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Tompa, Russia

Khakusy (an isolated hot-spring turbaza (holiday camp) is an hour by speed boat east of southeast across from Serverobaykal’sk on the wilder and unpopulated eastern shores. And it’s here that geothermal activity* pushes heated water up to the surface. Russians come for their medicinal bathing, their tonics, the hot spring green mosses applied to their arthritic knees and a man-like female masseur at the ready. I decided after a couple of hours alternating between the super hot pools amd the cooler ones that my pack-carrying back needed the gift of a massage. And this man-lady was good. I returned very chilled across the lake in the speed boat. Although, the boat’s occupants were a ittle irate as I was late. I blame the masseur.

* Yergeny tells me that Lake Baikal has daily micro-tremors. With the deep central submerged valley of the lake slowly spreading and moving the BAM engineers knew to build the soviet-style apartment blocks with earthquake proof design incorporated.

Severobaykal’sk, Russia

Azamat came looking for me last night and we arranged for tonight instead. Last night I was still dealing with the aftermath of the iPhone washing machine incident. Anyway, tonight at the ski-jump shaped train station, after returning from a chilled-out thermal baths and massage at Khakusy – an hour by speed boat across from town on the eastern shores – he helped me buy my last, longest and most expensive leg of my trans-Russia train odyssey: Irkutsk to Vladivostok. And with no platzkart available I’m going kupe all the way to the end. On Azamat’s reasoning around bottom bunk versus top bunk I decided to take the train that had a bottom bunk available in the four-bed kupe ‘dog-boxes’. It’s just over three days on board and I’ll be in Vladivostok mid-morning on 15th July.

I decided that with time running out and the fact that I’d already had my Arctic experience in Novy Urengoy and Salekhard, that I will can the idea of Yakutsk. Maybe another time.

Severobaykal’sk, Russia

Fresh from Baikalskoe on the marshrutka that bounced us all the way from floor to ceiling on a road that made the permafrost highways in Alaska look straight and level, I was full of beans and energy from a solid day’s hiking the shore line of Baikal (and forearms burnt to prove it) when I arrived back at the Baikal Trail Hostel and had a good chat with Ervgeny’s daughter, Alyona, who helps manage the family hostel business, when she’s visiting from her town on the southern shores near Irkutsk. A delightful woman, with a soul and open spirit just like her father: warm, confident and giving.

Alyona told me of the amazing pioneering spirit that brought her mother and father to Baikal in 1976. They were BAM workers lured by this Soviet nation-building endeavour of mammoth proportions. She a bridge engineer and he a rail engineer. Her mother was then pregnant with Alyona’s older sister, Anna. And Severobaikalsk was nothing more than a camp for rail workers in the inhospitable Siberian taiga. Alyona spoke of the dream they had, lured by the lake that is a sea to many. And she and her sister alike both remain attached to the Lake, their life force, as well.

Ervgeny and his daughters are all eco-conscious people. In his late 60’s he rides his mountain bike around Severobaikalsk’s summer streets, by turns dusty and swollen with muddy waters. And earlier he came in saying to his daughter Alyona that he’d been out looking for environmentally-friendly detergents for the hostel. This is something I’ve not witnessed before in Russia. And Ervgeny was conscious of the eutrophication processes happening as phosphorus and nitrogen were increasingly being added to the Baikal waters.

Ervgeny is also a major supporter and believer in the Great Baikal Trail (GBT). He regularly hosts volunteers with the GBT organisation as they pass through Severobaikalsk to the various trail development and maintenance areas. In fact, while I was south in Baikalskoe a group of volunteers spent a night in the hostel before going out to their various wilderness postings around the northern lake. And I saw one group as I finished my hike this afternoon.

Both Alyona and Anna have children of their own now. They are BAM babies too in a sense. But possibly given the strength of the environmental ethos that this family has and the dream of a healthy Baikal that they nurture in their hearts and actions, they are really in fact ‘Baikal Babies’ through and through.

Onokochan, Russia

Baykal’skoye, Russia

Three words. Gertruda, Gertruda, Gertruda. A matriarch from Kazakhstan, who along with her daughter, Tatiana, and her grandaughter, Anna (15 years old), made my three days in Baykal’skoye so much like a home away from home. In a village of 1000 people, some descendents of the original Evenki people, Gertuda with her female proteges, fed me potatoes and vegetables from their home gardens and fish from the lake. The town is almost entirely made of wood. And there is one paved street in town. Motorbikes with side cars laden with helmetless families tear about. Many house fronts have elaborate carved and brightly pained window frames, the contrast with the plain age-stained dark pine planks and/or logs. The first two days were misty, cloudy and overcast. But this didn’t stop me exploring everything. On the first day after arriving on the morning bus from Severobaykal’sk I was given a hearty potato and egg breakfast and then shown my simple room out the back. Their toilet, a simple squatting arrangement over a watery drop pit, doubles as their fertilizer source for the gardens. But I wondered what the impact of the entire village’s un-sewered state was having on Baikal’s waters. Gertruda’s son, Konstantin, was visiting from Almaty, Kazakhstan, with Olga (his partner I later presumed) and her two young pre-teenage daughters I walked in the rain that first afternoon, doing a part of the Baykal’skoe walk to the north and back to town. Up over a big headland shrouded in mist. I stood at the cliff above Lake Baikal’s waters and stared out into mist. Below I could see the crystal clear waters lapping at the cliff base. The green of the shallow rocks grading to deep blue and black beyond. Back at the family home in the middle of the village of wood and side-cars, dinner was served of whole boiled lake fish. Afterwards I played the young girls some songs on the guitar and they were busy filming on their mobile phones. The two young girls visiting from Kazakhstan replied, at their mother Olga’s insistence I think, with a couple of exquisite pieces on the home’s piano. The next day at one point I found myself on a lonely stony beach being attacked from above by feisty black-hooded seagulls, while trying to re-encounter the roe deer I’d just seen emerge from the taiga thicket to drink at the emerging river’s edge. When the birds ceased their bothersome dive bombing for a moment, I scanned the deep shadows and greens of the forest for any sign of the little lone deer. It had stared at me for a few seconds before walking into the forest away from the bank of the stream that burbled past my feet through a small inlet and over stones into the lake. With the wind in my back (the storm was brewing off the lake from the southeast and I’d hunkered down on the small inlet side for some shelter of sorts) I was starting to get cold, so I walked back into town, taking the old bridge road out to the collapsed wooden bridge. I then followed the straight flowing main river Rel up it’s massively incised channel in pure river rocks and boulders. Seeing these rocks gave me a sense of the river’s occasional might. Approaching the new bridge I’d crossed to the south earlier in the day I realised the errors of my ways: I was actually on an island with two major river crossings to contemplate. I could have walked back the hour downstream, but I decided to find a large sturdy walking pole, and with my laces tied and boots slung around my neck, I commenced the first crossing. Before half way my feet were freezing. And now it was raining. On the second main channel crossing the water rose above my thighs and over my rolled up jeans. (Little did I know my phone was in a side leg pocket, which I’d forgotten to stow in my pack for the crossing. However, the next day back in Severobaykal’sk, I would well and truly take care of my phone – in a terminal fashion.) The sheer force of this amount of water against my legs was starting to make me worried I’d lose my footings, with many of the river bed stones being covered in mosses. But I made it. And then in the rain I quickly donned my socks and boots over frozen wet feet and set off up the banks through the forest, over the old dilapidated bridge, for the half hour walk back to town. This my second and final night the family prepared their banya for me and I entered alone into a small bathhouse come laundry room (a hut with cow manure daubed into the cracks between planks to stop the draughts), with a box-like wood stove pushing out some serious heat. Water in various buckets, A small wooden bench to sit on. And hand ladles to douse myself with water of my temperature choosing. It was cosy. And exhilarating to exit into the fresh moist night air. My last day I wasn’t sure if I’d get up earlier enough to catch the morning marshrutka toward Severobaykal’sk, in order to jump off and do the full Baikal Traik walk back to Baykal’skoye. But I did in relaxed fashion and with another wonderful Gertruda breakfast. Olga then packed me off with fish pies and special fish, rice, onion and spinach pastry bread thing’os! It was a bright sunny day – the clearest since I had arrived 5 days ago. And after alighting the bus and walking in from the main road I spent too long at the start looking at Russia camping culture at the so-called eco-village. And massive leeches in Sluydanka Lake. As well as making friends with a Lake Baikal hobo in his vagabond camp, along with his two at first aggressive dogs. A real character, He showed me how the big ant nests I’d pointed out were full of largish but non-biting and/or non-effectual biting ants. With both his hands on the ant mound he demonstrated with his hands quickly covered in swarming ants. I followed suit. It would have been a strange sight to see! And so I was rushing it a bit in the serious heat at the end knowing that I had to make the 18:00 bus from Baykal’skoye back to Severobaykal’sk. A yellow scum sat accumulated on the surface of the shiny water’s edge. It seemed to be all the pollen from the pulse of flowering trees. The hike was undulating through cleared forest, past rocky promontories and wooded hills. Towards the end with the last hill before Baykal’skoye in sight I burst onto a clear felled zone with steep bare hills plummeting into the blue green depths of the lake. Cattle tracks ran like terraces around the sweeping containers as the sun beat down. My lack of lip cream was sorely missed. And my decision to hold off on the swim was now beyond reprieve. I made a bee line down tithe water’s edge and ripped off all and carefully but as quickly as I could stepped awkwardly over the rocks into knee deep water and lay down. Ahhhh! I saw the GBT volunteers arrive and I dressed and waded off across the patched expanses and picking up a dusty road followed it into town, where Gertruda was waiting with a final meal and a kindly written and under valued bill. I tipped her an additional 500 rubles. On the was back having just bought the only cold drink available (a terrible artificial lemonade) I saw Olga, Konstantin and the girls out walking and said my last good byes and a family photo. I caught the last bus back to Severobaikalsk and sat next to a young chap who showed me photos on his phone while I showed him mine.

Baykal’skoye, Russia

Baykal’skoye is a little bit of time warp. Nowhere else have I seen the dedication and penchant for old motorbikes with side-cars attached. They are used to take one’s entire family about, collect fire wood or sit around and have a street drinking get-together upon. I don’t know where this enthusiasm began. But it’s very cool!

Onokochan, Russia

Severobaykal’sk, Russia

On my way back to the Baikal Trail Hostel I walked through the airy spaces between the looming apartment block complexes and across the raggedy courtyards of patchy grass, dust and dirt. I passed some forlorn-looking children’s playground equipment. As I walked past the sand pit I saw a little girl sitting patiently in the dirty sand picking broken beer and vodka bottle glass from her cherished play area. For same reason this image continues to ply my experience-addled brain!

Severobaykal’sk, Russia

After Yarky and the Baikal breezes there, Severbaykal’sk, on a massive terrace up from the Lake’s cooling shores, was in a mini heat and humidity wave. Well at least it felt that to me as I searched for dodgy eateries in its towering apartment block labyrinth. Back at Baikal Trail Hostel, Tora and Kjersti, my new friends from Norway,and probably the first tourists/backpackers I’d seen since I left Moscow. They had just done the Baikalskoe shore line hike (approximately 20kms), which I hoped to do in the next couple of days (I’d decided to head down to the village and stay there with a family that Baikal Trail Hostel manager Yervgeny and his daughters had organised for me), and their sunburnt arms and faces was evidence. The girls were up for a beer down at Severobaykal’sk’s lake side beach and so we headed down there. We came across some gypsy-like Russian’s making themselves at home on the shoreline in their makeshift wooden summer houses, complete with a banya shack. One guy caught my eye with his Cossack hat and full dark beard – I haven’t seen too may beards a all in Russia. One of the tall dark women ran a little kiosk in a mock-gypsy wagon and the she opened it to serve our beer order. She even put the second round of originally warm cans of Baltic beer in a bucket of cool lake water for us and returned to galloping her horse bare-back up the sand behind us as we sat on a bleached driftwood log looking out at the indistinguishable sky-water horizon, as the blue-grey of the haze blended in so well with the distant water horizon. Amazing light and presence this enormous lake gave off,

We set off for town again, with the remains of our second beers in hands, still looking for shashlyk if at all possible. Walking past the markets and kiosks (Soviet kiosks are prefabricated hexagon-like structures that can house a small shop in them) we happened upon a party in full swing. It was past midnight and with the nod of approval from Tora and Kjersti we walked in. And before we knew it the guys who spoke the best English in the house, confident Azamat and his old school mate Artyom, were at our sides instructing the young dark eyed waitress behind the counter what we’d like.

The party was in 20 year old Azamat’s honour. He’d just completed his mandatory one year in the Russian army learning to drive tanks and fire artillery over 20km horizontal distance. So keen was he to talk English with us, that his mother became a little jealous I think, as she kept on coming over to drag him away back to his family and friends.Before too long we were all up dancing. In my case, happy to munch on the food that continued to come our way from the revelers, I was coaxed / led out onto the tiny packed-dance floor by a short pale, albino-like, woman. Turned out she was a pediatrician.

Azamat and Artyon served as a door-to-door escorts for us as they walked us home. There was some confusion outside our Hostel, when, upon asking the people seated outside the huge apartment block to take a photo of us, it turned out that they themselves were drunk and found it hard to handle the camera.

All of Azamat’s famly were from Kyrgystan. He’d lived in Severobaykal’sk since he was one and said that he was embarrassed to say he didn’t speak Kyrgyz.

PS: I was to catch up again with him after Baikalskoe.

Severo-Baykalsky District, International

I’m walking the five kilometres from Nizhneangarsk (moat northern town on Lake’s shores) along a stretch of flat land toward a spit that marks the northern edge of Lake Baikal. With only a couple of narrow inlets the spit, aka Yarki Island, is thin strip of sand and low dunes only tens of metres wide and covered in patches by small bushes, which protects the Verkhnyaya Angara river delta and system of lagoons and marshes from the storm surges that sweep north occasionally from the south along Baikal’s length.

Beside me in the marshes a stilt is calling chip chip chip repeatedly trying to lure me I suspect away from its nest in the marshes. It doesn’t stop and I’m impressed by its efforts. The broad flat comes to an end and I look across the narrow inlet to Yarki Island where fishermen ply the fresh waters in dinghies. If I want to walk to Yarki Island I now realise that I’ll have to swim or ask for a row across from one of the fishermen on the waters. I decide to hang out where I am. The view to the mountain ranges across the delta’s lagoon is expansive and awesome. The rain that left Severobaikalsk streets awash like rivers this morning has retreated into the mountains where grey rain clouds hover and shroud whole valleys and spur lines. The BAM line runs at their base. The mountains are covered in a mosaic of dark green pine-dominated taiga and a lighter green deciduous-dominated taiga. Occasionally the steep sides that plunge into Baikal are cut by visible ‘alley ways’, where creeks rush down.

Walking back to town to catch the marshrutka back to Severobaikalsk I wade across the marshes toward some small lagoons and find that I’m treading through a mat of grasses and mosses that soon give way under my weight and the brown organic water starts to rise over my boots. I stop at this point. There are some brilliant purple flowers nearby rising from reed-like structures. I take their photograph framed by the dark misty mountains behind. As I’m climbing out of the soggy mats and walk up the rise to the drier land all manner of strange insects erupt from the grass and herbs at my feet. Emerald green ones and flies with speckled red and yellow head and eye parts.

New fishermen arrive towing the boats along the corrugated gravel road to the spit. It’s starting to clear and the sun comes out and burns off the misty remnants of this morning’s storm from the mountain cradles. New bigger cumulus clouds plume up from the north and move south to ply the north eastern mountain range of Lake Baikal.

I approach a fisherman and without a common language we just look at each mainly. He seems bewildered that I am her alone. A common reaction I get.

My binoculared eyes scan through the haze and cloud following the eastern range to a point where I can no longer discern the difference between cloud, lake, land and sky. They become one. On the western side looking south of Nizhneangarsk tucked under the steep foothills above the BAM line and the lake shore I run my binoculars toward where Severobaikalsk would be. Suddenly I catch sight through a break in the clouds a cone shaped peak further south. I assume this to be Mount Chersky (2588masl), south of Baikalskoe, the tallest peak in the Western Baikalsk Range. Soon it’s gone from view, enshrouded in haze and cloud. My eye then runs out into the middle. To where just a hazey blue grey line runs above the watery horizon. From where I am, the northern most point on the lake, it’s over 600km to the southern edge, over waters making it the deepest freshwater lake on the planet. Fishing boats float in the shimmering horizon, neither on water nor in the sky.

I watch the cumulus change and grow on the north and northeast horizons. An anvil head has developed. It’s 5pm.

The sun is bright and strong now but the cool southerly off Baikal chills my head despite the sun on it and I’m not surprised. It’s coming across such an expanse of cold water. But people swim. They say Baikal has warmer water in the north.

This is a favoured beach side spot for locals. Not that there is much of a beach. Black hooded gulls dive for fish. And locals set up tents and picnic merrily. A beach goer hails me over. But I must away as he confirms that the last marshrutka leaves soon and I’ve some grokked to cover.

Pacing it back my eye spots a small black wasp doing furtive patrol around a spider it’s just paralysed with its sting. The little stalker spider is motionless. It’s fate will be to stay alive while the wasp drags it somewhere safe and bores a hole on it to lay its eggs, which will hatch and the baby wasps will eat the still fresh spider.

The afternoon sun breaks free of all cloud and back in Severobaikalsk, away from the lake’a wind it’s really hot and humid.