DAY 165 THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 5 CIRCUM BAIKAL TRAIN.

We had a small view of the lake from our chalet.
The next two weeks are all planned out by Real Russia so we will be moving on often with not much time off.  After a cooked breakfast, finishing with pancakes, we were driven to a ferry with our luggage  so that we could cross the exit of the lake to arrive at Baikal where our train was waiting to leave at 11am.  Our new guide, Helen (Yelena), arrived on the bus from Irkutsk along with many other day trippers.  She shepherded us onto the ferry and then the train where we had a first class arrangement of 5 seats around a table.  This was the first time we had seen a train that fitted 5 first class seats across with an aisle between the third and fourth ones.  The commentary on the PA system was in Russian only so we were able to turn it down low and listen to Helen who spoke excellent English, having served some years as a concurrent translator.  She knew everything we needed to know about the railway and the lake and there are many books written about its features and history.  Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world by far and contains 20 per cent of all the fresh water on earth. It must also be one of the most beautiful and unspoiled as it is surrounded by forested hills. The weather started off fine but clouded over during the day. We did not get wet. That is the town of Baikal in the distance.

 We saw pictures of it in winter when the surface has ice up to 2 metres thick and wished it was possible for us to see it in late winter. The shoreline is 1800 metres long and one local man claims to have walked it all.  Makes the Bibbulmun Track sound easy in comparison.  It is situated in a rift valley which explains why it is 1.6 kilometers deep for a lot of its area and why there are earth tremors in this district nearly every day.  It is 50 years since the last major quake so they are due for another one any day now.  Some of the key buildings in town have been built by Japanese engineers to ensure they will be safe.  Helen explained the difference between a gallery and a tunnel. A gallery is built against the hillside to protect the trains from falling rock and sliding snow.  The Circum Baikal track only goes around one tenth of the shore and we covered about half of that today before joining up with the Trans Siberian Track and following that back to Irkutsk. We stopped frequently to study features of the line.

This is one of the creeks crossed by the train.

We walked through this abandoned tunnel while the train overtook us and picked us up at the other end.

Here comes the train now.

 It took us ten and a half hours to cover less than 200 kilometers, so this is the slowest train ride we have had on our world tour.  We passed through 40 tunnels next to the lake and even more bridges, as there are 336 rivers flowing into the lake but only one (the Angara) flowing out.  So the Angara River is wide, deep and fast flowing.  We learned far too much about the history of the railway here to include in our blog.  If you are interested a good brief piece can be found in Wikipedia under Trans Siberian Railway.  We wanted to be first at the lunch table so we followed Helen across a paddock.

Chased the chooks out of the way and came round the corner.

 Lunch was in a lean-to next to a wooden cottage next to a nice creek,

 and was prepared by the lady resident on a daily basis for the tourists.  Delicious soup and chicken rissoles and veges.

At another stop we found a nicely painted steam loco.

Helen said all the men she brought wanted to climb up onto the footplate.  Malcolm obliged.

Had to jump down the last step.  We spent some time at the "beach" and were invited to take a swim. The temperature is supposed to be 4C but it did not feel that cold on our hands.

At another stop we saw how a creek was funneled over  the top of a tunnel.

Helen invited us to compare the style of two tunnels side by side, one Italian and one Polish.

 Italian

Polish
We stopped at an Art Gallery of sorts and people picked berries.

And a man was finishing the carpentry on his cabin.

The train turned around at the junction with the main line.  The station here is claimed to be the only one in the world made entirely from marble.

We could see the marble quarry in the distance. It looked like a glacier.

 At 9.30 Helen booked two taxis for us and shepherded us through the hotel check in, making it so easy for us. We thanked her for a long but rewarding day.