Sat Apr 27, 2019 16:03 GMT
We leave Irkutsk in the morning to reach Listvyanka, a town 60km away on the Baikal lake where our trek begins. The Great Baikal Trail is an associative project which wants to promote ecological tourism around the Baikal lake. They maintain some trails and a website with some maps and practical tips. Hiking the Great Baikal Trail is the easiest and probably the most popular option.
The lake is still partly frozen at this time of the year, boats are not operating yet.
We start the trek around 10:30am and enter a forest of birch and pine trees, hiking up along a river that’s still mostly covered by snow.
The lake appears in front of us as we reach the top of the hill, stretching further than we can see. We’ll learn later that the Baikal is over six hundred kilometers long! We walk down to the shore and make our lunch break on the beach.
The trail continues partly along the lake and partly above it, which brings a nice variations in the views we get. As we progress towards Bolchoie Koty, we reach parts of the lake that are already partly thawed. We don’t only see the Baikal lake, we also hear it: the ice is making a whole symphony of sounds as it melts, breaks and moves, from chime like sounds to loud cracks.
We reach Bolchoie Koty in the late afternoon, this is really a tiny village but we can still hear dogs barking and the occasional motorcycle.
The campsite we were hoping to use is a bit too close to the village to our taste, so we walk a couple of kilometers more to reach a quieter spot. We pitch the tent with a perfect view on the lake, start a fire, and eat peanuts while drinking vodka and watching the sun set… A really perfect setting!
The night is completely silent, we can only hear the lake which keeps creaking and cracking. The noises keep us awake for a while, as we keep imagining some animals roaming around our tent!
The first day was the longest one, the two days remaining to reach Bolchoye Golustnoye are easier, fifteen kilometers each on a mostly flat terrain.
The evening of the second day is much windier than the first one, we struggle to light our fire and must stay close to it once it starts not to freeze too much. We get a visit from the local ranger, who must be well over sixty years old, and rides a motorcycle that is not younger. We apparently were not allowed to light a fire where we did, but he is really nice and just asks us to be careful and to extinguish it well before we leave.
The third day is even shorter than the second one, we only have to walk twelve kilometers to reach the camp site before Bolchoye Golustnoye. The weather is nicer again, we can set our camp without rushing and stay outside for a while.
A bit after sunset, a herd of horses passes by and seeing us come to check if there are any leftovers of our dinner. They’re pretty insistent, and we must lock all our dishes in our backpacks to finally discourage them!
Our bus back to Irkutsk does not leave before 5pm on the following day, we spend the whole morning lazying in the sun and watching the lake, which we don’t get bored with. Bolchoye Golustnoye is a bigger village, we find a restaurant serving grilled Omul, a local fish from the Baikal.
In the evening we meet Alexey, who hosts us for our last night in Irkutsk. We spend a really nice evening around some beers in a bar with latino music playing in the background, it feels strange to hear this kind of music after three months of Chinese pop!
We spend our Sunday stocking up on food for our next train trip to Moscow, which will take three days. Smoked fish, sausages, cheese, kulitch (the local Easter cake), we won’t only eat instant noodles this time!
Our train leaves at midnight, and we’ll again be offline until reaching Moscow. It feels strange to think that we only have two stops left before coming back to Europe!