Today we are heading back to Lake Baikal. We started “early”
for this crowd (i.e., around 10 am), with Igor at the wheel. It turns out his
first and only grandson is celebrating his birthday, so he is rejoining his
wife in Irkutsk for the celebration. Naturally this brought the conversation
around to Ronnie, and both proud Opas
had a chance to boast about their respective Enkelkinder 😊
On the way we engaged in some conversation about what his
opinions were, as a businessman, regarding the political communist regime. He
assured us that he had free rein to engage in his business and we left it at
that (it has never a good idea to probe very deeply on politics). I will add
that, like in Cuba, I do not see evidence of a crushing bureaucracy or police
presence, although I see a certain shabbiness in public works and public
transport.
We drove to the train station is Sludjanka, an unattractive
train town in the southern tip of Lake Baikal, and after waiting for about 45
minutes boarded the extremely slow Baikal Express. This train runs the 75 km
between Port Baikal and Sludjanka once a day on Monday, Tuesday, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. It leaves Port Baikal early in the morning, takes 5 hours
to get to Slubianka, and comes back at 1 pm for another 5 hour “express” ride.
Every 10 km or so there is a small hamlet, and the train constitutes their life
line bringing eggs, milk, and the odd tourist. It is a very slow ride, but it
is extremely beautiful, with the lake extending farther and farther with every
passing kilometer. My estimate of 10-20 km wide at the southern end can now be
increased to 30-50 km wide (and I recall reading that the lake is 80 km at its
widest).
Our new abode is called Polowinnaja, and is located about
midway between the two end stations. A small creek has formed a mini-estuary at
the mouth of a wooded valley, and an easy walk of 500 m brought us into a
beautifully landscape of wooden houses, sprinkled among grass lawns and
vegetable beds and greenhouses. Every structure is spic and span, carefully
decorated with wood carvings around the windows and antiques. We are spending
two nights here, so tomorrow we will have plenty of opportunity to go hiking,
sunbathe along the shore of the lake, read, or go fishing. Not bad, not bad at
all.
No comments:
Post a Comment