we awoke to the sounds of two germans and a scot who went out, got drunk and missed their 5am alarm to get them up for a 0630 train. they jumped out of bed, a german shouted "I DON'T CARE! I DON'T CARE!" at his friends trying to hush him down, and carting what must've been pretty nasty hangovers out of the door at 0615. maybe they still made it.
listvinyanka is a little shore side settlement on the edge of lake baikal. like a little fishing village on the north sea, but on a lake.
it's a bit more than just a lake though. it's the biggest body of fresh water in the world. it contains a fifth of the planet's fresh water. it's large. my favourite statistic is that if you emptied it and then diverted every river in the world back into it, it would still take over a year to refill.
that'd be hard to do though.
on a map is doesn't look anywhere near as big as the american great lakes, but it's volume is in it's depth. the usa lakes are paper thin compared to baikal's bulk of water.
it's also one of the clearest areas of water in the world. you can see metres and metres down. divers have been known to suffer from vertigo as they look down into the blue depths at fish swimming far below.
we ate whole smoked fish (omul), fresh from the lake. omul is native only to baikal and it is deeeee-licious. it looked at me as i chewed on it's belly, i think i enjoyed the meal a lot more than it did.the out of place aquarium had seals in it. weird ones. they looked like round water monkeys. inquisitive little chaps they were with expressive faces surrounded by a beach-ball of fur.
we climbed a hill/mountain to the top of a defrosted ski resort. they look weird without snow and skiers on them. sort of... crap. lots of unexplained heavy equipment sits halfway up hills covered in dry tarpaulin flapping in the breeze.
climbing to the top was the first time so far i had realised my lack-of-fitness level. to explain, in the weeks leading up to the holiday there have been 2 factors key to my enormous weight gain:
1. i broke myself doing motorbiking and ash has disallowed me any kind of physical exertion at work, trapping me in a static desk job in my office.
2. i was coming to siberia and (stupidly without enough research) assumed it was going to be absolutely blummin' freeeezing, so i purposefully ate more than usual thinking i could i could do with a bit more insulation.
i managed to add 2 stone to my already impressive bulk. i would've been proud of myself (i am actually) but i've been in russia and siberia for a week now and it's yet to dip below pleasantly warm. bugger. so now i'm just a fat guy on holiday.
we took the ski resort chairlift back to lake level, for a giggle. ambling back towards the minibus/taxi thingy we paddled in the lake. local folklore says that if you come into contact with baikal's water the spirits will give you more years on your life. but it's only recently finished thawing from the winter. in winter they sometimes divert the train over it, laying down tracks on the glacier-thick ice. it was pretty much the coldest water can get without actually being solid. so cold it hurt. i could feel the blood in my veins beginning to frost up. actual pain, so it better work.
if you bathe in it you get an extra 25 years. no chance.
the local shamens also hold a rock that rises out of the water in high regard. they say it has sacred powers, we read before we arrived at the lake. we saw it, rising a mighty two feet from the water's surface. hang on, 2 feet?! pathetic, it might as well have been a bored shark. we didn't even take a photo.
if i'm honest, i'm not holding out for that extra year or two. but i've bought a coke bottle of baikal water back, it might come in handy, in my death-bed or something.
russians don't know how to make shops. we just discovered an amazing shopping centre, but from outside it looks like a warehouse. a locked up warehouse at that. they've even tinted the windows so you can't see in from outside. not the overly welcoming "come in and spend your money on stuff you don't really want and really don't need" construction that i'm used to.
i still haven't mastered crossing russian streets.
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