THE INCREDIBLE LAKE BAIKAL

Living life!

Most travelers, according to travel books, begin their Baikal trip at the southern point of the lake. Irkutsk, the closest big city to the lake has the most (in that area) tourist infrastructure set up, so it makes it an attractive destination for non-Russian speaking visitors. Since we had no problem with Russian, we decided to get off the usual track and start our Baikal exploration in the north, getting off at the Severobaikalsk station. We were especially quick to make this decision also because we received a “yes” from the only active couch surfer registered in Severobaikalsk. The morning of our arrival I received a text message from our host (Yuri “Gagarin” as we named him) saying that we would be picked up by a certain Andrey and he would take us to the “tur-baza” (tourist camp). As intriguing as it sounded at the moment, I did not know who that Andrey was and what kind of a tourist camp Yuri was talking about. The one thought in my head was the classic one: “This is how travel-horror movies begin…”. The good thing was that I had a phone and Yuri’s number so I could call him to get the details on the message. It turned out that our host Yuri, was just as homeless as we were, and Andrey who was going to pick us up was the owner of the tur-baza. Yuri had a privilege to stay (and host other people, apparently) as he was Andrey son’s friend and a business partner.

The souna.

Still confused about the living arrangements we were picked up by an old Toyota minivan with a steering wheel on the left, and a spare tire roped up to the front bumper. The captain of this vehicle was Andrey, a grim looking middle aged man dressed in a “Rambo” outfit. There was also his son with his girlfriend in the van who finally explained to us where we were going and why Yuri was living in their tur-baza.

Andrey's guest house.

It was Slyudianskie Ozera where we were heading to. Some 25 kilometers away from town, right on the shore of the Great Lake Baikal there are 2 pristine water lakes which sit at the foot of the Slyudianka Mountain where labor camp prisoners worked tirelessly extracting mica (slyuda in Russian) this valuable mineral for the good of the Soviet Empire. Some 6 years earlier Andrey came to this place to set up some kind of a tourist camp and bring people to enjoy the incredible views of the snow-peaked mountains  surrounding the calm crystal-clear waters of the 2 sister lakes. Since the tourist season was over Andrey let Yuri live at the place for free as long as he kept an eye on the area and helped him develop a strategy for making his tourist camp better and more popular. Andrey lived in town but he came to the baza very day to manage his logging business. In the off season Andrey kept himself occupied by clearing the woods from the old and burned down trees which he then sold to the towners, most of whom still have wood stoves in their houses.

Bolshoe Slyudianskoe lake.

When we arrived to the place Yuri met us with a huge campfire pot offering to share a delicious Uzbek rice dish, plov. Immediately, we felt at home and became exploring the territory. The place was incredible…! On a strip of land not wider than 100 meters that separated the 2 lakes there were 2 guest houses, an indoor and an outdoor kitchen, a souna, and “zimovie” – originally a hunter’s shack but now made into a place where Andrey’s workers stayed some times. Yuri explained to us that there were several trails around to explore, as well as other things to do such as fishing, kayaking, mushroom picking, bird-watching, and even wood cutting if we felt like helping with the sauna.

This is where some nice pike live!

At the tur-baza we were given our own private quarters with a lake view and a front porch. Not even in our perfect dreams we could hope for such an incredibly perfect set up! Since the first day at that magical place Yuri started asking us about our experiences travelling, about our opinions on the Baikal region and about ways tourism in Northern Baikal could be made more enjoyable. It turned out that Yuri’s interest was not simply curiosity. Yura was preparing a business plan for tourism development of Andrey’s tur-baza, so that the regional municipality officially allowed the leasing of the land tur-baza was occupying. At the same time, Yura was preparing for the presentation of his Baikal tourism project at the National Student Entrepreneurs Competition. Yura, together with Andrey’s son, was hoping to start a triple base tourism project that would be environmentally and socially responsible while generating an income for the company. The plan was to open a school of tour guides to generate quality local personnel for tour operations, which would include providing alternative active vacations in pristine nature for tired Russian businessmen. With the implementation of this plan Yuri and his partner also hope that attracting these sort of powerful and wealthy people would bring more attention to the preservation of the natural beauty and biodiversity of the Northern Baikal Region.

Baikal and Slyudianskie Lakes.

Yura stroke us as an incredibly energetic, positive and optimistic person who gave you a feeling that anything was possible in this life. He was 24, but I had a feeling that I was talking to someone with lots of experience and who knew what he was doing. It also turned out that Yura’s biggest life dream was not to create something in Baikal, but be an organic farmer in Argentina! Who would have ever thought that the only guy to host us in Severobaikalsk was planning to become an Argentine goucho one day?! Yura was convinced that one way or another he was going to find resources and knowledge to make his Argentine dream come true. He confessed that he did not know much about farming, wine, animals or land in general, but he only knew that he was going to make it all happen. Baikal was just an exciting money making project for him, which he hoped to develop and then sell in order to start working on his farming dream.

Pike is good for lunch!

Another thing that we found out about this guy was that he was a certified wilderness guide. I had no idea that such a certification existed, and I was not even sure what it meant. The International Wilderness Guide certification program is offered in Finland, where for 9 months 15 students from all over the word learn about survival in the extreme wilderness….Yura had just finished the course in July and was still very much contagious with excitement about it. His stories about survival cooking, solo ski expeditions in Lapland taiga, and studying for bird singing exams made Emi fall in love with the idea of going through the course. He was so serious talking about him applying for it that I began looking for Masters Degrees in Finland for me as well!

Baikal Mountain Range.

We were not the only guests at the tur-baza. Yura shared his room with a middle aged guy Vladimir, who worked with Andrey logging in the woods. This guy was a character, the kid that you meet rarely in life. We learned that this shabby looking laborer guy was in town because he was waiting for a response from one of the Moscow publishing houses regarding his book. The book was a sort of a biography/memoir about his life in deep Siberian taiga. 12 years ago Vladimir and his young wife Olga (24 years younger than him) decided to leave civilization and settle in the virgin taiga woods some 700 kilometers north of Severobaikalsk. Their idea was not to settle in a remote village, but to escape from modern civilization all together. The way to get to Volodia’s house is to take a 6 wheel drive truck through dirt roads and then walk through the woods for three hours. You can also get there by helicopter, but this option gets a little too expensive.

Lake Baikal.

Vladimir and Olga seem to be almost completely self sustainable: they built their house and everything around and in it themselves, they grow and hunt their food, and they even make such products as natural creams and soaps.  Anything that they can’t make they buy when they come down to town (twice a year), using the money that they make by selling their handmade souvenirs and body products. Apparently, Vladimir thought that we were cool enough to deserve a present from taiga and gave us necklaces with bear teeth (made with the teeth of the bear that he had shot in the backyard of his house). Vladimir was very talkative and felt that it was important to share with us everything that came to his mind, from theories about the “illnesses” of the modern civilization to the inaccuracies of western physics. Most days these chats happened after sauna or during dinner that we made in a huge cast iron pot over camp fire.

I could look at this for hours...

Our days at Sluydianskie Oziora were fun and full of activities. We hiked, fished, picked mushrooms, cooked for everyone, played with dogs or just simply watched the unbelievable landscape around us. The lakes and the mountains looked different every day, but they were always stunningly beautiful. It was very difficult to decide to leave this magical place, but it was time for us to start moving south.

Bolshoe Slyudianskoe at night.

The last day of our stay Yuri received the news from the competition asking him for a video with a brief introduction of his project. All of a sudden, we all transformed into a production team with Yuri working on the text and Emi and I on filming (with our small Lumix camera) and editing. By the end of the day, with a lot of work and very little technology the video was ready! It was nothing too special, but it had to be done well enough to be presented to a big audience in Moscow, and we did it! It was not just presentable, but was one of the ingredients for success. We have just learned that Yuri’s project has been selected for the final round of the competition, which will be held on November 16, 2011 in New York.

The surreal sunsets by the lake.

All in all, our trip to Northern Baikal was just simply unforgettable. The beauty of the place is impossible to describe and the absence of massive tourism makes it a precious jewel of Russia. If you have ever through of travelling to that part of the world you should not hesitate and do it now, while it is still undeveloped and cheap. Let us know if you would like to go to Northern Baikal and we will put you in contact with Yura, who will show you the best of what the region has to offer. I am definitely going back there and, hopefully, not just once!