 |
| The Angara River flows out of Lake Baikal and through Irkutsk. |
Trans-Siberian Railroad and Baikal –
Yesterday
we experienced a bucket-list two-fer.
Haven’t you always wanted to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad? And see Lake Baikal? Sure you have. We set it up so the group could do both. Ulan Ude and Irkutsk are only 150 miles or so
apart, but the southern part of Lake Baikal is a lumpy obstacle, and it took
the train about 7 hours to make it from one city to the other.
 |
| Lake Baikal as seen from the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Yes, it is electric but those locomotives are incredibly powerful, pulling the train up some incredibly-steep grades. Kind of looks like Monterey Bay, yes? Someone in the group said she was expecting to see a whale jump... |
The
nice thing about this stretch of the Trans-Siberian is that is affords
interesting view and landscape its entire 150 mile length. No endless birch trees or taiga. This is the best stretch of the entire
Trans-Siberian RR in my humble opinion.
And it includes our first look at Lake Baikal.
OK,
I’ll be honest. My first viewing of Lake
Baikal in 1986 and this one in 2014 were both a bit of a let-down. If you didn’t know better, for those of us
living on Monterey Bay, it looks like, well, Monterey Bay – there is even a “Monterey
Peninsula” thrown into the view on the far shore. Some Russians refer to Baikal as a sea
because it really looks like one. There’s
little for the eye or mind to provide a rest – a huge expanse of water – all of
it fresh. By contrast, Lake Hovsgol in
Mongolia where we spent some idyllic days last week, is much more human
scaled. You can hike up a hill behind it
and see most of it. Baikal is huge.
 |
| Our car attendant Tatyana in her souvenir selling persona. She was all business and tough when acting as a conductor, but laughing and giggling when she came around with her souvenir array. Here she holds a coffee mug with Lake Baikal on it. If someone in the group tries to tell you that they went to a lot of trouble to buy that mug, well.... |
All’s
well here and despite some pretty rigorous travel and suitcase schlepping, the
group is fine.
