Outside the station we grew a little nervous at the presence of the bad guy from every action film ever made. You could cast a gangster movie in ten seconds. But of course they paid us no mind, even after I set off a car alarm, and eventually we found a big bridge and decided to cross it. Both of us were in fine spirits and ready for more walking after our longest train ride to date.
We did some circuits around the parks and squares of Irkutsk, without much of an idea of where we were or where we were headed. The city instantly reminded me of my time in Poland last summer, and so I was struck with excitement to wander the streets as I had done back then. At this time of day, though, the streets were almost entirely empty. It was very strange to both of us that it was about seven in the morning and that nobody was beginning the bustle of the day. We had been used to waking up later, sure, but in the morning in China and Vietnam people were up and starting the day early. After about an hour of this confusion we had grown tireder and hungrier and paid a taxi too much to bring us to our very nearby hostel.
This was actually our first time in that backpacker mainstay, the hostel. We had shared rooms before when volunteering, but when buying accommodation it was well within budget to just get private rooms. Things were a bit tighter in Russia, so for all of Russia we booked hostels in an effort to force us into being social.
At this point actually, we were a bit cynical at the prospect of repeating The Script for the thousandth time: I'm from California, I'll be staying in your country this long, funny story actually we came from Vietnam, haha yes it's a long way to Denmark, Alex, Auberon, Au-be-ron, yes it's a hard name for Americans too... We'd started saying these things in Ho Chi Minh City and hadn't really stopped. In China it was especially frequent because of all the English teaching. Auberon declared that if he met a girl that went off script he'd have to marry her. He's still single.
After such cynicism you'll be happy to hear that we met a cool Mongolian guy named Timin (spelling uncertain) and went around with him for most of the day. He was there on business, coordinating international shipments of construction materials between Russia and Mongolia. He matched us in walking enthusiasm and his Russian blew mine out of the water. We wandered to a nice restaurant and then to the parks on the south side of the city, then back to the center where he departed for a bus ride out of town.
The next day we found passage to the nearby town of Listvianka, a popular and easy to access day trip. Jumping on the chance to collect another method of transportation, we traveled by speedboat. It was very fast and didn't offer too many opportunities for photography since the decks were crowded with Russians at all times. I find it very easy to fall asleep at the beginning of car or bus rides, and the boat was no different. In no time we had arrived at Lake Baikal.
Lake Baikal is huge, and the destination for throngs of Russian and international tourists. We were really there because we'd seen big cities for a long time and needed a good hike in the woods. We found a nice path leading away from the souvenir shops and started off. In seconds we were alone on the path. Apart from some women gathering mushrooms we had the woods to ourselves. They were wonderfully European woods, broad and dense and filled with roots and birches and ivy. Bright red mushrooms peeked out of the leaves here and there, and though the path was clear it was far from the paved trails of China.
After a solid climb we reached one rocky summit and were immediately covered in flies. Not biting or stinging, just aggravating and persistent. Even though the temperature is dropping in Siberia it's still bug season. After a minute or so of selfies we reluctantly pushed on. It turned out there wasn't much of a view from the actual summit, but at least we had a lively scramble down the very steep mountainside to the town.
Back in Irkutsk we felt pretty complete with our time. There wasn't a ton more to see and our train left very late at night, so we had just one more goal for the day: vandalism. Irkutsk is a territory in the board game Risk, and months ago over a game with some friends we decided that we would take one of the little Red Guard game pieces and secure our control over the area by supergluing him to the city. We did. If you find him and send me a picture, I will personally mail you a card of congratulations and all of the remaining Russian coins I have in my possession - a sizeable stack by now.
Pictured: a boat on Baikal and a very large church.
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