Ballad of Siberia

Irkutsk(Иркутская), the most popular stop in the great Siberian land for travelers, is a city located 60 km south-west of lake Baikal. Known for its deepest, clearest body of water, which totals to about 20% of world's unfrozen fresh water, the lake has many visitors all year around, and many tour trips are organized in this city, population of 600,000. The surface sizes at 31,500 square kilometers (339,000sq.ft), and the deepest end measures at 1,600km (1 mile). Most commonly visited is Olkhon island (Ольхон), however, we didn't have enough time as it takes from Irkutsk about 6 hours by bus that only runs once a day. Instead, we decided to visit Listvyanka (Листвянка), the town on the closest shore.

We check ourselves in at the guesthouse at 7:00, and the first thing we did was to shower for the first time in a week. Lack of sleep mixed with a refreshed feeling only led to an early nap. Our agenda of the day is to purchase bus tickets for Listvyanka, but in order to get to the center we had to take a local bus, and not being able to read or to have a bus map, this task can be tricky. They seem to not have a clear bus station(at least to us), and people hail these minivan type vehicles just about anywhere on the street. We jumped onto the one that seemed appropriate, looked around to see how much and when other passengers are paying the fare, and got off at a stop with everyone else, which was the downtown market area.

We walked to the bus station to purchase tickets, and then we stopped by at a post office to purchase two stamps. There, our patience was tested with people cutting in line and ended up waiting for an hour and a half. Later, we came back to the market to buy food for upcoming train ride, and this made up for our half-confused, half-culturally overwhelmed experience in the governmental organization.

The following morning was raining but we still went on our small trip to the world's famous puddle, and after an hour and a half on a minibus, we came to a shore. We were able to see nothing the lake is known for on this particular day, as the rain mudded the water, wind pounded waves to the shore, and the fog lessened the visibility. Nonetheless it was worth the trip. We walked around for a few hours and headed back to prepare for the final stretch on the Trans-Siberian Railway, on to Mongolia.