I spent a couple dreary, rainy days wandering around Listvyanka, the little fishing village an hour north from Irkutsk. But I didn't see much. This is the southern end of the lake, with the mouth of the Angara River to the right and the Old Trans-Siberian Railway curling around the Port Baikal in the distance.
I went to the pretty unimpressive Baikal Museum. They do have a sort of scale model of the lake. You can see that it is quite deep for most of its length.
Another fun fact I learned is that it is estimated that if all the other sources of fresh water on earth dried up Lake Baikal could provide drinking water for the entire planet for 40 years!
They also have tanks with local wildlife, including two nerpas, freshwater seals. They're in a tiny little tank, maybe 40 feet long, and they just swim back and forth. It's hard to get a decent picture of them because they're always moving and flash photography isn't allowed. They look rather like overinflated balloons.
And they look very, very sad...
Although it's obvious Listvyanka is starting to understand it's potential as a tourist town, there isn't much in the way of accomodation, so I did my first homestay. This is where you simply stay as a guest in someone's house, and it's quite common in Russia, in part because there are so few hostels.
Usually the hosts speak only Russian and the guests speak none, so I was prepared for awkward conversations with lots of hand gestures. My host, Victor, is turning his house into a proper guest house. There was the smell of fresh paint, and a brand-new indoor toilet!
He speaks no English. None. But he was very sweet, and very lonely, I think. So when I came home after wandering around in the rain all day, all I wanted to do was go to my room, for reasons that will soon be obvious. But he wanted me to join him for tea.
I think I was the first guest he's shared tea with, since he had to find a box of sugar cubes and figure out how to open it. He also served me store-bought biscuits, but honey and cheese he made himself.
I made a point to ask him about his religious icons, which pleased him. One is genuinely beautiful, hand-painted on wood, of the Archangel Michael.
This is his house. My room was the one with the triangular window and the new door on the second floor.
And this is the view!
I was looking forward to coming back in the evening with a couple cold beers and just sitting in the doorway and staring at the lake, which I did after tea. I left the door open and fell asleep staring at the lake...
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