Timetable for Krugobaikalka 2010

Wednesdays at 08:16 from Irkutsk railway station, return in Irkutsk around 21:00-22:00

Thursdays at 09:00/09:30 from the Irkutsk Drama Theatre, address: Karl Marx str.14, return in Irkutsk around 22:00

Fridays at 06:55 from the Irkutsk railway station, return in Irkutsk around 20:00

Saturdays at 08:16 from the Irkutsk railway station, return in Irkutsk around 21:00-22:00

Sundays at 09:00/09:30 from the Irkutsk Drama Theatre, address: Karl Marx str.14, return in Irkutsk around 22:00

Lake Baikal

We arrived in Irkutsk at 5am to be greeted by local Russian lads keen to ply us with vodka and practice their English in the local cafe. They’d been up all night drinking but we’d just woken up and all we wanted was a shower after 4 nights on the train. We managed to persuade them that 1 shot each was enough and headed off to find a bus to Olkhon Island.
Olkhon Island is the biggest island on Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest fresh-water lake. It’s an exciting six hour minibus ride away from Irkutsk. The tarmac stops half way making for a bumpy ride and the bus slowly filled up with drunken villagers who managed to smell worse than us. Lake Baikal was well worth the trip though, the scenery is outstanding and it is so hard to believe that it is a lake and not the sea.
We spent four days here walking around, appreciating the views over the lake to the mountainous mainland and visiting the important spiritual sights, which seem to include every rock on the island.



From: Mr & Mrs Gilfeather

Asiatified

Round the world way. See ther is Baikal!





Another nice mentioning about lake Baikal on this blog. Very stylish stuff.
The Transcontinental Oldbones Project

Back in the USSR........

It's Tuesday afternoon and I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Irkutsk, Siberia.

Another story by another wanderer...
Actually, a good example of a good travel experience! :)))

Lake Baikal. Island Olkhon. Nikita Bencharov's homestead

There are many different homesteads, hotels and camping areas. But there is one at the lake Baikal on Olkhon Island hosted by Bencharov family, which could be called at least unique. This place is located in a very beautiful place. They know how to do many things which bring great value to the homestead. They involve many different people, cultures, groups and individuals in making their homestead a living thing. Everytime you visit you will see changes and new perspectives.

Nikita Bencharov is a well known name. I wish there be more people like him.
Learn more about Nikita’s homestead.

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.

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.

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.

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