Irkutsk is the closest city to Lake Baikal, and is where the Trans-Siberian Railroad passes through. However, to actually see Lake Baikal you have to travel by road or boat about 70km – in our case, to the town of Listvyanka (which is the popular tourist town to see Lake Baikal).
We tried taking the tram to the bus station but had difficulty finding the tram stop (we were aiming for the #4 tram which would take us directly there, as we were carrying luggage) – we found the sign saying “Троллейбус” (“Trollybus” phonetically) with the No. 4 tram and others listed, but the No. 4 tram went by several times and did not stop. We started asking people how to get to the bus station and one businessman was kind enough to tell us to take one of the minibusses and showed us the stop.
The minibus is equivalent to a VW van in terms of size and can carries about 14 people (using fold-down seats – the van is considerably smaller than the 15-passenger vans I’ve used in the States). When it arrived, the minibus was mostly full and Lance thought we couldn’t fit. However, with a bit of creative positioning and unflagging spirit, we made it work. Despite the cramped conditions (particularly given the Brenders’ large suitcase which we came to call “The Beast”) we made it to the bus station while only mildly annoying the other passengers inside.
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| Lance guarding our luggage at the foot of Lenin’s statue. | Lance and “The Beast” crammed into the minibus. |
Unfortunately, at the bus station they weren’t selling tickets to Baikal (they only pointed us outside where a minibus was waiting for its scheduled departure). As it turned out, the bus wasn’t selling tickets either and wouldn’t let us on without one. As the “official” busses only departed every two hours we were at a loss for what to do next.
Someone pointed us across the street where we found other minibusses from a separate private company providing trips to Listvyanka. The rates were the same as the “official” busses (100 rubles per person, or about $3.25) and they had about a half dozen vehicles stacked up waiting for people to go. Once the van filled up with passengers, we took off for Listvyanka.
Now last year on my trip to Russia I observed that Russian drivers were generally speaking insane, even outclassing Korean drivers in that regard (in Korea, you get the whole range of drivers from the crazy ones to the timid ones so you never know what to expect. In Russia, they all seem to be universally very aggressive drivers). The same was true for our ride to Listvyanka.
In the hour-long trip, we topped out at about 125kph (77mph) on a highway with speed limits of, supposedly, around 80-100kph. On numerous occasions we passing while going uphill with blind curves, we roared by a guy doing roadwork without slowing down, and several times he was talking on his cell phone (held in his right hand) while simultaneously shifting the manual transmission van with the same hand while negotiating city traffic. The Brenders were sitting in the backwards-facing row, so remained blissfully ignorant of the danger throughout most of the trip. One interesting and unexpected sight on the drive was the presence of about five cows waiting at a bus stop on the side of the road – it was so unexpected I didn’t even have time to get a photo. Despite a couple close calls we made it to Listvyanka without crashing (in part due to the reluctance of oncoming traffic to hit us).
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| A typical minibus that takes the Irkutsk-Listvyanka trip. | Lance in the “oblivious row” unaware of how many times we came close to crashing. |
After arriving in Listvyana, we made our way to the hostel (the Eco-Baikaler, run by the same people who founded the Baikaler in Irkutsk. See www.baikaler.com for information). The upside: it is brand new and reminiscent of a log cabin house in the woods. It’s also cheap (similar rates to the Baikaler, about $25/person/night) and clean. It was originally the owner’s house which was upgraded to a hostel about two years ago. It was definitely a refreshing 180-degree change from Irkutsk and the city!
The Eco-Baikaler hostel.
There are two downsides to the hostel. First, it’s about a 15 minute walk from the lake itself (and the location where we were dropped off from the minibus), so considering our luggage and Jasper we ended up taking a taxi instead of walking. The second is that it does not have Internet access. Still, once we got our luggage dropped off we didn’t mind the walk and we had a great time during our stay.
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| The room where Dad and I spent the night. | After getting unpacked, Dad and I plan out our adventures for the day. |
In the next update I’ll describe what we saw and did at Lake Baikal.
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