Waiting for the Train at Port Baikal

My friend and travel mate on the Russia trip, Carol Ann Stoney, is shown below

while we were waiting to board the Circum Baikal railway in late May. Carol Ann and her family farm in southern Wisconsin, and I had not met her or any of the other fellow travellers before the trip.

Our backgrounds are fairly different, although we're both only children from the Midwest.

Carol Ann is an amazingly talented and hard working person, always doing some kind of handiwork while sitting in a bus or plane. She and her husband attend a farmer's market in Dubuque, Iowa every Saturday, where they sell mainly vegetables and fruit and samples of her crocheting, embroidery and knitting. Believe it or not,she and her husband has hardly missed a Saturday in 40 years. Carol Ann created a beautiful embroidered table runner for our lovely host in Irkutsk, and was kind enough to add my name.

I really enjoyed travelling with Carol Ann and the other Friendship Force(http://www.friendshipforce.org/) members, mainly from Dubuque but including some from Nevada and Texas. I'm a convert, having recently sent in my application to join the FFI chapter in Montreal. If the people I met on this trip, both American and Russian, are typical of Friendship Force members, I can't think of a nicer group to join.

Addendum in early January, 2017. I was very sorry to learn that Carol Ann and her husband were burned out of their homestead on Christmas Day. They survived, fortunately, but the house was totally destroyed. My thoughts and prayers go out to them.

Circum Baikal Railway

Baikal, the enormous lake in eastern Siberia, is a place of superlatives--deepest lake in the world, oldest lake in the world, a UNESCO world heritage site containing more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined. It even has a species of seal called the nerpa, a small rotund animal found nowhere else on earth. The rare Barguzin sable, prized by furriers, can be found along its shores.
However, Baikal is not easy to explore. Much of it is inaccessible by road. Hikers roam trails along the lake, but many of them are steep and forbidding. One way to see a lot of the lake on a day trip, and to enjoy some early 20th century railway architecture, is to travel on the Circum Baikal Railway along the shore of the lake from Port Baikal to Kultuk. This involves taking a bus from Irkutsk to the lake, then a short boat ride to Port Baikal where you board the tourist train. The trip can take up to 12 hours and costs about $50. The price does not include meals or drinks, and travellers are advised to bring their own. At some stops there may be people selling drinks and local delicacies such as smoked omul, but you could be very hungry by the time you reach them.
The train makes five stops where passengers can explore the surroundings, marvel at the engineering and architectural achievements of the builders, and even take a dip in the crystal clear but usually frigid water. On the return trip to Irkutsk the Circum Baikal uses the track of the Trans Siberian Railway, so even if you don't have time to take that fabled train you get to ride on some of its track and roadbed.
I'm a train lover and enjoyed this small train very much. But even if you aren't, it offers a good way to see remote stretches of the lake if you don't have your own transportation. You pass by small wooden homes accessible only by water, and catch a glimpse of the real Siberia away from the cities.

Below, some passengers disembarking from the Circum Baikal train.