The Largest Freshwater Lake in the world

Bubbles trapped in the ice.
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Before we planned this trip I'd never heard of Lake Baikal. But once we learnt more about it, we were amazed. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world and could supply 20% of the world's fresh water. It is 600 Km long, over a 1.5 Km deep (8 km deep if you count the sediment) and 40km across. So it's big. Really big. The other amazing thing is that it freezes over from December and it's possible to drive across it. So that's what we planned to do.

We all piled into Jack's minivan, all being us, Jack and a Russian couple - Alex and Marina.  It takes about 5 hours to drive to the offical ice road, then we were headed across the ice road on the lake (eek!) and then to the largest village, Khuzhur to stay with a fisherman's family.

It was truly weird to be walking on water - literally.

Cathal on the ice.
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The drive itself was quite interesting. I was struck by the number of white or grey cars we saw - about 90% of all vehicles were a light colour, so pretty difficult to see in the snow in Siberia. Why the camouflage cars?  The road was pretty good, but a number of hills so sometimes it was a bit like a roller coaster. We passed through a small mountain range and then got our first view of the lake and the offical ice road. There's an unoffical ice road, which is at the point where the island is closest to the mainland, where the ferries ply the route in the summer, unfortunately the currents are quite strong so ever year, someone dies going through this ice. We went the long and the safest way.

Niamh's balance was a bit better!
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Driving onto the ice is amazing, it's such a strange sensation. Jack stopped the van once we'd gone about 50 metres in and we all clambered out, with lots of oohing and aahing. It was so unreal to be walking on ice, yet still being able to see the bottom of the lake quite clearly. The ice, like the water of the lake is very clear, pure and slightly blue in colour. It was truly weird to literally be walking on water (now I know how Jesus did it!). We crossed over the ice, I was listening out for large creaking sounds the whole time and we stopped at a sacred site. The site was originally intended as a pagan site for leaving offerings. The island has a strong shamanistic history. Now however it's a bit of a rubbish dump with sweet wrappers and vodka bottles scattered everywhere as offerings and an inordinate amount of cigarettes. Clearly the Gods have a huge nicotine addiction. After we added our modest coins to this motley collection we headed off to Olga and Kolya's house.

Shaman's Rock.
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It was much like the other houses in the village, wooden and very simple. No running water, but it did have electricity. The island had been wired in about 6 months. Olga and her helpers coped very well with two non fish eating vegetarians and overall we had some lovely food. Especially the homemade pickles. Yum.

The next day we took a walk to Shaman's rock another sacred site. We're very interested in paganism in general (we had a pagan wedding) and we were very impressed with this beautiful rock in such a wild place. Some people say the island is very special and spiritual but at this stage we were reserving judgement. It has to be said that the rock was very peaceful and there was a sort of sense of power about the place. In the afternoon we went to the little museum in the village.

So bright. Niamh squints into the sun.
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This was incredibly interesting and I loved it. The museum was started by a schoolteacher who had been sent to the island by the soviets. He took his class all over the island to learn more about all aspects of its history, flora and fauna. They discovered lots, including some previously unknown species of trees and they dug up various artefacts. It's clear that this schoolteacher was a very special man, passionate about his adopted homeplace. It's very charming to still see the graphs and data the kids collected, still on copybook paper, carefully written in coloured pencil. The curator, the schoolteachers grand-daughter had no English but managed to convey the meaning of a fair few tools and implements used by the islanders over the years, and whatever she couldn't mime, Jack was happy to translate. Overall I found it utterly charming and well worth a visit.

Fishing boats near the canning factory, now defunct.
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The next day we were driven by a local fisherman to the very top of the island and saw some great rock formations including tusk rock (the northernmost tip), the warrior and the woman (see pics). The ice and landscape is so unreal. There are literally waves frozen into bizarre shapes and the blues and turqouise colours are amazing, set off by the orange lichens and grey rocks. The sense of peace and the obvious power of nature is amazing. We went crazy snapping pictures, so please enjoy.

The final (fourth day)of our sojourn to Olkhon island was spent packing up and heading back to Irkutsk. We headed off again over the ice road and then to the mainland. About half an hour after leaving the area, back on the main tarmac road to Irkutsk I noticed something weird. An ongoing  and pretty constant low level pain I have in my hands returned. I hadn't had it at all on the island. When I told Jack he said that lots of people experience various things about the island, mostly strange dreams etc. It may be coincidence that I didn't have the pain on the island, but somehow I don't think so. I agree with Jack that the island is indeed a very special place.