Chapter 9 Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. September 2019.

 View of the eastern shore of Lake Baikal from our hotel balcony. The mountains are about 10 miles on the other side.

Pictures we took in Irkutsk and at Lake Baikal can be seen at:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZZ8Epa5jXS7wUA5w8

We were met on the platform by Elena who will be our guide for the next two days.  When we arrived,  we were immediately subjected to the endless staircases which are the trademark of Russian train stations with no elevators no moving staircases.

Our guide Elens in Irkutsk and Lake Baikal.

As a matter of fact, the whole tourism industry in this country is still in its infancy with very little being invested to promote tourism or to make tourists feel welcome. We saw that throughout this trip. We hear it from our various guides who feel the brunt of the negative views of tourists they guide.  There are very few signs in any other language than Russian, trains are uncomfortable with old carriages made many decades ago, rail stations have almost no moving stairways or elevator. None of the train attendants speak any foreign language.   Even access to trains from the platforms is up 5 steps on an almost vertical gangway. It is clear that the stations were built for rail cars were lower and wider.  It really would not be a huge investment to raise and extend train platforms up to the level of current cars.  But no, passengers have to climb up 5 steps which are almost ladders. In addition, there is a gap of almost a foot between the train and the platform which is very dangerous. One guide told of a client who put his or her foot into the gap and broke a leg.

Not only is it an athletic exercise to go up into the carriages,  but getting luggage on and off trains is difficult and downright dangerous.  Apparently, the federal government invests very little in tourism promotion and even less in modernizing trains and passenger train stations as they are content to make lots of money on freight trains and view passenger trains as a bother.

On our train last night from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk there were no plugs in any compartments, only two plugs in the corridor for the 12 first-class cabins of our wagon.  There was no internet available all night.  There was no restaurant car.  The toilets were so unappealing that one feels uncomfortable using them.  I know someone on our team who avoids using them altogether... They look like they were designed in the 18th century with a flap that opens and the bottom to dump everything on the rails below. Real high-tech!

We spent a bad night in this bare cabin which was badly made with no sound isolation and which rattled the whole night, in addition to the loud noises of the train wheels themselves.  We are traveling in first class and we both felt we were in the 4th class compared to cleanliness and modern facilities one finds on the new high-speed trains in China which travel at 325 km per hour.  Russian trains reach a maximum speed of 100 km per hour, or 66 miles per hour and sway and shake and rattle and produce loud noises.  In the cabin we had last night,  there was one set of long curtains and then a set of half curtains.  Both sets of curtains were held up by two wooden rods that were held together in the middle with scotch tape in the middle.  Really classy!

And the few times we have eaten in the dining cars, the food has been atrocious. Slapped together and with no presentation nor taste. The servers are all women who have no charm and seem to hate their job.  Not one smiles and one really has the impression one is bothering them.  There is no wine offered. The choice of food is limited so one does not really want to go and sit in the very bare green chairs of the Russian rail restaurant cars. On trains in other countries, the dining car makes a pleasant change from sitting in one's cabin or seat.  Not the case in Russia.

As you see, we are not at all satisfied with the rail service provided on this long journey.  It is long because this is a big country but is longer because the trains are unable to keep up any reasonable speed nor provide the minimum of comfort and service one would expect.  I am frankly surprised not to have seen any negative reviews of this in the travel journals and travel blogs or I just missed them.  This is not a pleasant relaxing means of traveling. It is certainly not for anyone who is not in shape to go up and down endless stairs carrying suitcases.

We told our Irkutsk guide, Elena, that we would like to get to our hotel on Lake Baikal as early as possible as Monique needed to get some rest after another sleepless night on the train.  So we cut back the touring program and limited ourselves to visiting the house that Prince Serge Troubetskoy built for his daughter.  We have a family of Troubetskoys who is our neighbor in Labelle, Canada where we have our cottage on the lake.

This Troubetskoy was part of a failed uprising in the middle of the 19th century when a group of about 300 Russian military officers, many with titles tried to remove the tsar, abolish serfdom and install democracy in Russia. It is referred to as the first revolution in Russia.  Many of these officers had been part of the Russian army which invaded France when they pushed Napoleon out of Russia in 1812.   They had seen that democracy worked and saw how backward Russia was at the time.  Serfdom was still widely spread and living conditions were terrible.    These officers and other people, called the Decembrists,  failed to change anything in the Tsarist regime and many were executed. Troubetskoy and others were condemned to perpetual prison and sent to mines near Irkutsk.  They wore chain shackles on legs and arms and were forced to do hard labor in mines east of Irkutsk.  They lost their titles and lost their lands and buildings.  The Tsar was an absolute tyrant and treated these and other people in such a cruel and harsh way it was not surprising that he or his descendants were finally removed. 

The house we visited had lots of mementos of that time. Interestingly the wife of Troubetskoy (a French lady called Laval) and the wives of about 12 other banished Decembrists chose to go into exile with their husbands.  They lived a hard life as they spent their lives in prisons with their husbands. Thirty years later, these Decembrists were released from prison and allowed to return to Moscow, but not to St Petersburg.

At the same time, many thousands of other persons were sent into exile and prison in Siberia for crimes committed or assumed. Siberia continued to be used as the dumping ground for prisoners by the Soviets, particularly under Stalin who set up vast Gulags where prisoners were used as free labor. This is another tragic chapter in the history of this country which seems to go from one type of dictatorship to another with the people suffering each time up to and including the current period. Troubetskoy eventually took his children back to Moscow and Kyiv in order to give them an education.  His wife died in Irkutsk and never made it back home.

Siberia was the wild part of the country where many Russians came or stayed voluntarily as they could live freely without or with little tsarist controls. There was no serfdom in Siberia and people could come and establish residences, build their houses and farm the land or establish other ways of making a living.  As the West in North America, Siberia offered new lives and promised a better life.

After a nice lunch at a restaurant that was made up as a hunting club with lots of stuffed animals on the walls, we drove the 70 km to Lake Baikal.  The first section of the road is a  4 lane highway which then turns into a 2 land road with bumps and holes which made us think of our roads in Quebec. Even the scenery reminded me of the highway to our house on Lake Labelle.  The road was first paved in 1961 when the US President Dwight Eisenhower was supposed to visit Irkutsk.  Then the U2 spy plane of Gary Power was shot down over Krasnoyarsk so that trip never happened, but Irkutsk got the road. And people still thank Mr. Eisenhower for the road which is commonly called Eisenhower road.

We arrived at the village of Listvyanka on  Lake Baikal in the early afternoon just as the sun came out. This is the world's largest lake which is 400 miles long and 20 to 40 miles wide.  It is where two continental shelves meet and the lake is 1673 meters (5400 feet) deep.  There is more water in this lake than in all the five great lakes of North America. There is so much water in this lake that one estimates that the lake could provide drinking water for the whole world for 40 years!

Our hotel was built in the Soviet-style but it is the only one in town with an elevator.  We were given a lovely room with windows and a balcony looking out on the lake.  It really does not look different from any other lake, but knowing the huge depth and capacity of the lake, I found myself looking out in awe.   This lake has huge storms that can generate waves of up to 6 meters. It is so cold in winter that the ice can reach 3 meters. Apparently, the winds are so strong in winter that huge areas of the ice surface are without snow and people skate for huge distances on the lake.

We walked to the end of this village where there is a handicraft market selling the usual trinkets.  We discovered a stone that apparently is only found in Siberia, called Charoite, which is a beautiful semi-precious purple colored stone.  After some hard bargaining by yours truly, made easier as it was late in the day, Monique became the proud owner of a pendant, a ring and earring are made of Charoite.

On our way back to the hotel, we noticed that there was a show of Lake Baikal seals about to start. We bought our tickets and were treated to a 30-minute show of two trained seals doing the usual tricks. These seals were huge weighing easily 250 pounds each.  The Baikal seal is one of the only freshwater seals in the world and no one knows how it got to the lake from its normal habitat thousands of miles north in the Arctic ocean.  These Baikal seals are genetically related to the northern arctic seals. They have been under hunting protection for decades and as they have no predators such as white bears, their numbers now stand at some 200,000.  This is now a concern, particularly of fishermen, as the seals consume vast amounts of fish.

The next morning, Eleana and our driver Constantin picked up at 10 am from the hotel. We headed to the Lake Baikal museum which is just outside Lastvyanka.  This is one of the best museums we have seen in the length of this trip.  Lake Baikal is probably the best-studied lake in the world and this museum proudly shows how much is known about the lake based on decades of studies by experts from around the world.  The museum uses all sorts of sophisticated audiovisual equipment to show many facets of the lake.  They even have a simulated diving room where one sits and watches out the front and side windows as the machine dives down to 1400 meters.  This lake is a fascinating place and is certainly worth a visit.

We had lunch in Lastyvanka and headed back to Irkutsk with a stop at a huge open-air exhibition of several hundred reconstructed Siberian homes, schools, and churches showing how these developed around a huge reconstructed military fort built by the Cossacks as they spread the Russian presence ever deeper into these lands.  There were local tribes living in most of Siberia and they were not always happy to see the Russian Cossacks coming in to establish new Russian towns or villages.

This place is made up of a huge collection of old buildings that have been moved piece by piece from abandoned villages or areas which have been flooded to allow the construction of power dams in the area.  It is a wonderful place for kids as it is open air and provides a fun place to come and play which offers and adults a view of the past. Our guide said that the best-preserved Russian fortress can be seen in California at Fort Ross. Russian explorers went up the rivers in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk to the arctic sea and over to what is now Alaska and all the way down to California.  If Russia had not sold Alaska to the US,  Sarah Palin could have, in fact, seen Russia out of her kitchen window...

Elena dropped us off at our Marriott Courtyard hotel for the evening. She and the driver will pick us up tomorrow morning and bring us to our train to Ulan-Ude. It has been a good visit to this southern Siberian area which made us both feel very much at home.