Lake Baikal II

Two extraordinary days it were at lake Baikal. You’d say that after the many new and surreal experiences on the first day, I’d sleep like a log, but unfortunately the opposite was true. We didn’t know what time breakfast was, so we rose early, to be sure – it turned out we were the first one’s there, in the same little canteen we had our dinner yesterday. We enjoyed a good Russian breakfast while watching a bit of Russian television. We left the hostel at 10:00 in the morning, for the remainder of our tour. Our vehicle for today was, as our guide described it, a funny looking minibus. First, it brought us to the same spot we visited yesterday afternoon, with a great view on Shaman Rock, now basking in morning light. It promised to be a clear day and a bit less cold than yesterday, -5 degrees. We drove past the old fish factory and onto the lake, where we followed the shoreline of the island across the Small Sea – the narrow part of the lake between the island and the mainland.

The ice of the lake was not one and the same everywhere – sometimes it was level and smooth, dark and impressive in its beauty, but at other times it would suddenly turn into its angry little brother, with chunks of ice sticking out at odd angles, the road not much of a road anymore but just bumps and holes. We were hustled around in the car as if there were still waves tossing us around. The views were no less gorgeous than the day before, with the rolling hills of the island, its impressive cliffs and the lake stretching on until the horizon before us.

We had a chauffeur for that day, so our guide didn’t have to drive, but I’d say there wasn’t much difference when it came to driving style. I don’t think were we in a hurry, but you’d say so when little else but speed seemed to matter, on the ice road as well as on land. I actually don’t recall seeing any speed limit signs along the highway from Irkutsk to the lake, except at the most tricky hills and turns. Other cars were seemingly just there to be overtaken and in the city there were some situations that would have caused scandals in the Netherlands.

On the ice, we had the road for ourselves of course. We didn’t wear seatbelts when on the lake, and I would’ve liked to know how fast we were driving, but the meter was broken - obviously. We made several stops to explore the coastline and its beautiful ice structures. We stumbled upon several small ice caves with impressive collections of icicles. We explored around three cliffs named the Three Brothers, and drove close to the cape of the island, where from a specific angle, it looks like a giant stone woman is resting against the cliff side. The last part to the cape, we had to go on foot, because we were close to a big natural crack in the ice. It’s where the huge ice plates of the Small Sea and that of the Big Sea meet, and where every year at the same place a crack forms. Our guide told is it can be frozen or, as it was that day, a live crack, shifting, with the occasional cracking sound as if to warn us not to come too close. We joined up with another group of three, a couple from Thailand with their Russian guide, and our two guides led us along the crack and the shore, traversing ‘pancake’ ice and climbing across heaps of ice plates, stacked on top of each other as if an immense glass bottle had broken and someone had swept the remains together.

But as we hiked on, my less than a good night’s sleep was starting to get to me. I was getting tired of taking pictures that were all

beginning to look the same to me and we were a bit late for lunch – yes, I managed to be grumpy while on the most impressive lake of the world.

The crack didn’t fail to impress me though. Most memorable was when our guide approached it, till the point where you could see the small sliver of space between the ice plates. He picked up a block of ice and threw it on the crack, breaking the thin layer. After a few seconds, there was a low sound – it wasn’t loud, but it was big, and then for a moment water surged up from the crack before retreating again. The lake could not have been clearer if it had outright said: don’t do that.
After this, we went back to the car to have lunch, which was exactly what I needed. This, however, marked the end of our tour. We drove back to the hostel on Olkhon island to change vehicles and get back on our way to Irkutsk with our van. The last ride across the ice back to the mainland was spend in silence and enveloped in the golden light of the sunset. I was tired, but still unable to close my eyes and sleep. If there is a place where talk of Shamans and legends isn’t out of place, it is on lake Baikal. It was so impressive that it took me awhile to figure out how I felt about it all. Maybe it is partly because I was travelling alone, with no one else to either listen to or interrupt my thoughts - while on lake Baikal, I felt very much alive, but alongside it came also the realisation that I was just a tiny speck on a huge frozen lake, on that vast expanse of ice making the mountains look small. And that the lake did not care one bit.

We drove past Gogoy island and reached the mainland, still with hours of driving ahead. The mountains were blushing pink from the setting sun and as night fell, the snow and the moonlight made sure darkness wasn’t complete. Back at the hostel in Irkutsk, it seemed we had returned to the ordinary world of hot showers, Wi-Fi and sleep.