst taking a dip (but at least it might take your mind off your freezing testicles).

We are almost the first tourists of the season on the island too, only being beaten to this honour by a (very nice) German couple who arrived the day before. Typical. We later met them naked in the banya, so made friends perhaps more quickly and intimately than we might have anticipated. Yesterday however we were literally the only guests at the homestead and as such have been treated like slightly weird, if welcome, oddities. Last night we even had a personal concert on accordion and guitar (not simultaneously I hasten to add) by Nikola the care-taker (‘Because I take care of things’). It’s like being part of a small family and a world away from the summer hordes when the dining room has fed up to 350 people in a day in high season.

Far from the madding crowd. On an island. In the middle of a frozen lake. In Siberia. Bliss.