Subscribe RSSIn my insufficiency, the driver had built a fire and cooked a delicious fish soup for lunch along with bread and tea and a salad of lettuce, sliced cucumbers, and tomatoes. He served the soup into metal bowls from the blackened iron pot that he had only recently removed from the fire. We sat on a textile that he had spread across the grass. When we had finished eating, the driver carefully gathered all of the bowls, cups and utensils, as well as his cookware and returned it to the back of the van. The English women had walked a few steps to a feel put down stream that ran along side the trail to the lake. They filled gallon-sized plastic bottles with the cool, clear water, which I put on they were collecting to drink. I thought that they were rather bold to try this, despite the accounts I'd read of Baikal's incomparable purity. We piled back into the van and drove in a unalike direction, bumping along a narrow path lined by medium-sized trees on either side. Eventually we pulled into another clearing
Lake Baikal
The long way home (Part III)
Jan 12, 2012Incredible Lake Baikal, Russian Siberia
The second stop on our trip across Siberia - Lake Baikal and the tiny village of Bloshoe Gloustonoe.
At the northern tip of Lake Baikal
After our 36-hour train trip making a big loop from Irkutsk to the northern end of Lake Baikal, here we are in Severobaikalsk. A small, quite uninteresting place, apart from it's nice lakeshore with a small beach (although we saw nicer beaches on the Eastern shore).
When we arrived at the train station 3 days ago, a lady with a single golden tooth started talking to us in French. It was Dora, originally from Moldavia but has been living here for 25 years, struggling to make ends meet (as a lot of people here) and renting out a room in her apartment. As she's the only French-speaking person in town (probably in the whole region), she also tries to take care of all the French and Swiss tourists that get lost in this little part of the world. She had just been hosting 2 young students from Fribourg and offered her room to us. Well, it's no luxury... the beds could be more comfortable, the bathroom is simple (but there is hot water), and her son smokes in the toilet, but we accepted anyway. Yesterday she bought the first washing machine in her life (for our standards, a really bad quality one, not much better than handwashing, we had to wash our underwear twice...) and she was so scared to use it. After we had assured that we had used about 30 different washing machines in our lifes and always managed to make them work, she accepted that we use it and show her how it works.
Two days ago we visited a small hot springs village, 45 minutes from here on a bumpy, non asphalted road (but the driver was driving almost normally). The so-called "spa" was actually just a small wooden house (as you can see on the picture) with 2 changing rooms and a terrace with two small hot-water pools, and a lot of mosquitoes. One of the pools was so hot I only managed to go in until my knees, although Miguel managed to go in all the way. The other one must have been around 40 degrees. Russians love this kind of thing, believing strongly in the healing power of such places.
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