Mysterious Siberia

We're moving eastwards on the Eurasian continent. On June 29, our Trans-Siberian train left Moscow at 11:30pm for the 72 hour journey to Irkutsuk, where we arrived on July 3, at 9:30AM.

After meeting our driver, we continued east to the small town of Listvyanka on the shore of Lake Baikal, one hour away by car. Our lodging is located up a dirt road that stretches from the lakeshore into a lush valley. It's a log cabin that shares property with a few other homes, the Baikal Culture Center and an art gallery.

The valley itself has exploded with fresh green wild grass and wildflowers busting into purple, white, yellow, orange and pink blooms. The thick forest of pine and birch flank the valley floor and a small creek runs through the valley floor to the lake. The view from the cabin looks out to Lake Baikal, with it's surface shining cold blue. The opposite shore lies about 50 Kilometers beyond the rising mist of the lake.

Lake Baikal is huge. It holds about 20% of fresh water that exists on this planet. Its surface area is not so large, but its depth drops over 1,600 meters, making it the deepest lake in the world.

The lake hosts a unique set of wildlife including the fresh water Baikal seals who live mostly in the remote, northern part of the lake. Its water is crystal clear, and the rocky bottom can easily be seen. The lake has three distinct ways to purify itself: sponges, corpse-eating shrimp and a unique microorganism that all live in the waters. Unfortunately, many environmentally ignorant Russian tourists visiting this beautiful place mindlessly dispose of their trash on the shores.

As we walked the shoreline we felt the chilly wind blowing off of the lake. The water temperature stays below 15 degrees Celsius during the warmest season, and acts like an enormous water-operated cooler. It's easy to imagine how cold this area gets in winter, just by feeling the breeze coming off the lake in early summer. People told us that the lake freezes solid and that cars can be driven across in February and March.

The people's expressions are much softer here. It only takes seeing us twice for them to share their smiles with us. Our accommodations include breakfast, which is served at the neighbors' house next door. Each morning the grandmotherly woman welcomes us with a smile and serves us a large home-cooked meal. This gives us a sense of the true Russian hospitality. In her backyard is a wonderful vegetable garden, from which she picks lettuce and herbs for our morning meal. Potatoes take up the largest patch and tomatoes grow in the greenhouse along side the laundry hung to dry.

Another neighbor on our hosts' property is an older woman living with her grandchildren. We photographed her working in her potato patch and afterwards she invited us to her house to see her painting. During the long winters she transforms herself from farmer into artist, painting self-portraits and her surroundings in a Chagall-like style.

Unfortunately, the art gallery burned down this past spring. The property owner is busy building the new gallery. Paintings that survived the fire are now shown in a temporary building. I did not expect much out of artists who live so far away from art centers, yet once I stepped into the small room there were many wonderful discoveries. The imaginations of artists in Siberia are fabulously mysterious and surrealistic, sometimes even psychedelic. Their originality stretch out of their own fairy tales and are realized on canvas.

During this short stay by Lake Baikal, we believe that we have peeked into the beautiful natural surroundings and the mysterious lives of the Siberian people.