It's been brought to my attention that my Lake Baikal post is a bit cryptic. So I'll elaborate a bit.
The "travel mistake" was thinking I could figure out what to do and where to go once I arrived in Irkutsk. But it's not that easy here. It is Siberia, after all. There are tourists here, and it definitely appears as though the infrastructure is improving, it's not an easy place in which to improvise. I should have planned better.
As for Victor, my host at the home stay in Listvyanka, I was tempted to write a post just about him. As I walked back and forth down the town's one road I'd see him working: carrying lumber, painting, etc. Later he showed me the stencil he was working on for the sign that would say "Rooms for Rent" in both Russian and English. aIt seemed clear he was hoping to turn his house into a hostel or guesthouse.
Because I speak almost no Russian and he speaks nothing but, conversing over evening tea was a bit difficult. He chattered on and on even though I made it clear I didn't understand a word he was saying. I realized that I was perhaps the only person he had interacted with all day, and was probably just happy to have someone to talk to. I mentioned how I took time to look at and admire his icons. But I noticed there were no pictures anywhere.
I was relieved when he pulled out a stack of photographs, to help pass the time, if nothing else. There were a number of pictures which I figured out were of him helping to build the church on the hill in Port Baikal, which he seemed quite proud of. There were pictures of the lake in winter, which were gorgeous.
But there were photos of people as well. There were pictures of a precious young girl, maybe 10 years old, including one of her smiling under a Christmas tree in a McDonald's t-shirt. And there were pictures of a regal, statuesque woman, usually in a white fur coat and hat. She reminded me of Julie Christie in "Dr. Zhivago," and, really, is there a higher compliment for a woman?!
But as I went through I noticed something. I started going through the pictures again, even though he indicated that I had seen them all. All of the pictures had time stamps. None of them had been taken in the last ten years.
I don't know what happened to the woman and child, who I assumed were his wife and daughter. Even if we shared a common language I don't know how I would have asked. All I can guess is that about 10 years ago something very bad happened.
The next morning when he offered me tea again. I think he had been waiting for me to come downstairs. I felt really guilty declining, but I really did have to get to the bus station.
I gave his name and address to the folks at the hostel in Irkutsk. Hopefully they'll send people his way.
Showing posts with label Lake Baikal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lake Baikal. Show all posts
8/08/2008
8/07/2008
Travel mistake: Lake Baikal
I was really looking forward to exploring the area around Lake Baikal, but I blew it. I expected to be able to do what I've always done, show up someplace new, get the lay of the land, then book a tour or make plans. Can't do that here.
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...
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...
8/04/2008
Scuba diving in Siberia
I finally got to see Lake Baikal today. Here it is from the town of Listvyanka.
Not only did I see the lake from the top looking down, I saw it from the bottom looking up. I went scuba diving.
I knew I wouldn't see much, and I figured the cold would be excruciating, but I wanted to be able to say I went diving in the world's deepest lake.
Baikal is famous for how clear its water is. People get vertigo because they can see the bottom when the water is quite deep. But there was a storm yesterday, which stirred up the water, and we didn't go far from shore. This is an artist's rendering (mine) of what I saw:
We wore thick wet suits and the water near the shore wasn't terribly cold. My guide said it was 15 degrees, or about 59 degrees Fahrenheit. That's cold, but not unbearable. We eventually got down to about 20 meters below the surface. To do so we passed through a thermocline, a layer of much colder water.
Using my keen scientific intellect I estimated the water temperature there to be about 875 degrees below zero, but my guide said it was actually 5 Celsius, or about 41 Fahrenheit. That's still pretty cold.
The night I left Moscow it was quite chilly. That was the only time on the trip thus far that I have had to wear a jacket. It's still quite warm in Siberia. I took this self-portrait before suiting up to go in the water, and I was perfectly comfortable in shorts and no shirt.
Not only did I see the lake from the top looking down, I saw it from the bottom looking up. I went scuba diving.
I knew I wouldn't see much, and I figured the cold would be excruciating, but I wanted to be able to say I went diving in the world's deepest lake.
Baikal is famous for how clear its water is. People get vertigo because they can see the bottom when the water is quite deep. But there was a storm yesterday, which stirred up the water, and we didn't go far from shore. This is an artist's rendering (mine) of what I saw:
We wore thick wet suits and the water near the shore wasn't terribly cold. My guide said it was 15 degrees, or about 59 degrees Fahrenheit. That's cold, but not unbearable. We eventually got down to about 20 meters below the surface. To do so we passed through a thermocline, a layer of much colder water.
Using my keen scientific intellect I estimated the water temperature there to be about 875 degrees below zero, but my guide said it was actually 5 Celsius, or about 41 Fahrenheit. That's still pretty cold.
The night I left Moscow it was quite chilly. That was the only time on the trip thus far that I have had to wear a jacket. It's still quite warm in Siberia. I took this self-portrait before suiting up to go in the water, and I was perfectly comfortable in shorts and no shirt.
7/26/2008
Siberia primer
I wrote about meeting my guardian angel at the St Petersburg airport. After that I met some girls from the UK at my hostel, who invited me out to dinner. They left the next day on the Trans-Siberian to spend some time in the Lake Baikal region.
Today I came back to my hostel and, in yet another "small world" moment, discovered that two weeks later my UK friends had flown from Siberia to Moscow and, in a city of over 10 million people, are staying at my hostel!
I'm not sure if I'll have internet access in Mongolia. I found out from them that I may not have internet access in Siberia. So I may not be online for a month or more. So here are some fun facts to ponder.
The numbers on Russia, and Siberia in particular, are hard to comprehend. Russia is more than twice as big as the US (including Alaska). Siberia is bigger than the US and Europe combined. The forested regions of Russia cover four times the area of the Amazon basin. Four of the 10 longest rivers in the world are (at least partially) in Siberia: Yenisey (4), Ob (7), Amur (9), Lena (10).
In two days I'll hop on a train to Irkutsk, which is at the southern end of Lake Baikal. I'll spend some time there but I'll spend four nights on Olkhon Island, at Nikta's Homestead, a guest house recommended by my UK friends. (Nikita is a former Russian table tennis champion!)
Baikal is by far the world's deepest lake, at 5,371 ft, more than a mile for those of you scoring at home. It is a completely unique ecosystem. Most of the animals and plants there don't exist anywhere else, including the nerpa, a species of ringed seal, the world's only freshwater seals.
It is estimated that the lake holds 15-20 percent of the world's fresh water. Think about that! More than the Great Lakes combined. Beneath the water is over 4 miles of sediment. It may also be the world's oldest lake, somewhere between 25 and 30 million years old.
Over 300 rivers flow into it, but only one, the Angara, flows out. The pressure at the bottom is so great that it would be impossible to fire a cannon there. And yet the golomyanka lives there, a translucent, scale-less fish that gives birth to live young. Though they live throughout the entire depth of the lake and are thus fairly immune to changes in water pressure, they are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and literally melt in sunlight.
The chemical composition of the water is so unique that fish that swim downstream into the lake die. It's covered by ice up to six feet thick during the winter, thick enough for trucks to drive over.
I could go on. Is it obvious I'm excited to go there? It's something that's always fascinated me, yet another entry in this trip's list of "things that may only interest me."
Today I came back to my hostel and, in yet another "small world" moment, discovered that two weeks later my UK friends had flown from Siberia to Moscow and, in a city of over 10 million people, are staying at my hostel!
I'm not sure if I'll have internet access in Mongolia. I found out from them that I may not have internet access in Siberia. So I may not be online for a month or more. So here are some fun facts to ponder.
The numbers on Russia, and Siberia in particular, are hard to comprehend. Russia is more than twice as big as the US (including Alaska). Siberia is bigger than the US and Europe combined. The forested regions of Russia cover four times the area of the Amazon basin. Four of the 10 longest rivers in the world are (at least partially) in Siberia: Yenisey (4), Ob (7), Amur (9), Lena (10).
In two days I'll hop on a train to Irkutsk, which is at the southern end of Lake Baikal. I'll spend some time there but I'll spend four nights on Olkhon Island, at Nikta's Homestead, a guest house recommended by my UK friends. (Nikita is a former Russian table tennis champion!)
Baikal is by far the world's deepest lake, at 5,371 ft, more than a mile for those of you scoring at home. It is a completely unique ecosystem. Most of the animals and plants there don't exist anywhere else, including the nerpa, a species of ringed seal, the world's only freshwater seals.
It is estimated that the lake holds 15-20 percent of the world's fresh water. Think about that! More than the Great Lakes combined. Beneath the water is over 4 miles of sediment. It may also be the world's oldest lake, somewhere between 25 and 30 million years old.
Over 300 rivers flow into it, but only one, the Angara, flows out. The pressure at the bottom is so great that it would be impossible to fire a cannon there. And yet the golomyanka lives there, a translucent, scale-less fish that gives birth to live young. Though they live throughout the entire depth of the lake and are thus fairly immune to changes in water pressure, they are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and literally melt in sunlight.
The chemical composition of the water is so unique that fish that swim downstream into the lake die. It's covered by ice up to six feet thick during the winter, thick enough for trucks to drive over.
I could go on. Is it obvious I'm excited to go there? It's something that's always fascinated me, yet another entry in this trip's list of "things that may only interest me."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
