Irkutsk and Baikal

02-03.10.10
I lived with friends of friends (thanks to О.!) in the most famous hostel in Irkutsk, in the staff room. Don’t know why I didn’t use CS, but the hostel was fun.

In the evening we were approached by a Dutch guy and asked about the surrounding bars and nightlife in Irkutsk. I told him immediately that he was the man I was waiting for and we’ll go and have a drink immediately. And so we did.

Riding the suburban train was not pleasant. I wanted to lie down and die rather than go somewhere, however, there was no other options, so I rode up to the station “Tyomnaya Pad'”, where the train was stopped especially for me, and making a sip from the every creek on the way (fresh creek water is an excellent cure against anything), went down to CBRY. The descent exhausted me completely, and I stayed right there, in a small coastal hotel, too tired to camp.

The next day brought finally some relief and I went for a walk on the tracks. CBRY, once the main course of Trans-Siberian, after raising the level of the lake by the Irkutsk hydroelectric station became a dead-end line, which runs on several trains a day and a place of pilgrimage for tourists from everywhere. I was lucky with the weather, or rather, I arrived on time – early October, birches and larches stood with golden-yellow foliage that looked so beautiful against the backdrop of a piercing blue autumn sky.

A few hours I was walking along the railroad tracks, sometimes down to the water, sometimes climbing up the hill, and sometimes, when memories of the day before yesterday evening suddenly came back, I went under a golden birch and looked at the sky. There has been surprisingly quiet, the feeling that you can only find in the autumn, until the leaves have not turned into a wet carpet under your feet.

In the afternoon I had to pick up the backpack (pretty heavy) and walk along the tracks to the west side of Slyudyanka – some 10 km.

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