Traveling to Russia and especially alone already posed a number of hassles. That is from the side of the travel agent in Russia. My problem was that I knew I wanted to see Lake Baikal, but had no inkling of what it would entail. For one, the planning of such an unknown factor. Without the patience, the knowledge and boundless kindness of the travel agents here in Pretoria and in Irkutsk, this exploration would not have materialised.

During the months of preparing the itinerary all manner of information via the Internet regarding the lake, the environment, the history and the worldwide effort to resuscitate the pristine condition of this world-wonder came my way. Among this plethora of information was the fact that the summer temperature at lake Baikal is between 10 and 12 degrees Celsius.

My visa was issued in Russia, after every single booking was made and paid for in advance. If the daytime temperature is 10 or 12 degrees it stands to reason that the night temperature would be much less. So a suitcase with winter clothes was packed. I even borrowed a fur coat and hat to be on the safe side. I took two summer dresses for the few days that I would be spending in Moscow on my way back, where I knew it can be well into the 30's during summer.

So off I fly - to Moscow. The date on my Visa registered the 12^th and it was the afternoon of the 11^th that I arrived there. None of us had noticed this error except the body at the immigration desk at the airport. That was my first Nyet: No entry. I volunteered to sit it out until the next morning. Another Nyet. Today you pay extra and visa will be altered to register 11^th. So I pay and eventually the matter was settled and I managed to get to the Aeroflot plane on time, landing in the city of Irkutsk some 5000 kilometres from Moscow, situated on the banks of the Angara River and more or less 60 kilometres inland from Lake Baikal.

I was met by young Taos and taken to a well appointed hotel in the centre of the city of Irkutsk, a large city. The hotels at the various places I was to visit were listed on my itinerary. What with endless changes and re-thinks I had by that time forgotten that at some stage in the past I had expressed my preference for bed and breakfast accommodation.

Thank goodness. Early the next morning Taos was there with the previous itinerary stating that I preferred homestay as they describe Bed and Breakfast. In two ticks I was ready to move to the home of Mikael, Galena and their young daughter Elena at number 17 Lininskya, flat no. 19 on the third floor of their building. Just opposite the park where Lenin with his outstretched arm still stands.

I spent the first few days in Irkutsk scouting around. Then Taos came to fetch me. The harbour was crowded with day-trippers. I boarded the hovercraft, which took me to Koty. There Natasha shepherded me to Anna – whom I promptly dubbed Tante Anna. An energetic lady of 88 years living on her own more or less on the banks of Lake Baikal. Tante Anna was a librarian in her day. She knew where Pretoria and Johannesburg was and wanted to know all about Kimberley and all about the diamond diggings in South Africa since alluvial diamonds are also found in the Lena River. The Lena is one of only two rivers that take the water out of Lake Baikal. Anna was most interested when I told her about Hans Merensky.

Her house was filled with books and sets of encyclopedia and she was particularly proud of the photograph of herself and the group of delegates – librarians – who converged on Moscow attending a conference many years ago. Koty is a settlement with timber dacha’s – holiday homes with only a limited number of permanent residents. There I traipsed around in the Taiga – the dense forests so typical of the whole of the Siberian country. I saw more butterflies of all shapes and sizes than I have ever seen in my entire life. People flock there to pick berries and mushrooms.

My next homestay was in the town of Lystvyanka, near the mouth of the Angara river. Here Vladimir met me and took me to Lydia’s home four kilometres from the harbour. During the University holidays Vladimir, a Meteorologist works at the museum and also checks the acid content of the atmosphere Acid rain is a constant source of worry for the environmentalists and the Government, because of the damage it can do to the Taiga.

Youry Nemerovsky, the Director of the Baikal Travel Agency has an excellent network of permanent and part-time employees. Pleasant, helpful, reliable. No hotel, however grand, could have given me such an insight into the lives of a small segment of the Siberian people. Bed and breakfast never came into it. It was breakfast, lunch and supper all the way. And trips up the mountain and to and from the village. Neighbours rallied to my need when I developed an abscess on my tooth. Saying goodbye after a three day stay was touching.

It took me several days to realise that it was not going to get any where near 12 degrees Celsius. This was the water temperature in summer that was listed on the Internet. Nobody mentioned the daily dose of 25 up to 32 degrees. So my hopes of seeing wild bears, tigers and wolf packs roaming around in the Taiga never materialised, being too far south.

My next homestay was in the town of Lystvyanka, near the mouth of the Angara river. Here Vladimir met me and took me to Lydia’s home four kilometres from the harbour. During the University holidays Vladimir, a Meteorologist works at the museum and also checks the acid content of the atmosphere Acid rain is a constant source of worry for the environmentalists and the Government, because of the damage it can do to the Taiga.

Youry Nemerovsky, the Director of the Baikal Travel Agency has an excellent network of permanent and part-time employees. Pleasant, helpful, reliable. No hotel, however grand, could have given me such an insight into the lives of a small segment of the Siberian people. Bed and breakfast never came into it. It was breakfast, lunch and supper all the way. And trips up the mountain and to and from the village. Neighbours rallied to my need when I developed an abscess on my tooth. Saying goodbye after a three day stay was touching.

It took me several days to realise that it was not going to get any where near 12 degrees Celsius. This was the water temperature in summer that was listed on the
Internet. Nobody mentioned the daily dose of 25 up to 32 degrees. So my hopes of seeing wild bears, tigers and wolf packs roaming around in the Taiga never materialised, being too far south.

Victor and the two students, Sergei and Katya came to take me on the arranged three day trip through the Taiga. We covered two hundred kilometres driving through dense forest. It was a joy to camp on the banks of the Baikal along with several hundred other campers and picnickers all enjoying their far too brief, glorious summer weather. At the end of the day I opted to return to Irkutsk, instead of spending two more days, on my own, in a log cabin.

The extra two days were spent visiting the anthropological museum where I saw a plaster cast of the earliest human skull found in Siberia some 100 kilometres to the north at the place called Mal’ta.

The museum of the Decembrists was of great interest to me. Princes Maria whose husband, Prince Volkonsky was one of the ringleaders of the uprising against Tsar Nicholas in December of 1824. He and the other insurrectionists were banned to Siberia. Princess Maria stood by her husband during their 32 years of banishment. Often living in the direst of circumstances. Yet she established a hospital, an orphanage and later when they were able to live in Irkutsk, she managed to get sufficient funds to build a concert hall.

The open air museum with the houses of the earliest inhabitants of the area was well-worth the visit. These houses, bridges and outbuildings were dismantled and rebuild some forty kilometres from Irkutsk The three dams build in the Angara River to produce hydro electricity would have destroyed this priceless heritage. The three extra days at the home of Mikael, Galena and Elena cemented a friendship that is very dear to me.

There I had a chance to watch Siberian television, talk about everyday affairs and family history. So very valuable and heart-warming. Politics of the past was never discussed and I found the young people couldn't care less about the past. With those whom I had an opportunity to chat had already been abroad. The one lass spent time in England to round off her English studies. Aleksei had been to Switzerland with his parents and Oxana, the artist, spent time in Sweden. It was obvious that professional well-educated people are grossly underpaid at University at the Poly-clinic and at the Pathology laboratory.

To avoid sponging and also as a means of saying thank you for the hospitality that was truly showered upon me at each of the homestays, I had to devise all manner of ruses to leave the necessary roubles. So nobody felt offended and I came home with a clear conscience.

Then Yevgheni, Professor of Philosophy came to take me to the island of Onkol. A journey of 368 kilometres north, through a very mixed landscape. Taiga, rough roads, undulating hills, tatty settlements, high mountains in the far distance and eventually the Baikal just round the corner where the ferry loaded cars, trucks and passengers to take everyone onto the island. An island 71 kilometres long, more or less five kilometres from the shore.

A bleak, desert-like place, with the only road leading to the main village called Khuzhi. The fairly large resident population living in the ubiquitous wooden houses, shuttered windows, with rutted roads, and an atmosphere in sharp contrast to the beauty of the lake that surround the place.

Fortunately the log cabin settlement run by Nkita and his wife was a focal point of liveliness. The lake stretches out on either side of the island, with coves and bays and rock outcrops. On the northern tip of the island the Nerpa; the smallest fresh-water seals found only in Lake Baikal sunned themselves on the rocks. Their staple diet is the Golomonyanka fish, which produce live young and are so fat that they are just about transparent. Apart from a few dairy herds I saw no other farm activity – not on the island itself nor along the road from Irkutsk to Olkon.

Here and there, there were Cairns and Buddhist prayer flags. The Buryati tribe came from Mongolia many centuries ago and settled in a large area around the Lake. They venerate the lake as a holy place. At a point, while traveling to Khuzhi Yevgheni stopped the car, got out, and paid homage to the Lake. I commented on this. For a philosopher I found it rather unexpected. He replied that religion is for the soul and philosophy is for the mind!

I was booked in at Lubah’s homestay. Nkita’s log cabins, crowded with tiered bunks and communal ablution facilities, neat and tidy as they are; were meant for the young. I enjoyed my meals at Nkita’s establishment and met a number of back-packers from a host of countries and had long and interesting conversations with them.

And here I ran into Tante Margaretha, her nephew Joggen and his wife Gabriela. They came from the city of Bielefeld in Germany. The Bielefeld choir is as famous and well-known to music lovers as the St Hedwig’s choir of Berlin. They were sweltering in heavy winter woollies. There was nowhere on Onkol where they could buy the simplest of summer clothing. They just had to wait until they reached Irkutsk

What a co-incidence. In Germany they read the self-same information on the Internet that said the temperature at Baikal in summer is between 10 and 12 degrees and they, likewise assumed that it is the land temperature. It was the water temperature that the article referred to. Commencing in October right up to May the water freezes to a depth of l.6 to l.8 meters. Lorries transport goods and ice hockey is played on the surface of the lake. And naturally, there are lots of ice skating while the ice-over lasts.

It is believed that an earthquake moved the earth plates and subterranean hot water geysers feed the lake. This has a marked effect on the land temperature, which drops to only 25 degrees below freezing during the winter. Far less than in the rest of Siberia where the thermometer registers temperatures of 59 degrees below freezing. And this fact has influenced the development of every form of animal and plant life in the vicinity of Lake Baikal.

The lake is 640 kilometres long. A portion situated in Buryat and a portion spilling into Irkutsk territory. Some 330 rivers and streams flow into the lake, which contains one fifth of the world’s fresh water. It is estimated that Lake Baikal is between 25 and 30 million years old - one of the oldest lakes on earth with a depth that reaches 1630 meters. At some places the depth has not as yet been plummeted. Only two rivers channel water out of Lake Baikal. In the north the mighty Lena and in the south the Angara which takes the waters inland and flows past the town Lystyavanka and further upstream past the city of Irkutsk.

There is a concerted effort not only by the present Government but also with international help, to counteract the damage done by the unbridled exploitation of the past. The shipbuilding, the logging, the paper mills and other mining and industrial activity have been stopped entirely or it is being managed in a more environmentally-friendly manner. So too is the l800 species of fish being managed in a sustainable manner.

The two main cities near Baikal could not be more different. Irkutsk some 60 kilometres north of the lake and Ulan Ude on the other side of the lake, not that far from the Mongolian border.

Irkutsk with its large population, a University, Hospital, Schools an Art School where friend Oxana teaches, rutted streets, pavements with waist-high weeds, rows and rows of oblong, grey flat buildings. A fruit and vegetable market. A large shopping complex and many ad hoc structures in the streets where CD’s and all manner of the typical Chinese manufactured goods is sold. Copy Nikes and Adidas. The usual mock leather jackets and handbags, but nary a beautiful hand embroidered tablecloth, shawl or even a handkerchief such as the Russian and Siberian women made in days gone by.

Office girls wear the latest style shoes and clothes and many new cars from a variety of countries wove their way between battered Lada’s and Zims. Old army stock Kombi’s and such-like serves as informal public transport, alongside municipal busses and trams. There are individual shops selling clothes, tools, groceries, party gimmicks and whatnot fronting on the streets, as well as the odd shopping mall housing lots of stalls under one roof. Another type of shop is the box-like structure no larger than a container box. The labels of the cigarettes, wine, beer and chocolates are pasted on the glass front. The customer point at the label of the item required, pay and the item is shoved through the aperture. Fair enough, but it is still strange that these “shop boxes” are placed next to each other, at times six in a row – all selling more or less the same merchandise at the same price. As if business competition, business acumen, free trade, call it what you will, has not yet become a reality.

Bussing is a safe and inexpensive way of sightseeing in a large city. The huge, grey cement, oblong flat buildings, whether of pre-war or of recent construction was everywhere. Only in the centre and old part of the city 19th century buildings with interesting and often beautiful facades have survived. Timber houses, surrounded by their own plot of ground, are still to be seen in this area. An air of neglect seems to shroud the city. Other sad features were obvious, as if Irkutsk is just too far away from the hub of the changing society to warrant proper attention.

My stay in Siberia was drawing to a close. A last fling, so to speak - A visit to the town of Ulan Ude near the border of Mongolia. The night train chugged round the most southern tip of Lake Baikal and headed north. Early morning one of Youry’s youngsters met me at the station, ready to take me to the homestay of Victoria.

Again the master bedroom was put at my disposal. As in every instance, so far, the family slept and dressed inconveniently either in the lounge or doubling up in another room on makeshift beds. This was to augment their income or perhaps just to survive.

Once again the entrance to the flat, the surrounding area outside the building was not the concern of the family. Inside it was clean and neat as a pin. The hospitality all-embracing. After breakfast it was arranged that Edward, the eldest son, would take me on a look-see drive in his motorcar. Zana and mother Victoria were scheduled to go to the University to check whether Zana had passed his university entrance exams. Zana was in a state of tension. He wandered up and down, could not sit still while waiting for time to pass, so that they could get going. Yet he knew that the results would only be on the pin board by mid morning.

Edward took me far beyond the borders of Ulan Ude to where the Buddhist temple, ravished during Communist rule, was situated. At present the priests and novitiates have returned and restoring the temple is priority number one.

Coming back to town by a different route gave me a good impression of the vicinity. And I was treated to a drawn-out drive in town as well. What a difference! Far more colourful, better tended public gardens, streets in good condition, an openness creating a happier atmosphere – well - to my way of thinking.

We returned home to find Victoria, Zana and aunt Zianida in festive mood. Zana had passed. This meant that, as a student, he would not be drafted into the army to fight in the ongoing war in Chetneya.

The table was ready, but not set in the way that I know. Edward fetched grandmum. Sister Zianida had spent the afternoon preparing a traditional Buryati dish. Steamed, stew-filled dumplings … mounds of it and a good size as well. A friend and colleague of Victoria’s, Meriya, a pediatrician by profession, also joined in and we sat on stools at the table. The dishes of sliced tomato, cold meat, sliced cheese and cucumbers were placed on the table. Everyone helped themselves. You fork your slice of tomato or cucumber or have another dumpling. They served Vodka, Vino and Kvass with the meal

The conversation was electric, charged with the excitement and pride of Zana’s triumph. With lots of laughter and reminiscences. I heard of their father’s transfer to St Petersburg for a full five years, while mother and the five small children were not permitted to accompany him. They had to remain in Ulan Ude. Of Zianida’s experience of being told to pack her bags and go with a group of post graduate students to a language school, not far from Paris. There she studied French and German. The other students had been allocated the languages that they had to master. But none of them were allowed to fraternise with any of the local residents.

So Zianida confessed, although she knew French and German well enough to teach at university level, her ability to converse in the two languages was sorely lacking. Victoria studied medicine at the University in Moscow and specialised in Oncology at the University in Leningrad – these days called St Petersburg.

Sunday we paid a visit to the market. Again the disappointment of not finding authentic Buryati hand-made items. Again the factory manufactured goods by the ton. Except one single short, hand whittled wooden cigarette holder with a burned-in motif. The Siberian and especially the Buryati people are slightly built and on the short side, so it was difficult to find a Shapka for a much larger head size. After going to three different shops in centre town we were able, at last to find one.

One could set your watch; so punctual was Youry Nemerovsky’s helper. His arrival was spot on time for me to board the night train that took me back to Irkutsk

In the compartment was a newly married couple. Both International Lawyers. They have their own business in Irkutsk and do a fair amount of business in Mongolia. Because free-trade legislation is not yet in place in Russia, Foreign Investors employ International Lawyers to wade through this maze of uncharted business territory. It was nearly morning before we eventually said goodnight to each other. A usual feature of train travel is sharing a compartment with whomsoever. No segregation of the sexes here.

It was virtually pack and go. The very next day I said goodbye to Mikael, Galena and Elena. Both Youry and Taos came to see me off at the train. A train journey of 5000 kilometres through the endless, empty expanse of the Siberian countryside. Only at stations did I see groups of people. From the window of the train I saw only snippets of large towns such as Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk the Capital of Siberia, Omsk, Sverdlov, Kirov and Gorki - one station before Moscow.

The coaches each had a samovar where one could make tea, coffee or any other type of hot drink for oneself. The dining car wasn't a proposition for me so I bought the most delicious stuffed “vetkoekies” from the vendors.

Photo 8. Vetkoekies here!

At the box-like shops lining the edge of the station platform cool drinks, fruit and all manner of other eatables could be bought. The time that the trains stopped varied and there was no whistle blowing. One just had to keep an alert eye on the flag in the hand of the train conductor or conductress. The trouble that two of my fellow passengers had when they missed the train by milliseconds is an experience that I gladly sidestepped.

In retrospect I am amazed that the four days on the train never seemed boring. Visiting other travelers, reading, thinking, shunting excess emotional baggage, peering out, trying to see whatever lurked in the dark, mysterious Taiga that stretched kilometres inland on either side of the railway line interspersed with khaki coloured Steppeland.

After a long walk, through narrow alleys and two Metros, Lenah and I arrived at the South African Embassy where I handed over a letter from a friend to a friend. The rest of the afternoon Lenha’s friend Olga’s visit proved to be nail biting.
The following morning Olga’s daughter would know whether she had passed her university entrance examinations – just like Zana in far-off Ulan Ude.

Once again I was in a home filled with books of every kind – no different from the other homes where I stayed. In this country the saying, that money is not everything, truly earns its meaning. The quality of conversation, the laughter, the sheer exuberance of being alive and having a brighter future is palpable. The older generation want to forget the past and the younger generation is interested in the present and the future.

I left Moscow by plane with a wonderful feeling of mission achieved.

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