22nd April 1984 - Walking on Ice

Sunday 22^nd April  Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, went downstairs to break my fast, sat with the Dickinsons, ate some bread, along came David Taylor, there was apple juice to drink, a funny cheese-infested raisin thing which I didn’t eat.

  At nine o’clock we all boarded our two buses for our trip to Lake Baikal. First we drove through some of the streets of Irkutsk. There are many wooden houses in the city, some are as old as 150 years and are still standing due to the fact that they haven’t fallen down yet. There are some whose window sills are at street level or below because the street has been laid so many times. Or something like that.

  We passed a park where not one of the close trees and shrubs had a single leaf on it. This is very strange to see, coming from Australia as I do. There were also funfair-type atrocities such as dodgem cars, merry-go-rounds and other things that go round. (These were in use when we were on the way back to the hotel.)(Quite crowded too, with queues.)

   We also passed a whole lot of condos which were extremely boring, though some of them have weird sculptures outside them which one wouldn’t expect to find in the Soviet Union, really. One looked like a fence, but I think it was meant to be a sculpture.

   We passed the airport in our travels. We couldn’t see the runways because the buildings seem to be built on a sort of ridge. On the road side are ploughed fields of the local agricultural institute. The runways must be on the other side, obscured by the long hill and airport terminals and sleeping aeroplanes.

   The road is quite narrow for a highway (if it is that) but there is a wide clearing on either side. Apart from patches of icy snow, wooden villages and iced lagoons of the River Angara (which the road follows) there is quite a lot of taiga forest.

  Taiga forest consists of such trees as larch, fir, silver birch, Siberian cedar and a yellow-barked tree the name of which escaped my comprehension. Larch is the wood used for the wooden houses and is exceptionally and extremely hardy – it’s not very good at deteriorating.

   The fauna to be found in the taiga forests (it’s much thicker and more expansive further north) consists of brown bear (80,000 in the Irkutsk region); two types of wolves – the common wolf and the Siberian (?) wolf [four types of wolf in all Siberia – common, gray, tundra and forest]; the wolverine, whose hide is extremely waterproof [I guess that means as leather or fur coat]; four types of foxes, the red, the cross, the fire, and the other one; sable, muskrat, etc etc.

  We stopped to take photographs at a little high point overlooking the Angara. Some of the trees have bits of cloth tied to their branches, for good luck. Nice clumps of snow for throwing at people.

   Our next stop was just inside the mouth of the Angara River. This is one of only one river to flow out of Lake Baikal, but there are over 300 rivers that flow into it. [So is it really the mouth of the Angara or its source?] The water is very clear – in the lake, a small object can be seen at a depth of twenty metres, though not one thousand six hundred metres which is its deepest depth.

  There is about two metres of ice along the shore of the river (two metres wide) and the rest is cold clear water flowing downstream. Ducks drift along, not bothering to paddle, and dive suddenly if they see some enticing morsel ‘neath the water’s surface. The ducks live in the area during the winter because the lake offers so much food, but they migrate north in the springtime. There are about fifty species of fish in Baikal, some of which are indigenous. The biggest are sturgeon and armul. I don’t know what the smallest one is, but it isn’t PECTOPAH, which is the Russian word for restaurant. [Of course, that’s what it looks like, where in Russian P is R, C is S and H is N.]

    After our little stop by the river, we were driven up the hill to the Intourist Hotel there where we were to have lunch, but not for fifty minutes. So some of us went down the hill to the lake’s edge, and then we went walking on the lake.

A Virtual Tourist man of a later time lying on Lake Baikal, probably wishing he hadn't left his knitting at the hotel.

   Lake Baikal is covered with ice from about mid-December to mid-May, and as this was still only April we went walking on it. It’s like walking on Lake Eyre but colder, harder and not at all sticky, so it’s not really like walking on Lake Eyre at all. [Lake Eyre is Australia’s biggest lake – when it has water in it. It’s usually just a salt plain.] Anyway, there’s lots of fun to be had on the ice – there were a couple of locals on a motorbike, and you may cut a hole to fish there, or you may even sit down and knit a jumper, if that’s your idea of having fun.

   There is a very large semicircle of trees stuck in the ice to warn people that there is a large semicircle of ice edge at the mouth of the river.

  Young David McKinnon had the fortune to fall through a crack in the ice. But only up to his thighs. If the weather weren’t so right luvly, he could have been very cold indeed. As it was, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky worth its weight in gold. Hush! Don’t ask me how heavy a cloud is, I only write this stuff.

   Our next adventure was to walk up the road to the hotel restaurant and have lunch. At the table graced with my presence were Jane, Bernadette and Roger. We had cold meat – nay, some say icy – some red soup with meat in it, and meat-enveloped egg and vegetable (greens) things with rice which was too salty for my taste. Bread and high juice. [High juice?]

   After lunch we were driven up to the end of the road where there was a little ice-bound harbor. We went for more walkies on ice. David McKinnon’s grandfather Bill White put his feet though a crack in the ice, and he’s only 78. Plenty of opportunity for throwing balls of snow/ice at people here.

   The next stop along the road was Crosstown [Listvyanka?] a ‘typical’ Siberian village with its wooden houses, cows (of flesh) and muddy streets. There’s quite a wide stream covered in ice, so more walkies on and through the solid water. We particularly wanted to get to a church, which involved pioneering a route over the ice and through some leafless shrubs. The shrubless leaves were probably buried under the ice.

A picture of Listvanka in a snowier period than when we were there.

The Church of St Nikola in Listvyanka, though somehow I doubt this is the church we went to see.

  We had about fifty minutes to wander this megapolis. I was a bit disappointed because the intricate carvings so readily shown in the museum at Khabarovsk as typical house ornamentation was not in evidence here. But there were, of course, painted window shutters and a cat.

  At about three o’clock, we left this sleepy little village on the shore of Lake Baikal and proceeded back to the hotel in Irkutsk, which is about 86 kilometres away – or so I’ve heard. Of course, this is not as far as Lake Baikal is long. The lake is, indeed, 400 miles [636 km] long, and 50 miles [80 km] wide at its least narrow width. It has 2000 km of shoreline and is about twenty million years old – and still forming. It is an area of great seismic activity, where about two thousand earthquakes are recorded each year. Two years ago, one recorded at 6 on the Richter scale. Despite its immensity, only fifty thousand people live near the lake’s shores, mostly in the south, I gather.

  Back at the hotel I wrote some of this thing until dinner at six, though perhaps I should have gone for a walk.

   Never mind. For dinner with the Mullinses and Bernadette. We had, once again, much of a oneness, meat with rice. To drink there was only water and mineral water. The latter is highly revolting, and plain water is very well flushed with chemicals and can only be taken comfortably in one gulp. Ice cream for dessert.

   After dinner I had a looksee at the berioska shop, but, unlike some others in the group, didn’t buy anything. Then upstairs to my room to write this thing right up to this very full stop here.