Baikal, Friday

Have extracted my laptop from the pile of sweaters in which it was hidden, put aside guilt at frequent communication with the English-speaking world, and ignored the stack of books I’m supposed to be reading to attempt to describe our group trip to Baikal yesterday. By the time I post this, I may or may not have gone on a camping trip, also near Baikal, and I wanted to record yesterday before it was driven from my mind by the stress of getting lost on the marshrutkas again or getting yelled at trying to buy soap (actually my previous attempt to buy soap did not involve getting yelled at, but was nonetheless unsuccessful: I asked a salesperson at this rather large pharmacy, full of every imaginable kind of shampoo and diaper wipes and facewashing product, if they had any “very normal soap.” They did not- they only had little soaps in the shape of a strawberry, that would “make your hands smell all day, I tell you honestly.”).

Yesterday was our first cool day here, maybe in the 50s. We left Irkutsk in our rented van around 10:00, and within 20 minutes we were driving through birch forests. I’ve never seen a real birch forest- in New England there’s a lot of birch, but it’s mixed in with oak and maple and whatnot, so it just serves as a white accent on the general forest view. But where we were driving, though there was some pine along the side of the road, it was generally pure birch, and effect of all those smooth white trunks (the leaves start pretty high up the trunk) spaced evenly across acres of hills, with the already-half-golden canopy above, was of a secret, stately ruined palace, with the patches of sun streaming through the crumbling roof only heightening the mystery and solemnity.

Our first stop was this outdoor architectural/ anthropological/ something-or-other museum, where they had assembled various old buildings, I think rescued from flooding when they build the hydroelectric dam, but I’m not really sure. The old wooden architecture was certainly cool, and onion domes (actually I’m not sure whether these counted as onion domes- I seem to remember from Russian history class last fall there being some term for these more elongated versions) look especially cool when they look like they’ve been made out of lincoln logs. We also saw a traditional Buryat hut, and various other things. But the experience sort of became increasingly miserable for all concerned as our plump, self-satisfied guide rebuked us more and more for our failure to ask good questions, and we became more and more frustrated at our inability to understand the tour, and we frantically tried to think of questions to ask that had probably not already been answered in the speech we had just finished not understanding; we would often just all be standing looking at each other, the guide waiting for us to give her a topic to talk about and we standing in non-question-posing silence that slowly passed from anxious to defiant. There were, however, beautiful views of the Angara river (the river that flows from Baikal and through the city of Irkutsk, and Baikal’s only non-tributary river (not a real term, but I can’t think of the real one- starts with an ‘e.’)

So, with great relief we left the museum, and we soon had our first view of Baikal. Right at the mouth of the Angara (stress on the last syllable), we saw the legendary Shaman Rock- supposedly, if the water level of Baikal ever drops low enough that the whole rock is exposed, it will mean the end of the world. Interestingly, it probably won’t be too long before this happens, as the water level of the lake is indeed decreasing, I think due to the hydroelectric dam, but I’ve never quite understood the whole explanation. Another myth attached to the rock is that it was thrown by an angry Baikal after his daughter Angara as she ran away from home to meet up with her betrothed, some other river whose name I don’t remember. Nearby the rock is the village of Listvyanka, which in the past 10 years has become a big tourist destination, as the village most accessible from Irkutsk. We went to a little open-air market to eat- I bought an omul, the lakes most famous endemic fish (almost all of the gazillion species of fish in Baikal are endemic), and a sort of wheel of bread. The omul was handed to me whole, without a plate or anything- it was sort of fun walking around with it while other people bought food. It’s a pretty fish- the scales are a brilliant golden color- and also rightly famed for its taste. A little challenging to eat with a plastic fork and no plate though- I may have eaten more bone and skin than meat.

Next we went to the Baikal Museum, were we saw all sorts of dead fish in jars and various stuffed mammals- wolverines and wolves and sable and weird Russian squirrels, among others. Of greatest interest was a little aquarium where there was a tank of 2 nerpa- the seals that live only in Lake Baikal. In their fall manifestations, these nerpa are approximately the cutest animals ever: they’re bigger than oceanic seals, and brown and glossy, and perfectly round, like a barrel. In the winter they turn white and thin- I hope I can see one then.

But it was our next activity that made the day. We pulled into this chicken-strewn yard, with a little babushka puttering around in it, and while we in the van looked at each other in confusion Elizabeth explained that this woman owned the banya we would be using. And, indeed, we went down this little path from her yard to the lake shore, and into this cool wooden shack, and there was a Russian banya (bathhouse), approximately the coolest thing in the world. There was a little vestibule, then a middle room with a table and samovar, and then the banya itself, like a sauna I guess- are saunas humid? I’ve never been to one. Anyway, the banya is heated with a big oven thing, on top of which are hot stones, over which you pour hot water. Then you experience a heat and an attack of steam the likes of which I would not have thought survivable, but after about 60 seconds of being sure that’s you’ll suffocate it becomes strangely fun. After a while in this room, you run out as fast as you can, through the other rooms of the shack, down the little stairs to Lake Baikal (keep in mind that we were shivering in sweaters most of the day and that Baikal is so huge it never heats up that much from winter) and run in. I’m not sure why this is so much fun, but it really is. The process is repeated for a couple of hours, with breaks when you want it for looking out at the lack and drinking tea. Actually I think you’re supposed to be drinking vodka, but we weren’t. After a while we got some branches – I’m sure there’s a word of this too- and did the think wheer you beat each other with them. I know no part of this process sounds fun- the incredible heat, the freezing water, the being beaten with tree branches- but it was. Swimming in Lake Baikal was so amazing- I can’t begin to describe how beautiful it is. ‘Lake’ doesn’t seem like the right word for it- everyone around here refers to it as the sea. It’s surrounded by wooded mountains, the treetops striped with yellow along the diagonal ridges, like sunlight had been applied with a pastry brush. [This post is becoming alarmingly full of cheesy metaphor, but I don’t know how else to describe these things.] But more than the mountains, unlike any I’ve seen, the “power and the glory” of the place was in the lake itself, in the expanse of it, the color, the movement of the water. It really is perfectly clear, and I drank straight from the lake, which might not have been the best idea so near the village, but I was convinced by the display we had seen in the museum of tiny little animals with world-record breaking water-filtering abilities. But it was so amazing- it was nothing at all like lake water. Not like spring water either, but of a taste all of its own, like everything else about Baikal. We learned in our Baikal studies class (actually this is one of the only things I’ve ever understood in this class) that Baikal water contains 40 different elements and is irreproducible in a laboratory. Later, at dinner, we were served big bottles of Baikal water, and I realized that it was actually sweet- I couldn’t figure out why this was so striking to me until I was back in Irkutsk that evening and remembered that sweet water was how Reepacheep, in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, identified the edge of the world. I wish I could remember that rhyme his nurse taught him- Reepacheep, Reepacheep, sail to where the water’s sweet, something about a heart’s desire.

In another interesting note, Ivan and I tried blini with caviar at dinner. Blini were good, caviar not.

I feel sort of bad that yesterday was the only day I really had fun in Siberia. Much of the fun involved the lack of stress of being with a group of Americans (even though we spoke Russian the whole time, we were completely unselfconscious doing so, and we knew each other, and we could laugh at things like Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot like Me playing on the van radio, and especially at our attempts of translation of it), on a trip entirely planned for me by someone else, in a fairly touristy town. It seems like I should be off being independent and immersing myself in Russian culture and doing things with Russians. On the other hand, I was sort of relieved to realize that my basic dislike of life in Irkutsk is more due to disliking cities than disliking Russia. And the variety of fun I had yesterday was not one I would have had in America. I can, conceivably, spend three days a week not in Irkutsk, as we don’t have class Mondays.