My 50 hours train ride was quite an experience ! I was staying in a new (=post-communist) train model called Firmeny which had the luxury of 1 electrical outlet in every compartment and the Provotnik was bringing over lunch to the compartment.
As the train was moving forward, there were less and less signs and civilization and increasingly taiga landscapes all around and more than 8 hours between stations at some point !
The train suddenly broke down in the middle of nowhere. They struggled to fix it and I was getting increasingly worried when looking at no man’s land outside but then the train went back on track more than 1H00 later and it still managed to arrive in Irkutsk train station exactly at 20H57 more than 50 hours later as per the ticket !
On the second leg of my trip, I was with a russian oil engineer (designing pump). His English was really basic so we made extensive use of Google Translate to discuss, the problem being that we were loosing regularly signal as we were in the middle of Siberia. I found out that at 25 years old, he was making about 3000 USD/month working for the Russian Oil Company and was spending his time travelling all over Siberia. China signed recently a huge Energy contract with Russia and seems like business is booming.
A Russian/Siberian boy suddenly came to my compartment and when I told him in Russian that I was from France, he started acting hysterical like I was the 7th wonder of this world and kept touching me , in an extatic manner.
I arrived in Irkutsk exhausted, finding my hostel quickly. The next day, I went straight to the Baikal lake which is the world largest freshwater lake in the world. The closest town is Listvyanka and although quite touristic, is beautiful. The local markets were selling smoked “Omul” which is a variety of fish only existing on the Baikal lake and is quite tasty!
While walking along the shores, I bumped into a French TV crew who were shooting a documentary about the biggest lakes in the world for Arte (French Documentary Channel). They had 2 weeks all expenses paid with interpret just for a few minutes of documentary about the Baikal lake (total movie will be 52 min including documentary). I envy their job.
I then took a 30 min boat to Bolshoie Koty which is at the center of the National park. The ride was epic, pure water.
We had 4 hours to explore the village and it absolutely took my breath away. From one side of the village, one of the most beautiful lake in the world, the other side mountains and taiga forest. It was really quiet, houses with beautiful wooden sculptures and animals such as Cow and horses just wandering the streets of the village. A world away from the rush of London life ..
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