Siberia

I started off the year with grand plans of taking the transiberian railway from start (Vladivostok) to finish (St. Petersburg), but one look at my budget swiftly altered that plan.  However, I was most fortunate to be able to travel to see Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater lake and Russia’s pride and joy.

I met Gabby in the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk (I flew, she trained…for 55 hours). Although we only had a few hours in “the Paris of Siberia”, we quickly found the knock-off Subway chain before proceeding to a philharmonic concert…in true Meri/Gabby fashion.

The next day we crammed into a marshrutka and started the long journey to the Lake. The journey felt akin to riding a mechanical bull for hours on end except for when we slowed to a crashing halt whenever cows or horses decided to cross the road. Five hours later we were on a ferry to Olkhon Island, the only inhabited island on Baikal. A few hours later we were dropped off in a town called хужир at a hostel owned by a Soviet Gold medal ping pong player. We immediately turned on the heater in our room and went outside to check out the view.

We met a lot of other travelers at the hostel, including a retired teacher from Rochester! We were served breakfast and dinner as part of our stay since besides a rundown grocery store and a few small cafes food is difficult to find on the island.

But don’t worry: there was internet!

We stupidly hadn’t foreseen there would be no ATM on the island (silly American girls), so here we are adding up our money to see what we could afford to do and eat for our three day stay.

Gabby and I went walking, running, biking on a terribly bumpy road, boating on the lake where we met a couple from Rochester, and swimming. The swimming only lasted a few brief minutes since the water was approximately 3 degrees C since Baikal only begins melting at the end of May/ beginning of June.

Boating on the Lake

Biking next to horses

Before doing anything else the day we arrived, we immediately booked a reservation for a marshrutka for early our last morning back to Irkutsk in order to make our train home. Of course the man feigned ignorance when he showed up at the hostel to pick up another man. After a lot of arguing on the secretary’s part and apathetic shrugging on the driver’s, he begrudgingly told us that another van was leaving in an hour. Our next driver was just as reckless and terrifying, but Gabby managed to fall asleep on our way back calling the bumpiness “somehow calming” (as we stopped to let the poor man in the front seat with motion sickness out). We stopped for lunch at a tiny café in a tiny village on a tiny dirt road, and all of a sudden I heard familiar voices. My Estonian friends who live on the floor beneath me were on their way to Olkhon and had just eaten at the café! Even in Siberia it’s a small world.

After our driver drove around Irkutsk for an hour-seemingly aimlessly but apparently with some purpose, he dropped us at the train station and we boarded our train to Yekaterinburg. Since Gabby already had a long trip from Chelyabinsk, she was considerably less excited for our 50+ hour trip to Yekaterinburg. In between chatting with our neighbors and eating kielbasa, I loved staring out the window and watching the scenery change as we made our way West. 

Our fellow passenger Stan insisted on showing me pictures of his home. Of his girlfriend. Of his ex-girlfriend. Of his dacha. Of his apartment. Of him swimming. The worst part was I couldn’t even come up with an excuse to leave. He knew as well as I did that we had hours of train riding left! I was grateful when the kids in my bunk grabbed me to show me the sunset.

Russia passed a law June 1^st outlawing smoking in public places (which included trains) and since it was still early June, we got to enjoy the many battles in between passengers wishing to smoke and the exhausted conductor about the law that now prohibits the wafts of smoke coming from the rooms inbetween the cars that I am so used to after nine months of train rides.

At about hour forty, we had a thirty minute stop in Novosibirsk. Gabby and I left our backpacks on the train, grabbed our passports and one small towel and hurried into the station to find the shower. After literally the fastest shower of my life, we sprinted back to the train dripping wet (a huge no no in Russia since, as my old host mother would say, “the devil will get in your wet hair if you are outside”). The elderly woman in our car was so concerned we wouldn’t make it and let out a huge sigh of relief when we bounded onto the platform with twenty minutes to spare. The woman’s granddaughter, Dasha, spent the first few hours on the train staring at me but would look away as soon as I glanced up. After about seven hours, she came up and put an apple in front of me on the table. I started chatting with her and soon we were playing cards and drawing pictures. 

Waiting for the train with Dasha after our shower

Upon finally arriving in Yekaterinburg, Gabby and I parted ways back to our cities. Even though we didn’t make it all the way to Vladivostok, I am glad we had the chance to experience a small snapshot of Siberian cities, villages, trains, and people.