Listvyanka and Lake Baikal

Well, this is what we looked like ater a 3 hour walk around Lake Baikal. It was more than -30, verging on -40 with wind chill - hence the frozen beard and hair!

Lake Baikal is the largest and deepest fresh water lake in the world - the size of Belgium. Surrounded by mountains and totally frozen over, it really is beautiful.

We stayed in Listvyanka village, a small fishing village near the town of Irkutsk. Walking on the lake is pretty terrifying - although the ice is about half a metre thick it's totally transparant in places so you can see the water below. And to make matters worse, the area is on moving plates so there are constantly small tremors under the water - not enough to feel, but you can hear the ice creaking and cracking as you walk on it, and so there are massive cracks in the surface of the ice and huge chunks of ice in places where it's been pushed up. Pretty spectacular....

Ha ha - they're not going anywhere in a hurry!

We stayed in a homestay with the lovely Rita, who fed us like kings (but we're not fattening up - being so cold burns so many calories - it's great!). The house was a traditional siberian cottage, built around a stove, very warm - but so traditional there was no running water indoors. Meaning an outdoor drop toilet. Imagine that. Bearing your bum to the -40 elements in the middle of the night. That's got to be dangerous. No more beer for me thanks. There was no way I was getting up in the night for the toilet!

Showering was interesting too - at the back of the garden was a wooden shed, a Siberian banya (sauna). The stove heats up all day, ready for us in the evening - it's a full on fight between sweating and trying to wash off the sweat, tipping buckets of water over yourself. But it was quite an experience!

We're now in Irkutsk and ready to board the next train - on to Mongolia!

Around Lake Baikal