 A Trip to Siberia By Anatoly SOROKA |
Just recently, my friends and I were trying to come to agreement on where to go traveling. It was definitely Russia but we wanted to choose a place uncommon and not hackneyed. Everyone was sick and tired of the traditional routes like The Golden Ring of Russia (Novgorod, Suzdal, Rostov, etc.). Then we decided it must be somewhere "wet" or "dry" at the same time. Finally, we decided on Lake Baikal in Siberia , which fit the first criterion, and then the Bashkir Republic, which is close to Siberia and would be easy to get. Moreover, Bashkiria satisfied our desire for "something dry". We started with Baikal.
Lake Baikal, sometimes-called "the pearl" or "visiting card" of Siberia, is one of nature's most breathtaking beauty spots and a mere 68 kilometres from the city of Irkutsk.
Irkutsk itself was founded by Cossack adventurers over three hundred years ago on the slopes of the valley where the River Irkut flows into the River Angara and is well worth a visit. Today it is the major administrative, cultural and industrial centre in East Siberia. With its fortunate combination of energy resources (the Irkutsk coal basin), hydroelectric power (the River Angara) and various types of mineral deposits, it is no wonder that the city has flourished.
Modern Irkutsk retains many fine buildings from its fascinating past, such as the splendid Church of Our Saviour, the Catholic church, and the Irkutsk Museum of Local Lore, built in the 19th century. Delightful traditional wooden houses with lace-like carving alternate with high-rise residential and office blocks. In fact, the streets in Irkutsk are like pages from the chronicle of its three centuries of exciting history. But perhaps the main attraction is the Angara, one of Siberia's mightiest rivers. Its banks are a favourite place for the townspeople to stroll and relax in their leisure hours. In addition, visitors to Irkutsk are invariably brought here to admire the monument to the builders of the Great Siberian Railway, designed at the beginning of the 20th century. The monument is a kind of symbol of this interesting and unusual city.
Only after a visit here, to this part of Siberia which has produced some remarkable people with great destinies, will you be able to understand fully the following words by the Russian contemporary writer Valentin Rasputin: "Made wise by history and life, Irkutsk stands, knowingly serene, famed for both its former and present glory, modest, traditionally hospitable and cultured... it stands, endowed with the long and exacting memory of its stone and wood gazing fondly and with some surprise at the activities of its present-day citizens, who number 600.000, parentally protecting them from heat and cold, and giving them life, refuge, work, a home-kind and eternity".
So, having seen the city, we eventually found ourselves on the way to our main objective - Lake Baikal. An extremely scenic road runs there alongside the Angara. We made a brief stop on the way to visit the open-air ethnographic museum of wooden architecture. We found it to be alike the museum of architecture in Pyrohiv by Kyiv, smaller but very fascinating. It is like walking into a Russian fairy tale. There are fine old timber houses, which were brought here from areas later flooded to form the Bratsk and Ust-Ilimsk reservoirs and which now form a typical Siberian village street as it looked in the old days. And over there stands the timber gateway tower of the Ilimsk stockade built in the 17th century. But eventually we managed to drag ourselves away and continue our journey to the world-famous lake.
Baikal comes into sight all of a sudden and absolutely takes one's breath away. The few snaps here will give you some idea of how vast and beautiful the lake and the surrounding countryside are.
In the settlement of Listvyanka there are a number of excellent hotels tucked away on the forested hilly slopes. We stayed at Hotel Baikal, the most modern one. It has extremely comfortable rooms, a first-class restaurant and a sauna, which smells of fresh resin. And the prices are very reasonable at $70 for a single and $90 for a double room.
There are all sorts of interesting leisure activities here. A ten-minute walk takes you down to Lake Baikal or into the forest for berry picking. There are fishing and hunting trips down the Angara and, of course, tours of the lake itself by steamboat or motor launch. The inquisitive traveller can sate his thirst for knowledge by visiting the Baikal Ecological Museum, and the romantic by climbing up to touch the magic shaman-rock and be filled with the gift of prophesy. But perhaps the greatest experience of all is to watch the sunset as the ancient lake slowly sinks into slumber.
But everything comes to an end, and so has our journey. We are now returning on the plane to Moscow from Irkutsk airport to tell you about what we have seen, dear Readers. We're sad that this wonderful new experience is over for us, but happy for those of you who can look forward to it for the first time. We will never forget the time spent on Baikal, no matter how short it was.
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More in the section:
The Cradle of The A-bomb
Investigating Terra Incognita: Bashkiria
Kyiv Beaches and the "Ukrainian Mentality"
Read also previous issue' articles:
THE EAR: Time to Stop Traffic Terror
The USSR: What was it?
Socialist Realism From One Collector's Viewpoint
Weak Laws Make Ukraine Europe's Dumping Ground
Social Entrepreneurship Expands in Ukraine
Lenin and Ukraine
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