A slightly later start today. Sergei and our driver Alexander were not arriving until 9:30am to take us out to Lake Baikal, the world's largest fresh-water lake — it holds about 20% of all the world's fresh water, and it's so pure that you can use it directly to top up lead-acid batteries in cars! Oh, and it's good to drink, too!
Virtually before we got started, Sergei took us to the Angara (Ангара́) — no, not the river, but the second icebreaker that was manufactured in the UK, shipped in parts to Revel (now Tallinn) and then carried by the Trans-Siberian Railway for reassembly in Listvyanka (Листвя́нка) on the southern part of the western shore of the lake — our destination today! It was finally launched on July 25, 1900. The ship served to link the western and eastern parts of the Trans-Siberian Railway, shuttling between Port Baikal (Байка́л) and Mysovaya (Мысовая, now Babushkin, Ба́бушкин) twice daily until the Circumbaikal Railway round the southern tip of the lake was finished in 1905. The Angara carried passengers and goods, whereas the first icebreaker, the Baikal (Байка́л), carried trains, which rolled on at one end of the ferry-ride, and rolled off at the other.
Angara was a working ship until 1962, since when it has been docked first at Lake Baikal, and later at Irkutsk. Since it has been docked, she has been sunk — well, swamped — several times, but she was refurbished in 1989 and is now a floating museum. Now fully seaworthy, she could be steamed up for service at any time.
The fate of the Baikal is less distinguished. In August 1918 she was damaged by field artillery fire and was burnt at the Mysovaya pier.
The trip out to Lake Baikal is much like a trip from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. The distance is about 70km, and the road is much the same for the first 10 or so kilometers (a well appointed double highway) — and then it seems to go back about 40 years, being one lane each way, and somewhat bumpier. Both roads, however, have something else in common — pine trees growing on either side of the road!
An early Evenk dwelling.
Would it surprise you to learn
that the Evenk crossed the Bering
Strait into the Americas?
We stopped off on the way at the Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture and Ethnography, about 20km short of Listvyanka. This museum is divided into three sections:
- dwellings of the indigenous nomadic Evenk people, the oldest inhabitants of the area,
- traditional structures of the Buryat people who inhabited the Irkutsk territory to the west of the Baikal,
- log structures from the Ilim area erected by Cossacks in the 17th-century.
Our walk through the museum took quite some time, and was fascinating. When we neared the large Cossack fort, we heard the sounds of singing. A male trio were singing traditional Cossack songs in the entry hall of the fort, a venue perfectly suited acoustically for this exercise!
The museum came into being when certain villages on the banks of the Angara River were to be inundated with the building of new dams. Enthusiasts moved many of the historic wooden buildings to this site, and brought in more from further afield. There is also a programme of constructing exact replicas of other buildings to extend the overall experience. The early Evenk structures, for example, made of bark and wood, would have survived only about 70 years at best, so all of these in the museum are reconstructions. (The Evenks are considered to have been living in this area of Siberia since Neolithic times, and only came into contact with the Cossacks in the 17th century!)
While at the Museum, we had a light lunch — pirozhky (пирожки, hot baked or often fried puff pastry filled with sundry savoury stuffings) and, while Suzie had coffee, Warren tried out sbiten (сбитень), a traditional Russian drink made by boiling honey, water, spices and sometimes jam. (There's a stronger version, unfortunately not offered here, made by substituting red wine for the water!)
After the Museum, we continued on to the shores of Lake Baikal, at Listvyanka. We dipped our hands into the freezing lake — supposedly each time you do this, it adds a year to your life! — and took the opportunity to fill up a bottle from the lake, which later proved to be just as pure as reputed.
We walked up to a market, mainly selling Lake Baikal fish products and souvenirs, a very lively place. Just beyond it, we walked in to an abandoned area, scheduled for redevelopment — the shipyard where the Angara and the Baikal were assembled round the turn of the last century.
And the last part of our time at the lake was to go up to a viewing point overlooking the lake and its sole outflow into the Angara River. Two pairs of old legs were reluctant to make the climb, so we took the chair lift! Sergei and Alexander, on the other hand, made the climb, and almost beat us up. On the way down, our hands got a lot of exercise as we waved and said "Nǐ hǎo" to an entire busload of Chinese tourists as they came up, two by two, on the chair lift.
After this it was back to Irkutsk and farewell to Sergei and Sasha. We went out to dinner at a little restaurant, the Tochka (Точка), recommended by Sergei, and treated ourselves to a traditional Cossack dish — Chicken Tabaka (Цыпленок Табака, Georgian 'Chicken Under a Brick'), where the whole backbone of a chicken is removed to allow the bird to be grilled flat. Interesting!
Another day well spent!
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