Tuesday 24 July 2007

Ulan Ude (1), Buddhists, Old Believers and an Enormous Head of Lenin: Trans-Siberian Railway Part 6


Ulan Ude

Russia
It’s an underwhelming city, Ulan Ude: three hundred thousand people huddled on a grassy slope where the River Uda joins the much larger Selanga on its way to Lake Baikal. If Irkutsk retains the feel of a frontier town, then Ulan Ude (pronounced Oohlan-oohday) is the town beyond the frontier, the step beyond the certainties of civilization.

The central Soviet Square sports the city’s only item of note – a giant head of Lenin (see later). From there a wide pedestrian street called, inevitably, Lenin Street descends some 800 metres to the half-restored Cathedral. Lenin Street has fountains and modern sculptures and is lined with some of the town’s less dowdy shops; elsewhere there is little but rattling trams, soviet-style apartment blocks and soviet-style industrial dereliction. So soviet is the town, in fact, that in cold war days Ulan Ude was closed to foreigners - more, one feels, in a spirit of Stalinist bloody-mindedness than because it had anything to excite a western spy.

Lenin Street, Ulan Ude

Svieta's Apartment

Andre met us at the station and drove us the short distance to a dingy courtyard behind a forbidding apartment block. In the semi-darkness of the stair-well we lugged our cases up to the third floor and Andre knocked gently on a heavily armoured metal door. Had we been met by a nervous, shifty-eyed dissident and passwords been hissed through clenched jaws I would not have been surprised. In reality, we were welcomed by a smiling, diminutive old lady who introduced herself as Svieta and ushered us into her equally diminutive apartment.

Andre left as we chose one of the two basic but clean guest rooms. The third room, which contained a television as well as a bed, was Svieta’s. It seemed she either lay down or stood up, sitting in chairs was not part of her repertoire. There was a tiny kitchen and an even smaller bathroom with an ancient shower. We made good use of this pleasingly efficient antique while Svieta bustled about in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
Rattling soviet tram - the view from Svieta's apartment, Ulan Ude

Ivolgonsk Datsan

Clean and relaxed we sipped black tea, nibbled equally black bread and enjoyed a mound of scrambled egg lurking beneath the inevitable carpet of dill. As we finished, a tap on the door signalled the return of Andre, who was to drive us to the Ivolginsk Datsan some thirty kilometres from town.

“Have you heard of the Old Believers?” Andre asked as he piloted his Lada out of the courtyard, which seemed a little less dingy and forbidding now the sun was fully up. I had been reading about them and found them a strange, even lunatic bunch, which, fortunately, was not what I said as Andre’s next remark was: “My mother was an Old Believer.”

I could think of no appropriate reply, but Andre did not seem to want one, and anyway we were on our way to a Buddhist temple.

Once beyond the urban sprawl, we were in rolling open grassland with a big sky and low hills on a distant horizon; steppes which stretch all the way from Lake Baikal to the fringe of the Gobi desert.

The highway was narrow, but well surfaced and more than adequate for the small volume of traffic. At one junction a sign pointed 450 km back to Irkutsk, a journey which had taken us twelve hours. The Trans-Siberian Railway is real enough, but the Trans-Siberian Express exists only in fiction.

A distinctive low hill became a prominent landmark. From a distance it resembled a breaking wave, but closer to we could see it was more of a cone with a shattered apex. The hill stood above the small wooden town of Ivolginsk. In a circle below its peak stones spelled out Om Mane Padme Om in Cyrillic.


Om Mane Padme Om, Ivolginsk

It was strange visiting a Buddhist temple in Russia, particularly in the company of Andre, a local man of obvious European descent. Ulan Ude is the capital of the Buryat Republic, a constituent republic of the Russian Federation, and the Buryats, like their Mongolian cousins, are traditionally Buddhist. Very possibly, the Mongols are not so much cousins as exactly the same people. Buryatia has been Russian since the seventeenth century and whilst Inner and Outer Mongolia suffered under imperial Chinese rule, the Buryats traded with the incoming Russians and enjoyed comparative freedom and prosperity.

The Buryat Republic

In the early twentieth century, Sukhbaator’s communist-inspired rebellion freed Outer Mongolia from the Chinese, although Inner Mongolia remained, and still is, a province of China. The Russians liked having a buffer state between them and the imperial giant to the east, particularly after they had murdered Sukhbaator and installed their own man to lead the new Mongolian Republic. Realising that Russia’s Mongol population might be glancing enviously at an independent Mongolia run, ostensibly, by Mongolians, Stalin set out to create a distinctive Buryat identity as dissimilar as possible from Mongolian culture. The policy has been partly successful. Buryats still have a love of archery and an insatiable appetite for mutton, just like Mongolians, but while many Mongolians remain nomadic herdsmen, Buryats are settled, living in Ulan Ude or one of the many typically Russian villages of wooden houses and grassy streets. The policy has been aided by the influx of Russians, which has continued unabated since the seventeenth century so that today Buryats are out-numbered two to one in their own country.

Before the revolution, there were hundreds of Datsans in Buryatia and thousands of monks, but by the 1930’s the Datsans had all been closed and the monks dispatched to the Gulags. In the 1940s Stalin decided it was time for more religious tolerance and Ivolginsk was among the results.

The Datsan, which opened in 1947 on a site carefully chosen by astrologers, is a large, flat rectangular compound surrounded by a low wall. We paid our photography fee and entered. A couple of lack-lustre stalls selling trinkets, fridge magnets and religious gewgaws guarded the entrance, but little effort was made to sell us anything. The officially post-communist Russians have taken to petty capitalism with far less flair than the still officially communist Chinese.


Ivolginsk Datsan

Inside the compound, the structures were largely wooden; the style of the temples and stupas reminiscent of Tibet, whilst other buildings are clearly Russian.


Monk and stupas, Ivolginsk Datsan

We ambled in the approved clockwise direction, wandering in and out of temples inspecting statues of the Buddha, thangkas and libraries of tantric texts. Compared with other Buddhist temples there is little special about Ivolginsk and the most sacred and perhaps the strangest sight is not for general viewing. In 1927, Dasha-Dorjo Itigelov, the 12th Khambo Lama (the head of Russian Buddhism) died whilst at prayer. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried in the lotus position and dug up at regular intervals, in the belief that the physical bodies of those who have attained Nirvana do not decay. In 1955, 1973 and again 2002 he was found to be remarkably well – for a man of his age and condition. After the most recent exhumation, the current Khambo Lama decreed that Dasha-Dorjo should henceforth sit in a glass case in an upstairs room. Devotees may pay their respects on one of the seven sacred days in the year. He was not open for business the day we visited.


At Ivolginsk Datsan

Temples are a reflection of those who use them. In materialistic Hong Kong, where spirituality lies well hidden, temple visits are a way of assuring good luck. An act of devotion is followed by a visit to the fortune-tellers who pronounce on the likely success of their latest venture. In Beijing, years of state atheism have made temple-goers unsure of what they are supposed to do, and there is much giggling and confusion. By contrast, pilgrims in Lhasa form a sweeping clockwise tide encircling palaces and temples, twirling their prayer wheels. Inside, among the jostling throngs, the atmosphere is of intense spirituality, the pilgrim’s belief as powerful as the odour of wood smoke and yak-butter they carry with them.

At Ivolginsk, however, atmosphere seemed absent. The monastery is of the same Yelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect as the Tibetans; the Dalai Lama himself has made several visits, but still I felt we were seeing not so much a living temple as a museum. Buryatia is, allegedly, undergoing a Buddhist revival but at Ivolginsk there were few visitors, no tourists except us, and the monks kept a low profile. In Lhasa the prayer wheels turn incessantly, the bearings are always oiled and the handles polished by the devoted grasp of generations of pilgrims. Here we could have been the first to turn the creaky wheels that day, or maybe even that week.


Turning a prayer wheel, Ivolginsk Datsan

Seeds from a sacred Bo Tree – the tree under which the Buddha sat and meditated – were brought from Delhi in 1956 and the result is carefully enclosed in a glasshouse. On a summer’s day it might well have felt comfortable, but the Siberian winter is not the winter of northern India so it needs the protection. It looked well enough, for a plant so far from its natural habitat. Buddhism, on the other hand, has been in Buryatia for millennia and was once well acclimatised; now it too seems in need of the glasshouse treatment.

As we left Ivolginsk Lynne remarked how peaceful and spiritual it had been, so my take on it is clearly not the only one. We drove westwards for a while, then, as the road swung left to by-pass a village of wooden houses Andre swung right and took us down the main street.

Old Believers

“This is an Old Believer’s village,” he informed us, although it looked like every other village we had seen on the five and a half thousand kilometre journey from Moscow. Confidently navigating the maze of streets he parked beside the churchyard.


Old Believer's Church, near Ivolginsk
The Old Believers split from the Russian Orthodox in 1667 over reforms instituted by the Patriarch Nikon. The Patriarch had set up a commission to examine the drift of Russian Orthodoxy away from its Greek template, and so claimed the weight of scholarship behind his reforms as well as the support of Tsar Alexis I. The real driving force was Alexis’ ambition to become the liberator of all Orthodox lands then under Ottoman control. Sweetening the near-eastern patriarchs did no harm to this ambition, nor to Nikon’s chances of becoming the new Patriarch of Constantinople.

Among the reforms were an alteration in the spelling of Jesus from Ісусъ to Іисусъ (effectively Isus to Iisus), a change in the direction of processions from sunwise to counter-sunwise and the use of three straightened fingers instead of two when making the sign of the cross. These were not the most trivial of the modifications.

It may seem incredible that the Slavonic spelling of a name already far removed from its Hebrew original, or the precise way of holding a hand when making the sign of the cross should be deemed to affect one’s chance of eternal life. If God was that petty there would be little hope for Catholics, who cross themselves backwards (at least to Orthodox thinking), or Protestants who do not cross themselves at all – not to mention the Buddhists of Ivolginsk. However, such issues mattered to many thousands of simple believers who had no interest in or knowledge of Alexis’ Byzantine machinations. They mattered enough for thousands to die for them, and, predictably, many Old Believers eventually found their way to Siberia where their faith was strong enough to endure centuries of persecution and survive through the communist era.

The church itself was a small, elegant, whitewashed building. To a foreigner the Russian crosses on the tiny domes spoke more of the continuity of Russian symbolism than of schism. Andre found the pastor’s wife, the pastor himself was away on business, and she unlocked the church for us.

To my inexpert eye, the interior was like any small Russian Orthodox church. The iconostasis separating the nave from the sanctuary was relatively new but incorporated a number of much older icons. In Stalin’s time, the pastor’s wife explained, many icons and churches were smashed or burnt. She remembered the Young Communists arriving, intent on destruction but the most important icons had already removed and hidden. In these, more stable times, they have been returned to grace the new iconostasis. She also showed us two bibles, lovely illuminated works in Church Slavonic that had similarly survived. 

Andre and the pastor’s wife chatted as we looked round, they were obviously well acquainted. After we had seen enough of the church, she took as across the road to a building resembling a large church hall.

For years her husband had been collecting obsolete rural artefacts, and had assembled them into a private museum. What was surprising was how similar many of the old farm and household implements were to those in museums at home – though no British museum would have had such an extensive collection of samovars.

The pastor's private museum

Sheep for Lunch

Back on the main road, we stopped at a roadside café, a drab but not quite dilapidated building with a concrete floor, metal chairs and functional Formica topped tables. It might have been a transport café, but for the absence of frying. Indeed, there was something of an absence of menu – at least in the sense of choice - as the entire clientele, largely Russian but a good mix of age and gender, were all tucking into the same Buryat sheep fest. We joined them, and after our potato and lamb soup we found ourselves sitting behind large steaming bowls of lamb and potato. We had come a long way, I thought, to eat something that was, in everything but name, Irish stew.

As we ate, Andre told us of his scheme to build the Baikal trail, a venture bringing the youth of Russia and the USA together to work on projects to serve the community, and of the visit of the Dalai Lama in 1991. “I am not a Buddhist,” he said, “and I only came within fifty metres of him, but I could feel the energy radiating from him.” 

An Enormous Head of Lenin

Back in the city we explored a little and took some photographs of the enormous head of Lenin. On the Mongolian border we met three Spanish students who had been beaten up for not showing the head sufficient respect. That, though, happened late at night; in the afternoon sunshine there was nothing more threatening than Lenin's half smile.


Lenin's enormous head, Soviet Square, Ulan Ude

Svieta provided an evening meal of stuffed cabbage leaves with cheese, aubergine slices and a dill laced salad, followed by ice cream and jam. Not wishing to cause offence, we consumed it all, despite being still full of lunchtime sheep.

Beer in Lenin Street


The beer's okay, but I wouldn't trust the pizza
Lenin Street, Ulan Ude

We joined the rest of Ulan Ude in a stroll up and down Lenin Street in the evening sunshine, stopping for a beer at a pavement café. It was fortunate that we were not interested in eating, as the only food available consisted of unidentifiable triangles of greasy mush served on paper plates. As we left I saw that I had been sitting in front of a large picture of a gondolier and the Rialto Bridge. Only then did I realise the greasy mush was pizza. In the course of our travels we have seen some sad things served up in the name of pizza, but never anything quite as dire as that.

Monday 23 July 2007

Irkutsk: Trans-Siberian Railway Part 5

Russia
Irkutsk

Irkutsk: First Impressions

At first glance Irkutsk seems a down-at-heel sort of city.

The minibus dropped us outside the Hotel Angara, where we would deposit our luggage for the day. Inside the upmarket hotel, which was considerably less down-at-heel, we spotted a post office and decided to send the cards we had bought at Yekaterinburg. The cards were enormous, but in no way big enough for the huge stamps, four of which were required for each. For some reason this irritated the woman behind the desk, and she was further incensed to find that we intended to purchase her whole stock – leaving two postcards still unstamped. We were treated to a Russian speciality: public service with a tantrum.

Irkutsk

A young man of vaguely Middle Eastern appearance was waiting behind us. ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘From England’ we replied. He pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Isn’t it a bit rough there, now?’ Slightly perplexed by this response, we assured him there was no better place on earth, except possibly Irkutsk and wherever he came from, and set out to explore the city.

At second glance Irkutsk seems a down-at-heel sort of city.

Irkutsk is in southern Siberia at the southern tip of Lake Baikal

Kirov Square and the Cathedral of the Epiphany

The Hotel is beside Kirov Square, which once sported two cathedrals and two other major churches. This was considered a superabundance for a city of only half a million people, so when the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan was destroyed in the civil war that followed the revolution, the Central Government Headquarters was built on the site. It is a truly ugly building. Opposite, the World War II memorial is in a sad state of neglect. The substantial Church of Our Saviour is now a museum, whilst the Polish Catholic Church, built in 1882 and Siberia’s only neo-Gothic church has become neglected as the Polish population has drifted away.

Only the Cathedral of the Epiphany remains in good condition having been re-consecrated after serving as a museum in the Soviet era. An unusually low building for a cathedral with a detached bell tower, its exterior had been freshly painted in the Russian ‘cake-decoration style’. The interior is covered with painting of saints, heaven and hell, angels, archangels and Virgins with and without Child. We watched two artists on scaffolding adding colour and calligraphy to new frescos.

The Cathedral of the Epiphany, Irkutsk

A small group of beggars had gathered by the door to receive our largesse. None of them were young, and it is easy to see why some people still think fondly of the Soviet era, when the young had jobs they were paid for, and the old could live on their pensions. They may not have had riches or political freedom, but they did not have poverty either.

We walked towards the commercial centre, stopping at a Post Office to dispatch the last of our cards. Here we encountered the other version of Russian public service, the one where you become invisible as you approach the counter. Fond thoughts of Soviet egalitarianism evaporated quickly.

Lenin Street and Karl Marx Street

After eventual success, we made our way down Lenin Street to the main drag, predictably called Karl Marx Street.

On our way we passed a number of the wooden building that are - or should be – Irkutsk’s pride and joy. With their carved ‘Siberian Lace’ decoration, their existence within an urban setting is almost unique. Sadly, those that are not falling down have been demolished to make way for cheaply constructed, badly designed modern buildings. Irkustsk will not be the first city to realise what treasures it had only after the last of them has gone.

Wooden Houses, Irkutsk

The main street was built in more confident times, when the city was still a boom town. Irkutsk was founded in1652 as a military outpost and by the 19th century was the administrative capital of Siberia. It still feels like a frontier town, a little like some small towns in the American west that once hoped to grow into Los Angeles or Seattle but never did. Just as the Americans pushed west in the nineteenth century to open up their continent, the Russians pushed east to open theirs – though without the cowboy hats and the movies. The city was a place of exile – most notably for aristocrats involved in the failed ‘Decembrist’ coup of 1825 – but most newcomers arrived of their own free will, particularly when gold was found in the area.

Karl Marx Street, Central Irkutsk

Though different in type, the difficulties of reaching Irkutsk in the 19th century were of the same scale as travelling the Oregon Trail. This changed when the railway arrived in 1898. Bradshaw’s ‘Through Routes to the Capitals of the World’ said of Irkutsk in 1903 ‘The streets are not paved or lighted; the sidewalks are merely boards on cross pieces over the open sewers…the police are few, escaped criminals are many….the stranger should not walk after dark; if a carriage cannot be got…the only way is to walk noisily along the planked walks….to walk in the middle of the road is to court attack from the garrotters with which Siberian towns abound’.

At third glance, Irkutsk seems a down-at-heel sort of city, but it has improved dramatically in the last 100 years.

An Italian Restaurant in Karl Marx Street

Café Snezhinka, inside one of the buildings on Karl Marx Street, has a high stucco-ed ceiling and a pleasant old world feel. We both read Cyrillic, but like primary school children, spelling each word out letter by letter and often arriving at nothing we can understand. On this occasion, we quickly deciphered Карбонара (carbonara) followed by Спагети (spaghetti) - it did not require a genius to deduce we were in an Italian restaurant, of sorts. The Siberian versions of carbonara and spaghetti bolognese had a weightiness that would have astounded their Italian originators, but were nonetheless pleasant enough.

The Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya Houses

The Decembrist rising of 1825 was an attempt to replace the autocratic rule of the Tsar with a constitutional monarchy. Five of the leaders were hanged in St Petersburg, the soldiers involved were transported to Siberia in chains, but the aristocratics involved merely found themselves sentenced to exile.

The Trubetskoy House, Irkutsk

We walked the best part of a kilometre down Karl Marx Street to see the house where Prince Trubetskoy and his wife endured their exile. It was covered in scaffolding and closed, so we walked on to the home of Maria Volkonskaya, wife of another Decembrist. It is a large and comfortable house still containing Maria’s furniture, clothes and letters. It is not altogether surprising that some of the Decembrists chose to stay in Irkutsk when their exile finished rather than return to the intrigues of St Petersburg.

The house of Maria Volkonskaya, Irkutsk

Others live less comfortable lives today. Walking back into town we saw people filling buckets with water from hand pumps in the street.

Loose Change

We dropped into a supermarket to buy supplies for our night on the train. Prices, as always, were quoted to the kopeck. This was sensible in the days when there was approximate parity between the rouble and the pound. The rouble crashed along with the Soviet Union and the new rouble - a thousand of the old soviet roubles – is worth 2 pence. In the days of the Italian Lira prices were often given to the precise Lira, but the cashier always rounded off to the nearest hundred when giving change, not so in Russia; you get your exact change down to the last kopeck. The tiny 1 kopeck coin is of such infinitesimally small value it costs more to hand over than it is worth. Unsurprisingly the recipients do not value them greatly and abundant if worthless loose change can be gathered in any Russian street just by bothering to bend down.

Off to Ulan Ude

We returned to the Hotel Angara to meet a man called Alexander who would give us our onwards tickets and drive us to the station. He was waiting not with two tickets but with four. ‘You can have the whole compartment to yourselves’ he said, ‘it will be more comfortable.’

This arrangement seemed simple enough, but was beyond the comprehension of the provadnitsa who looked at our four tickets, then the two of us and shook her head. ‘Where are the other two?’ she probably asked, though we did not understand. ‘Just us two,’ we answered, equally incomprehensibly. As we settled in she searched up and down the carriage for the other two people. As the train pulled out she shrugged her shoulders, gave us four sets of bedding and washed her hands of the affair.

Our next stop, Ulan Ude, was only 400 km away, but the journey took all night. The trip round the southern tip of Lake Baikal is allegedly the most scenic section of the whole journey, but it was dark, so I cannot comment.

Rudolf Nureyev was born on the 17th of March 1938 in a Trans-Siberian sleeping compartment travelling between Irkutsk and Ulan Ude. We had a much less eventful journey than Mrs Nureyeva.





Sunday 22 July 2007

Listvyanka and Lake Baikal: Trans-Siberian Railway Part 4

A Couple of Days Beside the World's Oldest and Deepest Lake

Arriving in Irkutsk


Russia
At first impression, Irkutsk station (for Irkutsk see next post) has a strange, almost nineteenth century feel. There was something about the movement, about the way people were dressed, about the men pushing trolleys that was not quite of the modern age. Then we were met by Lydia, a summer-time tourist guide and term-time lecturer in English at Irkutsk University, who was very much of the twenty first century. She led us to our transport, a twentieth century minibus. Like many local vehicles, it was right hand drive, imported second hand from Japan.

Listvyanka is a little north of Irkutsk on the south west shore of Lake Baikal 

Lake Baikal

We drove through the city and across the Angara River, which flows from the southern end of Lake Baikal and eventually feeds into the Yenesei. Then we travelled through birch forest - as though we had not seen enough already – before finally arriving at the lake shore.

Looking across Lake Baikal

Formed 50 million years ago in a rift between two tectonic plates, Baikal is the world’s oldest lake. 636 km long and up to 80 km wide, it is the fifth largest in area but at over 1600m by far the deepest. It also has the greatest volume of water of any lake - more than the North American Great Lakes combined – containing a staggering 20% of the world’s non-frozen fresh water. It is certainly the hugest slab of flat, clear, cold water that I am ever likely to see.

Listvyanka

Listvyanka is a village of wooden houses lying beside the main road. We bumped through the rutted streets and turned into the yard of a typical foursquare single story house. Galina, who was to be our landlady for the next three days introduced herself and led us to the dining room where a substantial breakfast had been laid out. We had eaten some bread and cheese on the train, but Galina’s pikelets were particularly moreish and we did full justice to her efforts.

Galina's House, Listvyanka

Galina was a widow living alone except for her paying guests and a grandson who was delivered in the morning and taken away in the evening - and spent the intervening time watching cartoons on the television. As is typical in Siberia, the core of the house consisted of four large comfortable rooms built round a central boiler. In summer, the boiler was not in use, but we could imagine how necessary it must be in the long Siberian winter. The house had mains electricity and UPVC double-glazing hiding behind the carved wooden exterior but despite being two hundred metres from the world’s biggest fresh water supply - a supply so pure it is bottled for drinking - it had no running water; a couple of aluminium barrels being delivered daily along with her grandson. A pit toilet stood outside the back door, and each washbasin was equipped with a small tank that she filled every morning. Feeling a little sticky after two and a half nights on a train we were please to learn that Galina also had the Siberian version of a sauna. The remainder of the grounds was given over to a lush kitchen garden featuring a huge patch of dill - no Siberian meal is complete without a liberal sprinkling of dill fronds.

Lystvyanka Church

After breakfast, we visited the little wooden church built on a hill at the back on the village. Dating from the 18th century it is the oldest building in the area – wooden villages are prone to fires so old buildings are a rarity. It was moved lock, stick and icon from its original site to make way for the tarmac road. A christening was in full swing, several families having brought their infants who were being baptised in quick succession. Lydia seemed oblivious as she walked around pointing out various items of interest. Feeling uncomfortable, we dragged her outside and left the priest to water his flock in peace.

Listvyanka Church

Lake Baikal Museum and Freshwater Seals

We walked back to the tarmac road and up to the small Lake Baikal museum. It had a comprehensive explanation of the particular geological conditions that formed the lake and a self-congratulatory rundown on its size compared with every other major world lake. Eighty-five species of plants and animals live here and nowhere else, including the omul, a trout-sized member of the salmon family which finds its way, smoked or fresh, into most local markets. They featured in the aquarium along with several other fish and a small family of Baikal seals, the world’s only exclusively fresh water seal. Small, black-furred balls of lard, they hurtled around their tank like giant jet-propelled tadpoles. If that was the tadpole, I would not want to meet the frog.

Lydia returned to Irkutsk and we strolled back to Galina’s for a lunch of huge fish cakes – a lake fish, apparently but not omul. In the afternoon we needed to sleep off lunch before taking a stroll through the village streets. We admired the carved and painted woodwork which surrounds most doors and windows - a style of decoration known as ‘Siberian Lace’. The houses were well kept, the carving freshly painted, but there were surprisingly few people around. The sun shone, but the nip in the breeze was sufficient to remind us where we were.

House, Listvyanka village

Siberian Sauna

At six o’clock Galina announced that she had fired up the sauna. Unlike the regular version, the Siberian sauna comes with a tank of hot water, a churn of cold and a washing-up bowl to mix them in. There are also gaps in the wooden floor to let the excess water drain away. It was a joy to have a proper wash and to become completely and very satisfyingly clean.

Galina's sauna, Listvyanka

Feeling deeply relaxed we faced up to dinner which was, fortunately, less heavy; potato dumplings, cabbage and sour cream, along with the inevitable cucumbers and tomato, covered with a layer of dill the thickness of a light carpet. In the evening we strolled by the lake.

A Paddle in Lake Baikal

Being such a huge body of water, the temperature varies little throughout the year. It is the last open water to freeze in the winter, and warms up hardly at all in the summer. Most of the year the water is around 4º C. I took off my shoes, rolled up my trousers and bravely waded in – as far as my ankles. Dipping your hand in the lake is supposed to add a year to your life, submerging your feet adds 5, while immersing your whole body adds 25. I settled for five, and at the cost of some pain. Several men were actually swimming. Overweight, middle-aged men (the salt of the earth, in my not entirely unbiased opinion) egged each other on and slurped vodka to build up their courage. They did not look entirely comfortable, but I admired their bravery – and, of course, they will live for ever, if they don’t die in the attempt.

Adding years to my life, Lake Baikal

Although the church and residential buildings are all wooden, more permanent structures line the main road. Listvyanka clearly sees itself as a lakeside resort in the making, but by nine thirty everything was closing down and there was little more to do than wander back to Galina’s for a read and a nightcap. Being in Russia I was attempting to read ‘Crime and Punishment’ but several hundred pages in with several hundred more to go I was finding it hard work.

A 'Softies Trek' by Lake Baikal

Next day, Sacha came to guide us on a day’s walk. This was billed as a ‘softies trek’ but he set off along the lakeside road like it was a route march. At the end of the road we started to climb. Slowly but steadily, we rose through the birch and pine forest and across clearings carpeted with wild flowers to a ridge 800m above sea level and 150m above the lake. Listvyanka is the end of road, but we passed several groups of young men and some families who had carried tents and equipment a mile or more before setting up their weekend campsites.

Following Sacha up the ridge

Sacha told us he too was once a Maths teacher. ‘The Soviet times were the best’ he said. ‘When they ended I worked for three months and never got paid.’ He gave up teaching and became a mountain guide. He does not earn much, he said, but he likes being out in the fresh air. When we came to a clearing full of purple clover Sacha pulled a bag from his rucksack and began collecting the flowers. We helped him, though not entirely sure why he was doing it. ‘It’s for my mother,’ he explained, ‘she soaks the flowers in vodka. A daily glass of clover-flavoured vodka is better medicine than you can get from any doctor.’

Lunch by Lake Baikal

After an hour or so walking along the ridge we descended to the lakeside at a small stony beach. Sacha extracted a saw and an axe from his capacious rucksack and gathered up the wood for a fire. Then he produced a substantial billycan, strode unflinchingly into the lake and collected some water. As the water boiled he delved into his pack again to produce a red checked table cloth, dishes, spoons, cups, some bread, cheese, salami, frankfurters, peppers, cucumbers, biscuits and chocolate. He made tea from some of the boiled lake water and poured instant mashed potato into the rest. We sat in the sunshine by the lake and ate sausage and instant mashed potato made from the water of Lake Baikal – as fine a combination of the exotic and the banal as can be enjoyed anywhere.

Sacha makes a fire on the beach, Lake Baikal

Walking back on a lower level path we crossed the top of several lakeside cliffs. Lynne survived an attempt to throw herself over a precipice, and although Sacha seemed momentarily alarmed by the prospect of one of his clients plummeting to their death, I don’t think she was in quite as much danger as she would like to make out ('Yes I was'Lynne).

Across several lakeside cliffs, Lake Bailkal

It was a long trudge back to the village, but that did nothing to spoil what had been a beautiful day out. Sacha caught his bus back to Irkutsk and we reached Galina’s just after six to find we were no longer her only lodgers. Naomi and James were gap year students planning to take up university places in September. They had been in Australia and were now travelling home overland. They spoke of their adventures with infectious enthusiasm and as they were taking the same journey as us, but in the opposite direction, we exchanged information about what was to come. Given Listvyanka’s preternatural quietness, it was good to have somebody else to talk to, though they made me feel so old – less than a year before I could have been their teacher. It was not their fault, the problem was entirely in my head, but knowing that made it no better.

After a relaxing sauna and a good night’s sleep the right hand drive minibus came to take all four of us back to Irkutsk.