The Holy Sea

Yesterday I went to visit Lake Baikal, 1637m (537ft for all you oldies) deep, and contains 20% of the worlds fresh water, (could supply the whole world for 40 years). Due to the many myths surrounding this lake, and the vast scale which causes storms and 2metre waves, the Russian call it 'The Holy Sea'. It is also believed that dipping various parts of your body into it, (no not that! Your hands, legs and head!) can add certain years to your life. Yesterday, however, it was frozen solid up to 3 metres thick! It was really cool working across it (like walking on water), looking through the clear ice at the stones on bed beneath us. One of the Russian girls kept asking if I was scared, well a little, I was walking over frozen water far from the edge, with giant cracks all around me.... We then went to buy some locally produced fish, (Omul), fresh from the lake, and barbecued. This went very nicely with the Blinis (Russian pancakes), and a bottle of wine. We then climbed up a giant ice sculpture which had a big slide made of ice, and all slid down together, collapsing in a heap in the snow. Great fun! :-) Today we returned to the lake, but walked higher up into the mountains and hired some ice skates. It was too difficult for me to ice skate over the snow, even after the many frustrated attempts of one of the Russian girls to show me how. :-) After this, we hired some inflatable tyres, and joined them together and flung ourselves down a bumpy path . The effect was a little like white water rafting, except that we got covered by the tons of snow which came up from both sides. At the bottom of the path, a man hooked the string fasten to our tyres to a pulley system, and we were hauled back up the mountainside. Now this should be a winter Olympic event! I returned back to Irkutsk and after some pointing at my phrase book, I managed to get some Russian pastries with a choice of fillings, - cabbage, chicken, or meat. I choose the non descript 'meat' filling, which with a beer came to about 1.20 pounds, not bad.

Tomorrow I am heading off to Ulan Ude, the Buddhist centre of Russia, hosting a few monasteries which have been rebuilt since the Revolution. The city does not appear to be famous for anything else other than a giant head of Uncle Lenin, (the world's biggest)!!! This will be a turning point in my trip as it is here that I leave the Trans Siberian railway, and join the Trans Mongolia. Basically the railway is made up of three parts; the Tran Siberian which continued to Vladivostok on the edge of Russia on the sea of Japan, The Trans Manchurian which caries on to Chita, then crosses the boarder into China and heads down the East side to Beijing. Then there's the Trans Mongolian, (my trip), which heads down through Mongolia across the Parries, then through the Chinese boarder into Beijing. Russia is actually a very big country, (the biggest in the world), and where I am right now is 6511 km, (or \n4045.8 miles) from London, 7 hours ahead. Geographically, Irkuskt is further East than Iran of Afghanistan, and I am already above the Eastern part of China!