I, the beholder

I received an email last evening, in which I was instructed to meet my guide at 6:10 this morning at the reception desk. This alarmed me a bit because I really did not want to have to spend a day parlaying in a one-on-one situation with a stranger who needed to be nice in order to get a good tip. I was surprised by a knock on my door at about 5:45, asking if I was ready-well, not quite, it's not 6:10 yet. But apparently we needed to leave early, so I grabbed my bag and pulled on my shoes, forgetting my water bottle and snack in the process. But Helen was well-prepared with instant coffee and tea (there's always hot water on the train), and biscuits, bread and cheese spread. Those might not be my choice of food, but in the circumstances, it was quite welcome. 

We caught the train here in Irkutsk, took it out to Listvyanka, and from there we switched to an older track that runs directly along the lake. This track is part of the original line that once ran from Irkutsk along the Angara River and then south along the lower west side of Lake Baikal. This section was replaced by a more direct route when the river was dammed, and it flooded the old tracks along the river. The tracks we were riding along were the tracks used during WWII to move troops and supplies, but haven't been used as part of the Trans-Siberian Railway since sometime in the 50's.

While Lake Baikal is fed by over 300 different streams and rivers, only one river has its source in the lake, and that is the Angara, which runs through Irkutsk and on to the Arctic. We rode along the Angara on our way to the lake just as the sun was coming up today, giving a nice symmetry to the sunset I'd seen from the other side of the river last evening.

In some respects, a lake is a lake- it may be beautiful, but how does one lake really differ from another aside from any personal attachment we might have? Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. That being said, Lake Baikal has had a draw for me for a long time, and I looked forward to today's jaunt with anticipation. I was not disappointed, although you may be, either by all the factoids, or the photos, which fail to do justice to the beauty of this place.

Helen gave me a lot of information about Lake Baikal as we rode along, and if anything I say here is incorrect, that is my fault for either remembering or writing it down wrong. She explained that the lifespan of a lake is typically measured in thousands of years, because they gradually fill with sediment and will become more and more shallow. However, Lake Baikal is at least 25 million years old, and is growing deeper rather than becoming more shallow, because it is along the Siberian and Amur plates. The Amur plate moves at a pace that is 2 centimeters faster than the Siberian plate, so in a very long time, Lake Baikal will become an ocean.

At one time, long, long ago, Lake Baikal was at the equator, but as the earth gradually shifted its tilt, it has moved away, and in fact has gone through at least one ice age. During the building of the Trans-Siberian, there were many places where tunnels were built, or parts of mountainsides were blasted away, and in the course of that, in at least one place, permafrost was found deep inside the earth (there is not permafrost found at Lake Baikal normally).

I think I may have mentioned that at its deepest, the lake is a mile deep. There are several kilometers of sediment at the bottom, and scientists have bored into this to obtain samples of former life. Because the lake has developed independent of oceans and other water sources, it has some unique types of fish, plants, seals, and other forms of life not found anywhere else on the planet.

There are bitumen oil particles that are released from the bottom of the lake regularly (I can't recall the rate of release), and there are bacteria which consume these, which are in turn consumed by crustaceans, which are in turn consumed by fish. In the process the bitumen is 'cleaned' and scientists are trying to see if they can develop a bacteria like this that can survive in salt water so it can be used for oil spills.

There are also fish that live at the bottom of this lake (a mile down) that have developed the ability to withstand the pressure at that depth. They stay below during the day, and at night they rise to about 200 meters below the surface. When they ascend and descend, they do so gradually, much as a diver would to avoid the 'bends.'

Unrelated to the lake itself, Helen gave me a lot of human history about Siberia, and also Alaska, some of which I already knew, but it was helpful in bringing it together for me. She talked about the settlements established in what was then called Russian America, and how supplies were a constant issue. As a result, a man from Irkutsk (I don't recall his name) established Fort Ross, in Sonoma County, California as a place to grow grains and other food to supply the Alaskan settlement, whose job was to collect furs and send them to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

I took hundreds of photos, but will not subject anyone to that-here is just a sampling of the lake and the other things that interested me today.

Lake views:

Fireweed, like we used to know in Alaska:

Some gardens along the way:

Some people hike this route, and there are little camping spots like this at fairly frequent intervals:

This is the railway station at Listvyanka, and it is made entirely of marble- not just faced with marble, but built with marble. The marble came from a nearby marble quarry, and they had a surplus of it, so they used it.

 One of the older viaducts- much of the work done on this route initially was done in the 1902-1905 time period. Later additional track was laid, requiring more tunnels, rock catchment walls, and tunnels. During the soviet period, retaining walls were added to shore up the railbed along the waterfront.

These are the supports for one of the overhangs built  to protect from falling rock.

 The railway was worked from both ends simultaneously, and this is where the railbed met, and the last spike was pounded in.

Helen is old enough that she was an adult with two children at the time of the collapse of the Soviet regime, and she described a bit of what she did to survive during that time- she technically didn't lose her job, but she was not getting paid, so had to find other ways to make money for about two years. For her that meant traveling to China, buying goods and bringing them back to sell them for about 9 times what she had paid for them, and this is how they managed to get by. She laughed when she said that she really wasn't sure who was buying all the goods being brought back like that- there were quite a few doing it, and who had jobs? Her mother lives in Salt Lake City, is a US citizen, but is now considering moving back to be near her daughters, as she is 80 years old and alone. No matter where we live, we end up dealing with a lot of the same human issues eventually.