Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

After travelling for nearly two and a half days I reached my next stop, Irkutsk. The “Paris of Siberia“, as it was called in former times, was a welcoming change to the busy, industrial Yekaterinburg. Even though Irkutsk is not that small, having more than 500 000 inhabitants, it is a very relaxed city – except for the car drivers, which were way more aggressive than the very polite ones in Yekaterinburg.

The city is well aware of its touristic value, but – except for certain areas like the “130 district“ – it is fortunately not commercialised too much. Therefore it‘s a nice city if you would like to relax a bit, walking through the streets, spotting an old wooden building every now and then. Of course the city also has the usual share of churches and museums, but if you are only staying there for a short time, you can probably enjoy the city more if you mostly skip these.

The main attraction of Irkutsk is actually found approximately 60 kilometers away: Lake Baikal. As the largest freshwater lake of the world, containing around 20 % of the fresh water sources worldwide, it is a place where you could easily stay more than a few days. Unfortunately I didn‘t have so much time to spare. So I went to the nearest village, Listvyanka, planning to do some hiking together with a nice guy from the USA, whom I met in Irkutsk.

Arriving in Listvyanka outside the main season was probably a good idea. Judging by the amount of hostels, this place gets crowded in the summer. Now, at the end of September, there were just a few other tourists besides us and they were of the more pleasant sort.

We didn‘t have so much luck with the weather, however. During our “big“ hike on the other side of the river on the second day it rained and therefore the full beauty of the lake wasn‘t revealed to us. With wet and cold feet (I have to get some hiking boots …) we finally returned to our starting point, Port Baikal, in the late afternoon, waiting nearly an hour for the last ferry to take us back to Listvyanka. What we didn‘t know at this point: we misinterpreted the ferry timetable and therefore the last ferry from Port Baikal had already departed. After we realized our error, we tried to organize a way back to Listvyanka, which sounds easier than it was for us, since nearly no one in Russia speaks English. But finally we got a water taxi to take us to the other side of the river and after a short (5 km) hike we returned to our hostel, being happy to have a warm place and nice people around us.