08.11.08
Das Vidanya!
So we arrived in Listvyanka after the “walk”. Listvyanka is a very touristy town on the shores of Lake Baikal. There were little chalets and motel complexes everywhere you looked. Add to this the large hotel that stands in the middle of town and also the equally prominent Hotel Baikal that stands on the edge of town and you have a rather dull and uninspiring location. I’m sure that at one stage it had all the charm of Bolshie Koty but no longer. I shouldn’t run it down too much though since it did have a nice bar by the lake shore where Kelly and I snuck in a quick dinner or Pelmeni and Baltika. I say snuck because this was right after we had arrived. The other two had gone off to their room to sulk so Kely and I headed into to town for supplies when we came across this place. The walk back, with full bellies and bags full of drinks etc was so much longer than the walk into town. It didn’t help that it was uphill either. We didn’t really do much in Listvyanka .. the next day we wandered the length of town, about 8km, and ended up at Hotel Baikal where we stopped for a late lunch. Prior to this we had walked, uphill again!, to the funicular and taken the chair lift up the hillside to a viewpoint which was apparently famous.
Admittedly the view was quite spectacular from there and it was worth the walk … although I liked the chair ride better…. especially when I looked down to see a big sign warning against ticks. Right now as I right this .. thinking of that sign gives me goosebumps. Hotel Baikal was yet another Baltika break. It was also a chance for me to try the local freshwater salmon known as Omul. You generally see Omul by the truckload in and around the lake. The standard fare seems to be smoked Omul and beer. I went for the seafood extravaganza and had Omul stuffed with prawns and then baked.. it had the added bonus of coming with Chips! It didn’t fail to live up to the hype. After such a heavy meal we thought we should walk it off … actually I was the only one that had a big meal … the girls ordered Pelmeni and were disappointed. It looked like they had used frozen Pelmeni and just dropped them in hot dishwater to cook. Pelmeni, by the way .. in case I haven’t described them before, are little dumplings shaped a bit like ravioli. As we wandered back towards our guest house we stopped for a drink at the bar from the night before. Kelly and I did our best to steer the girls in there and suggest ordering Pelmeni without giving away the fact that we’d already had some the day before that were really good. The hints were ignored and we ended up just having a beer and then heading across into the hotel and up to their bar which was located on the roof. The view was good but they had trouble understanding that we wanted food as well. Eventually we left and ended up a a dodgy looking restaurant attached to a supermarket. To add to the fun there was a guy with a crossbow in the field next door. In a display of brilliance he placed his target a little to close to our restaurant for comfort.
Now usually little dodgy restaurants have the best food … and this one possibly did but given that we couldn’t read the menu and the wait staff couldn’t speak English we struggled … a LOT. We ended up having a few barbequeued chickens and some vegetable salad. Cara was having trouble explaining that she was Vegetarian so I had to come to the rescue with my vast Russian vocabulary. All this time Cara had been pointing at herself and saying “I’m Vegetarian … no meat”. I pointed at Cara and said “Vegetarianski”. Yup that’s it …. you just need to add a ’ski’ to the end and suddenly you’re speaking Russian!
The next morning we were picked up by Boris/Damien/Vladimir .. we never quite worked out what his name was. Mr “This is the System” from Irkutsk originally. Our bags were loaded into a van which was to meet us later that evening. We, on the other hand hopped on to a ferry which was to take us to the Port of Listvyanka. This was the start of the Circum-Baikal Railway, a scenic railway which as the name suggests circum-navigates Lake Baikal. We were going to be travelling on a small portion of it … known as the Golden Buckle. Work commenced on the Trans-Siberian simultaneously in Vladivostok and Moscow. The two tracks met at Lake Baikal. Here they encountered problems due to the mountainous nature of the region. For a little while the gap was bridged by ship, Ice-Breakers were used during the winter. Eventually a path was carved out of the rocky cliffs that form the South Western shores of Baikal. This stretch of rail was called the Golden Buckle. Golden because it cost an absolute fortune to construct and Buckle because it finally joined the two sections of the Tran-Sib. The tourist train was quite fun and we had Damien translating the information for us at the various stops. Lunch was taken at a little town by the shores of the lake which also had a small bay. The shore are was soon packed as everyone on the train got off to have a paddle in the water. At least that was their intention. Clearly not many of them had experienced the refreshing water of Lake Baikal before. I think there may have been no more than ten of us that actually went for a swim. Since it was a sheltered bay and relatively shallow, the water here was actually warm by comparison to Bolshie Koty. I made friends with a walrus of a man and his wife who were also swimming around … they were Irkutsk locals and came down here relatively often. As usual, pictures were taken with the exotic foreigner, the man actually spoke a fair amount of English, he said he was a railway worker and had classes through work. Over here working for the Railway is a big deal, I think I’ve mentioned it before .. they have their own Universities, holiday resorts, schools and even day care.
It was quite late in the evening when we finally made it back to Irkutsk where we were met by our van and bags. They drove us to the guest house where we were to spend the night. It was run by a little old German lady who was clearly not happy to see us. The house itself was built in the 19th century and funnily enough looked it too! From the outside you’d think it was likely to collapse at any moment. The inside, however was done up to cater to the turistas.
The next morning we experienced the joys of sharing one bathroom amongst 12 people. Breakfast was in shifts, Galina made us Blini by the truckload. I’m sure I had about two kilos of Blini, not that I was complaining .. they were quite tasty. I think at this stage Cara was feeling unwell as well so I had to eat for two since I didn’t want to offend our hostess. We were due to catch our train to Mongolia that evening so we spent the day wandering through Irkutsk, emailing, writing postcards and doing other general stuff .. I was actually trying to book a flight back to Macau at this stage … never one to leave things to the last minute. Nothing much more exciting happened here .. the house didn’t collapse and nobody was killed, mugged or arrested. We were quite excited at the prospect of being able to leave Russia with only one arrest. Boarding the train that evening was actually quite sad, I’d loved Russia and all of it’s quirks. Now I just need to plan the next trip … so anyone else planning on doing a Trans-Sib .. let me know. The journey across to Mongolia was relatively uneventful, we had the usual customs/immigration stop that took hours - on each side!, but no trouble getting out of Russia or into Mongolia. We even met a pair of sydney siders travelling down to Beijing.
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All about the Mongolian train and the nasty Provodnitsas in the next email! Railway bandits I tell you!