Where Is Ron?
Russia, Summer 2007
Ron in St. Petersburg, July 2007
Lake Baikal
2 August 2007
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
As you will see from his message below, Ron's 3.5 day train ride turned out to be a nice experience, but on his arrival in Irkutsk, the "Never trust your hotel reservations" rule I articulated in my last message held true once again.
A few words about Lake Baikal, quoting the Lonely Planet guide book: "Shaped like a banana, Baikal is 636km from north to south [almost 400 miles] from north to south and up to 1637m deep [5402 ft, more than a mile!], making it the world's deepest lake. Incredibly, in contains nearly one-fifth of the planet's unfrozen fresh water, more than North America's five Great Lakes combined, and despite some environmental worries, it's drinkably pure." The guidebook waxes lyrical in describing the scenery: "Crystal-clear Lake Baikal is a vast body of the bluest water, surrounded by rocky or tree-covered foreshores behind which mountains float like phantoms at indeterminable distances. Baikal's meteorological mood swings are transfixing spectacles, whole weather systems dancing for your delectation over Siberia's 'climactic kitchen'."
Irkutsk, the largest city in the region, and where the railroad goes, is actually 70 km inland from the lake, which is why Ron only plans to spend time there on arrival and before his departure by plane for Moscow on 10 August.
Love to all,
Ellen
Long train trip with nowhere to stay
2 August 2007
Irkutsk, RussiaHello, my dear,
When you described your feeling of wanting to do nothing but sit and read in a quiet place for a few days when you got home, I realized you should have come with me to do so.
While normally I would have complained about a three and a half day long train trip, this time I enjoyed the time immensely. I slept lots, dozed between pages of my book, watched the sunset at a civilized daylight saving time of about 10:30 - 11 PM, drank lots of juice and hot tea, and enjoyed the fact that none of my compartment mates could speak enough English to have a conversation. The noise of the train clicking over the tracks became almost un-noticeable after a while and much of the time I listened to classical or rock-n-roll music (50's) on my Walkman.
So while it wasn't quiet, it was peaceful, and I was not overwhelmed with logistics, planning, moving, pedaling, or talking.
(typing again - lost most of the message and not a happy camper)
Some detail:
At one end of the train wagon (car) there was a 250V electrical plug where I could charge my Walkman while I sat on top of the wooden lid of the trash can and looked out the window or read my book. ( The train I am guessing was designed before plastic bottles and food containers were widely used because the trash can was very small and would fill up quickly.)
At the other end of the car there was a large boiler of hot water for tea or coffee. I had brought our left over tea bags and sugar cubes from St. Petersburg and a new lemon from Moscow and enjoyed many a cup of tea. I grew tired of my little plastic collapsible cup and bought a package of instant noodles in a plastic bowl container and used the bowl for my tea.
At each end of the car there was a toilet which was kept remarkably clean and supplied with toilet paper and also supplied with a 250v outlet for electric razors or hair dryers.
They provided me with a mattress and pillow along with a package of sheets, towel and pillow case. During the day I would roll up the mattress and use it and the pillow to lean on while I read or napped.
The train had a food car where I ate once, but in general I had brought along plenty of food and I enjoyed my sandwiches of salami, freshly sliced tomatoes and cheese, along with fruit juice and other snacks. At a couple of stops per day, ladies lined the platform to sell fresh and packaged food and drinks.
While I didn't meet people that could speak enough English to have much of a conversation, I did meet some people who couldn't speak English but had enough interest in me to try to carry on a conversation -- and I was amazed at the amount of conversation we managed to exchange.
In the last few minutes on the train before I got off at Irkutsk, I met an English guy, Tom, working on his PhD, who had come to study the environmental effects on Lake Baikal. An interesting guy whom I hope to get to know better on this trip. We shared a taxi to where he was staying (with a family) and the Baikaler Hostel, where I was staying. I had made a reservation and exchanged a couple of email with Jack, the owner, including directions on how to get to the hostel and including the train number and arrival date and time. We arrived at the hostel at about 3 am and no one would answer the bell. I had a telephone number so Tom called it on his phone and got a recording with another number which he called and Jack answered saying there was no bed left and he wasn't expecting me until tomorrow at noon and he wasn't at the hostel. After a lengthy conversation, with me explaining that I would appreciate it if he would come let me in so I could at least sit someplace inside and be out of the rain while I waited for morning, he finally agreed to come let me in. I sat at the kitchen table and drank tea until the rain had slowed to a light drizzle and it was early (or late) enough to go find another place.
Before I left, several people came to the hostel and rang the buzzer and of course no one answered. When I left I realized I would have no way to get back in since I didn't know any of the door codes.
I found another hotel, the Arena Hotel, behind the circus, for 850 roubles, where two private rooms shared a toilet and a lobby room with a table and sink. The hostel was perhaps a bit nicer but had 4 people or more to a room for 500 roubles.
Yesterday at the Internet Cafe I found myself sitting next to Tom again but I was having trouble sending messages so I came back today.
And now I am going to follow Lenny's advice [Lenny is a Russian friend Ron met last winter in Central America] and go and see if I can find a boat to the northern tip of Lake Baikal.
Love and miss you,
Ron
To see photos of Irkutsk, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of the the boat trip on Lake Baikal and of Severobaikalsk, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of the beach and dachas at Severobaikalsk, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Afton, Virginia, USA
To see photos of the village of Baikalskoe, click on the thumbnail at the left.
9 August 2007Dear Family and Friends,
Below is Ron's report about his trip to the northern end of Lake Baikal. I'll bet it is a lot cooler there than it is here, where we are in the midst of the same hot and humid weather (high temperatures around 38C/98 or 99F) in our area) that has blanketed much of the eastern half of the US, and seems to be stuck here for at least several more days. Our house (which is not air-conditioned) stays reasonably cool, since we are surrounded by trees, and I close all the doors and windows in the morning and then open things up and turn on the attic fan at the end of the day.
I've been enjoying making jams and chutneys with garden produce and local fruit. This morning Sharon (our daughter) and I made peach jam, much to the delighted anticipation of Leo (7.5) and Simon (5.5), both of whom are attending art camp for the five mornings of this week. This afternoon I'm doing tomato chutney.
Love to all,
Ellen
Lake Baikal and the village of Baikalskoe
Irkutsk, Russia
9 August 2007Hello, my dear -
Phase four of this trip will end tomorrow morning with my flight back to Moscow at 9:15 in the morning.
An Australian man about my age told me yesterday, while returning to Irkutsk on the hydrofoil boat, that the Irkutsk state is the richest state in Russia because of all the gas and minerals in the mountains around Lake Baikal.
I have seen a lot of Irkutsk and traveled by boat the length of Lake Baikal (636km from one end to the other) and found the lake beautiful, but the experience has not equaled the images in my memory of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan, the Li River in China (between Yangshuo and Quilin) or Halong Bay in the area of Cat Ba Island in North Vietnam.
In Russia the distances are large, and for a traveler that means a lot of time on boats and trains (3.5 days by train and 12 hours each way by boat) which gives me a chance to rest and read.
Irkutsk, a larger city than then I expected, has lots of water and I have enjoyed exploring the various edges to the city; however, it is not a place which I will long to return.
Meeting people has also been a bit more difficult than usual, but there are some backpackers passing through, many of them on their way to China using the train between various sites along the way. Many of the local people I have met are the results of proximity on boats or buses, often because I am having difficulty understanding something and someone is found who can speak English. As example, the day the inspector got on the tram and checked tickets. When I rode my first tram I bought three tickets from the driver and punched one in the little punch box that punches holes and time stamps the ticket. This day I was using my third ticket and the inspector was clearly telling me that something was wrong and I had to buy a ticket. An English teacher joined the discussion to explain to me that the tickets for the trams and the Charlie Buses were different, but it took a while longer for me to understand that while both get their power from overhead lines, the trams roll on tracks and the Charlie Buses use the road surface.
Once the ticket problem was sorted out we continued to talk and got off together near my hotel where she and a friend, who got off with her, were going to the University to pick up their diplomas. They invited me to join them and showed me of the area along the river bank where most wedding couples go for picture taking. They later took me with them to pick up their diplomas at the University and explained to me that they were both sad that they could not continue their education next year.
The education system changes next year to be more like ours, 4 years of college and then 2 years for a masters degree. The two of them have just completed the 5 year higher education program, which is equivalent to the masters, and were told since they already have a degree they would have to pay $2500 for the additional year while other students can attend free, and it is impossible for them to earn that kind of money. All in all it was an informative and enjoyable afternoon. One of the ladies was dark haired and a tiny bit more Asian looking, and while she considered herself Siberian, all of her family background was either Chinese or Russian. While both were teaching for a living, one of them also works as a sales person for Mary Kay Products, organizes marriage parties, and sells advertising -- as well as teaching English classes.
Another night I was invited by two 17 year old girls to go to a club for which they had three free tickets. It turned out that the free tickets were only for women and I had to pay an entrance fee to what turned out to be a very fancy disco. The way Russian women dress made the experience like a fashion show. The young girls felt safer with me and didn't trust the local guys; they trusted me because I was older and a foreigner.
A lot of the tourists and travelers are coming from the other direction. The Australian, about my age, I met on the boat yesterday was coming from Korea and heading south towards the border of China. I think there are also lots of tourists from Japan and China.
Lenny, the Russian-American guy I met on the boat down Lake Nicaragua last winter, emailed me saying I should go to Severobaikalsk, on the northern end of the lake, and the 12 hour fast hydrofoil was worth the time and effort. I agree.
When I arrived in Severobaikalsk and asked for a room in the hotel near the railway station I was told they were full. There was no English but we managed to communicate enough so that she drew a picture of a house and gave a sign for sleeping and some time later someone arrived to take me to a private home, which worked out just fine.
The owner of the house was the administrator for the hotel and she showed me a book where other travelers had written reports, and it is located on the map as the same place that Baikal Resort is on the map, but while I saw a bus marked Baikal Resort a couple of times, I never saw it at the house.
Her flower and vegetable beds made me envious. They were just beautiful, with no weeds, lush foliage, and almost everything in bloom. What a show and a challenge. As I wandered around town I discovered that her gardens were the most beautiful.
I spend a very enjoyable day wandering around Severobaikalsk. First I found a market, then I checked out the three Internet places I could find, including the public library and the post office, but all told me that the Internet was down for the day. Then I wandered down a path my landlady had told me about to find the beach. I was quite surprised to find a lot of people sunbathing, swimming and fishing. A man and woman tried communicating with me and invited me to join them. He was 70, a retired electrical engineer and she was, I am guessing, in her late 40s, the daughter of the older man, and a physician specializing in bacteria. They were very friendly and shared their lunch of fish and tomatoes with me.
Later in the afternoon while I was exploring the end of the beach where the dachas are (little Russian weekend homes), accessed by a different road from my guest house, I was exploring the edge of the water on the last property on the road and a guy, maybe younger than I, spoke to me in a manner not friendly or unfriendly. I think, he was saying I was on his property, or be careful at the edge, or who knows what he was saying, but we started up a conversation that led to me giving him a new penny for good luck and he ended up giving me a bag of three cleaned and iced fish. Not a bad conversation with a person who spoke no English. But what was I to do with the fish?
When I returned to my house I showed the fish to my landlady who smelled them and determined they were good and fresh. At first she brought a bowl of salt and indicated that she could salt them, but after checking them out better, I think she decided they had already been salted. Frankly I don't understand how the fish is prepared and I could not understand what she kept trying to tell me. Either the fish would be ready to eat on the day I left through their own salting process or she would cook them, but on the day I left she woke me up early to go with her son to Nizhneangarsk, 30km north, to catch the boat where it starts the trip south back to Irkutsk. I couldn't understand most of the details of the conversation, but I got ready to go quickly and a car took us north at what I thought was a high rate of speed. We arrived just a couple of minutes before they started loading the boat. In the process of this rush I forgot all about the fish.
The boat arrived in Severobaikalsk at the time I had expected to catch it, and the other travelers, including the German lady I spent the previous day with in Baikalskoe, got on the boat. I think that there are no reserved tickets for sale on the northern end and all the people may have not been able to get seats, and that is the reason my host rushed me off with her son at such an early hour.
It was good to see Marie Isabel again and meet her traveling companion, who felt sick the day before and didn't go with her to Baikalskoe, 45 km south, described in the Lonely Planet as a "timeless little fishing village." It was a beautiful site and we enjoyed walking around in the region, the old houses, the beach area, up the cliffs for a wonderful view, down the path in the woods to a camp site with a number of different groups camping, a walk back to town through the cow pastures and open fields back to the store where we bought food for a picnic on the old dock where I sat and finished John Irving's latest novel, Until I Find You. I would have enjoyed a few more days in the area, but the perceived need to have a plane ticket back to Moscow (for my next bicycle adventure), which gave me a date for the return boat ticket, made me understand how different travel is when you can just go or stay as you like without regard to schedules and reservations. That's the way most of the long term backpackers travel, and, at times, I experience that on some of my longer trips.
Tomorrow I will return to Moscow by plane and put my bike together for the next challenging part of this trip. I hope to arrive in Moscow on Friday, get organized on Sat, and leave on Sunday, which is a good day to bicycle through Moscow to the train station since the traffic will be light.
I am going to inquire about usb and return for my camera to try to send a couple of pictures...but it might not work or I may run out of time.
Love and miss you,
Ron
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Last updated: 15 August 2007
