We are currently in the town of Khuzhir in the middle of Olkhon Island in the middle of Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is not a lake. By definition it is, of course: it contains 1/5 of the world's unfrozen water and will be the earth's fifth ocean eventually. We spent 5 hours on a hydrofoil to get here yesterday. In other words, the lake is huge: 636 km north-south and 1637 m deep (1 mi).

First, the train trip. We were shown to our lovely two-person compartment by the provodnitsa, one of the two women who is responsible for your train carriage (they work in shifts). The compartment was semi-luxuriously decorated, but the main luxury was simply to have it to ourselves. For four night and three days that is pretty essential! We had stocked up on food in the expensive but comprehensive supermarket at the end of our street in Moscow, but at various stations (depending on local time) women would show up and sell home-made food during stops. Most of this was meat-based, of course, but imagine my delight in the middle of Siberia when they showed up with piroshki filled with potatoes and homemade pickled cucumbers! We also found field strawberries at another stop.

Being on the train was delightfully relaxing. You'd think boredom might set in, but not so. The constantly changing landscape accompanied by different styles of architecture and different ethnic compositions of various areas provided some entertainment. Our handcarved chess set, bought in Moscow, provided another way for B to entertain himself (as everyone knows, I'm an atrocious chess player). We'd also stocked up on books in the airport in Oslo, so B read Stendhal and Stefan Zweig while I got through some Dickens and George Eliot. A couple times a day, the train would stop long enough for us to stretch our legs on the platform. Our wagon was filled with foreigners, mostly Germans, which is pretty natural as the cost of a two-person compartment makes it prohibitive for most people (including us, normally!, and for the rest of the trip). Once we entered Siberia, the characteristic wooden houses appeared, decorated with wood carvings and painted blue-and-white shutters.

On Friday morning, we arrived in Irkutsk. It was a slighly dazed arrival, as the time had changed five hours forward since we left Moscow (we are now +12 relative to Eastern standard time). We'd taken sleeping pills the night before to get to bed at a reasonable hour--it is very strange to have the time change while travelling on a train, because so little changes actually--and so we stumbled out of Irkutsk station at 7am local time. We took a tram into the center of town (cost: 24 cents). It is just like the American Wild West must have been: a strange mixture of aged-looking wooden houses and newer, shinier buildings, few paved roads (this is a city of over half a million), Soviet cars and BMWs, etc. I don't know if I've ever been in a city that size that looked so... different. We found a taxi out to the hydrofoil station, which passed a newer and much more ordinary section of the city. The hydrofoil did not accept cards, nor change money, and we did not have enough cash on us for the $60 each tickets. Luckily, a fellow traveller lent us the missing $8. She spoke Russian as well, and thus was able to tell us when we had to change hydrofoils in Listvyanka. We all disembarked at the southern end of Olkhon. Fortunately, someone from the village had come down the 30km to look for passengers as we were dropped off in a deserted pasture with no one else in sight. Our fellow traveller found out that the price was 100 rub ($4) per person to the village, so we hopped into his Soviet "Jeep"(Lada) and off we went.

As we crested the first large hill up from the ferry, we came to a few carved wooden statues decorated with bits of cloth. Our driver informed us that we needed to throw out a kopek to the shamanic statues. He genuflected slightly before driving on. The Buryat people, which mostly lives on the east side of Baikal, venerates this island as one of the five global shamanic energy sources. The island is dotted with (sometimes carved) wooden posts and trees decorated with shamanic bits of cloth. Like Naaman, we bowed when we had to! As we entered the town, our driver pointed out the dwelling of the local shaman as well.

We are staying at the ecofriendly lodge of a former Russian ping-pong champion. Ecofriendly means just that. The shower has to be filled up before using, running water is provided by transferring water from a bucket into a makeshift faucet while using a scoop, and the toilet has a bucket inside that is emptied daily. You shovel sawdust onto your leavings, so it is not as unpleasant as it sounds! The "homestead", as it is called, is a cluster of beautiful wooden buildings in traditional Siberian style, all hand-built and carved, it is clear. (Google Nikita's Homestead Olkhon for details.) Food is included at $30 per day each, and thankfully they cater to vegetarians and people who don't eat meat. (Fish is, naturally, served twice a day.)

The town consists of sometimes stunningly beautiful, sometimes run-down Siberian wooden houses. As we were walking down the main street yesterday, we came upon a cow grazing in the middle of it. Cows, horses, and sheep dot the island, and there are basically no fences to keep them in or out. Nonetheless, the lake is so large that it is drinkable pretty much everywhere.

The lake is stunning in its beauty. Just past Nikita's is a beach that looks as though it belongs on an island in the Pacific, although the water is rather cooler here. We're going to run and hike around the island (we're here until Tuesday morning) and hope to catch a glimpse of the famed nerpa (fresh-water seal) on an expedition to the north before we leave.

Many thanks to Wheat Thin for adding visuals! We hope to add some pictures once B finds his camera cord and we are no longer using the internet at 14 cents per minute in the office of someone's house (since the wireless in the ger [yurt] was down this morning).