Hi, I am Eduard Merker (@E.merker), a resident of Sochi with a twelve -year experience, and the city of Irkutsk was chosen as part of the Kudablin project. In February! Here I deliberately emphasize what climatic conditions are natural for me and in what environment I had to plunge. Well, another spoiler for those who, like some of my friends, counted Irkutsk not the most obvious place to relax – there Baikal is nearby.
Doubts
As soon as the direction became known, I began to morally prepare. Is it a joke, the temperature +10 ℃ in the winter Sochi I consider it extremely low, and there –20-30 ℃. I don’t even remember how it is felt. Needless to say, I have not had warm clothes for a long time. Rather, it is, but the Siberians call my winter jacket the summer: in June, they throw such on their shoulders in the evenings so that it is more comfortable to walk. Of course, I exaggerate a little, but the truth is not far from the truth. Of course, doubts began to creep. I was afraid to get sick on the first day of arrival and spend a vacation in a room with temperature and hot tea. But the coin is abandoned, winter Baikal beckons – we must prepare.
Endeur journey
Friends recommended ordering self-heating insoles for shoes in the online store, and I took out my ski clothing: a hat, buff, gloves, snowboard pants. That’s all the preparation. Looking forward, I want to say about insoles separately – their genius came up with, not otherwise. Throw it into shoes, and, despite the frost, your legs seem to be on the battery.
In general, the suitcase is half -assembled (I usually collect it just before going to the airport to the end), departure at 9:35 the next morning, everything is booked (thanks, onetwotrip!). What can go wrong? When it became known that the victory in the vote for the participant of the Kudabin project was behind me, my fast “adventurous journey” was prononized, so I decided to add a little adventurism – I overslept.
I open my eyes – at 8:10. I jump up. I run to brush my teeth, simultaneously calling a taxi: “The car will arrive in 6 minutes, the road to Sochi airport will be 50 minutes.” Cork. I throw the remnants of things into the suitcase, pushing myself into clothes, run out of the house. I say to the taxi driver: “I’m late!” And I’m going to the airport. In parallel, I am looking for the next flights in the OneTwotrip application, since I completely clearly understand that I do not have time to my plane. The landing is closed at 9:15, the taxi arrived at the airport at 9:10. I ran through all controls like a kind of flash. I don’t know what happened, a miracle, not otherwise, but when I ran to the landing, the last passenger just went through the “sleeve” to the plane. I managed!
Already sitting on board, I realized that I had forgotten to put in a suitcase all the warm clothes that I prepared the day before. Only insoles with you. Well, I’ll come up with something! The spirit of adventurism is still alive in us, it turns out. Meet, Irkutsk!
Irkutsk
Irkutsk met with frost -16 ℃ or, as the taxi driver said, very warm weather, because “a week ago, there, -30 ℃ was, but now it’s hot even.” I did not share his opinion. Six minutes on the street in thin jeans, sneakers and a “summer” jacket seemed to me an eternity. But here is a warm hotel, a delicious dinner and sleep.
Honestly, I had no large plans for Irkutsk itself, the mood exclusively on Baikal. Therefore, the next morning I first went to visit colleagues on the MCM radio station. They met warmly, released on the air (I complained about their weather and my inappropriate to her), but, most importantly, they provided a warm jacket and gloves. I bought a hat and thermal underwear in a local store. The frost has become a little less merciless.
In Irkutsk, I managed to see very little how the hangar flows violently, without freezing even in such cold, to visit the historical 130th quarter with monuments of wooden architecture and the famous Irkutsk woman. This is a mythical beast that ended up on the coat of arms of Irkutsk as a result of simple misunderstanding. It was decided to depict a woman in Siberia in Siberia in Siberia in Siberia, it was decided to depict it on the coat of arms of the city in 1878. They sent a description to the heraldry of St. Petersburg, and there, of course, they never heard of any kind of bud. They decided that the typo, depicting a beaver with a sable in his teeth. Now this predatory beaver (in the sense, Babr!) And is a symbol of Irkutsk. I also managed to meet a sunset on the roof with a view of the city. Beautiful, comfortable, very cold. But ahead – Baikal.
Olkhon
I was offered two specific directions: a leaflet, a city that is located an hour and a half from Irkutsk by bus, and a hujir located on the island of Olkhon (in the winter it is about five hours through an ice crossing). Since the Festival of Ice Sculptures took place on Olkhon, and the beauty, as I told me, there, there was more, the choice fell on the second option. Tickets for the bus, by the way, are easy to book through the OneTwotrip application. I advise you to book in advance, since there are not many places.
Again morning, a suitcase, a taxi, a station – and now I’m going to a dream, admiring a rather cute landscape outside the window. Separate emotions caused an ice crossing. You just enter the ice by bus and move along it, as on the road. Even road signs are installed.
He arrived already in the slope of the day, settled down and only managed to go to admire icy sculptures, get acquainted with Grandfather Baikal, as the locals call him, and eat pose or buuses poured by everyone. Visiting all the main beauties and completing the assignment from subscribers (skating on ice on the ice of Baikal) left the next day, booked a tour of the car on ice to the village of Buguldeik, which was a couple of hours of driving from a hujir. The locals said that there are plots with clean ice (most of the Baikal is zealous with snow and looked like a white field with sticking here and there with rocky mountains of bizarre forms).
Huzhir itself is a small village with a large number of souvenir shops and cafes. Do not expect, by the way, from the catering of the Michelin level. Most of the establishments are rural taverns, but it is warm and tasty there. At least in those that I visited was delicious. Experienced tourists told how to determine the places that deserve attention. Life hack is extremely simple – choose a cafe in which there are a lot of people, if the institution is empty, it is better not to enter it.
In addition to people, cows and furry dogs-flashings of varying degrees of imminent roam the frozen streets of Khuzhira. All, without exception, the dogs are very friendly (well, the point of being angry, if in winter you can be left without food), so boldly scratch them behind your ear.
I had dinner with the poses, or Buzami (tastes like manti, whoever said anything). On the way home, I leased skates for 500 rubles (there are a lot of rental points) and prepared for the main day.
Baikal
In the morning, the driver of the UAZ Bukhanka drove behind me, and we went to look for clean ice, making stops on the road near different rocky islets to admire beauty.
Let’s so, I’ll only briefly describe what I saw and what I experienced, and I will also attach some photos. I don’t see any meaning in detail: firstly, you need to be at least Paustovsky in order to accurately describe the nature of Lake Baikal; And secondly, no description and photographs will convey the main thing-emotions. For me, it was the quintessence of happiness, I can not say differently. As if the world froze, time has stopped, all the concerns remained in another life, and here only you, “merged with the endless eternal” and has already become part of this nature. Do you understand? Yes, and not now. We must be there to understand.
I went into frozen grottoes with icy stalagmites, stalactites and sticks, admired the Cape Dragon on the island of the Off (the most recognizable attraction of Lake Baikal), listened to how it cracked under the feet of the ice (cosmic sounds, like shooting blasters of the Enterprise), rolled on the pure ice on the skating and tried to taste Baikal. (This is when you drill small moons, fill the drink there and drink through a straw). Be sure to ask your driver to take you to see the toros at sunset. This is visual ecstasy – as if the icebreaker has passed and scattered huge pieces of ice on the surface of the frozen lake, and they, like diamonds, shimmer in the rays of the sunset. I was on another planet.
Epilogue
You can endlessly and, honestly, it is useless to write about the place of power, the spirit of Lake Baikal, the beauty of his nature. No words will be able to convey everything quite reliably, so it is better to feel it yourself.
It is also worth saying that I spent this day in Baikal absolutely without communication, and after that I thanked my operator for the lack of a coating area in these places. The next day, I went to Irkutsk by bus, spent the night there and on the morning of February 26 was already sitting on an airplane and sorry that I did not stay in the Baikal beauties forever, but returned to the usual world, which was already completely unusual.
