The real reason to travel to Irkutsk was not to see that city, but to make the 250 and odd kilometre trip up to Olkhon Island in the middle of Lake Baikal. The stats about Baikal are mind boggling: one-fifth of the world's fresh water and it's bigger than all five of the US Great Lakes combined. The reason it's not better known may have something to do with the fact that it's some 5,000 kilometres (or four nights) from Moscow by train. They've also not made it that easy to get to: the first 150km from Irkutsk are decently tarmac-ed, but after that it starts to get bumpy as it becomes a pot holed mud road. In fact, the road is so bad that an impromptu secondary mud road has grown up alongside the "real" road and most people seem to prefer the new one.
Our six hour journey was delayed - turning into an eleven hour journey. We met some nice people while we were waiting (and a slightly quirky German "traveller" from the school of "let's just talk about me and my experiences") - a couple of Norwegian students and a French couple who had hitch hiked their way through a lot of Southern and Eastern Europe and Turkey, before getting a boat over the Black Sea to Russia.
Anyway, the journey was definitely worth it when we made it to the island - wonderfully undeveloped (although I always think it a little strange when there's electricity, mobile phone reception, satellite TV and plasma TVs, but no running water and flush toilets) and beautiful open spaces. We did a lovely hike up the coast and the weather was great too. We stayed at Olga's and she delivered some fine food in generous quantities (I should mention that the spaghetti with cheese for breakfast on our second day was a little odd - more than made up for by the lovely cake which was also on offer).
Our six hour journey was delayed - turning into an eleven hour journey. We met some nice people while we were waiting (and a slightly quirky German "traveller" from the school of "let's just talk about me and my experiences") - a couple of Norwegian students and a French couple who had hitch hiked their way through a lot of Southern and Eastern Europe and Turkey, before getting a boat over the Black Sea to Russia.
Anyway, the journey was definitely worth it when we made it to the island - wonderfully undeveloped (although I always think it a little strange when there's electricity, mobile phone reception, satellite TV and plasma TVs, but no running water and flush toilets) and beautiful open spaces. We did a lovely hike up the coast and the weather was great too. We stayed at Olga's and she delivered some fine food in generous quantities (I should mention that the spaghetti with cheese for breakfast on our second day was a little odd - more than made up for by the lovely cake which was also on offer).
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