Lake Baikal

Irkutsk / Lake Baikal

A place I have often dreamt of visiting since I was a teenager, but one I never believed I would actually see.

If you research stats about Lake Baikal, you will come across superlatives like biggest, oldest, deepest, purest, clearest etc. It certainly was impressive, but I especially enjoyed seeing that the shores of the lake are still almost completely unblemished. You could easily spend two weeks exploring Lake Baikal and still only see a small part of it. I dreamt of returning one summer to spend a few days hiking and camping around the shores.

Lake Baikal from the shore

Our schedule only allowed Joep and I a short visit to a village called Listvyanka, on the shores on Lake Baikal. The peak tourist season had passed and the temperatures were dropping fast towards their mid-winter lows of -45C.

A great memory!

Almost as soon as we jumped off the bus, I walked down to the shore to touch the water and have a taste - fresh water. The water was perfectly clear, allowing me to see quite far into the depths. If I had a bucket list, Baikal would have been ticked off at that moment.

Boat on Lake Baikal

We took a 1 hour boat trip which gave us a valuable perspective of the shore. The wind was cold, although just bearable. A group of Chinese tourist clicked away with their multiple cameras, some couples enjoyed the moment with each other, whereas I moved around the boat looking for the best vantage points.

Boat trip

As I said, Lake Baikal deserves more than a mere 3 hour visit to do it justice. On the bus journey back to Irkutsk, I found myself wondering how much a flight ticket from Europe would cost.

That evening, Joep and I ventured into central Irkutsk for some food. We chose a restaurant that specialised in good old fashioned Soviet / USSR food. The restaurant staff were even dressed in Soviet era uniforms. Quite a wonderful day!