January 2019

My dream of Lake Baïkal

Sometime in early winter 2018/19, I heard about Sylvain Tesson and his book about his six-month stay in a hut on the frozen, wintery Lake Baïkal. I had seen pictures of the lake in documentaries here and there before and was drawn to it, but the undertaking of getting there seemed unattainable. Then I heard about Tesson's¹ book Dans les forêts de Sibérie (available in German: In den Wäldern Sibiriens: Tagebuch aus der Einsamkeit) and read it. The spark ignited and I began to dream of the Baïkal. My friend Nicolas Navazo, who was largely raised by his Russian grandfather, had the intention of traveling to Russia in the footsteps of his grandfather, who had to go through all the wars of the first half of the 20th century and ended up as an immigrant in Paris. So we got together and planned the trip² to Baïkal. Nico was also busy learning Russian, which turned out to be very helpful.

This Ural (Russian BMW copy) stood in the middle of the lake for the spring, when the ice no longer supports the Buchankas

Our plan was to travel to Irkutsk via Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway, stopping off in Novosibirsk and Tomsk. From Irkutsk, we booked an 8-day excursion on the frozen lake, and as luck would have it, we found a one-woman agency (Irina from BaikalVoyage) that specialized in fans of Sylvain Tesson and offered a visit to Tesson's hut as the culmination of the trip. In Irkutsk, we even spent the night in the same guesthouse Nina as Tesson!

Our trek is marked in red

Lake Baikal is located in the south of Siberia north of Mongolia, roughly at central European latitudes. Due to the continental climate, it still gets very cold there in winter (-35ºC), so that an ice cover 1-1.5 m thick forms. The lake can then be navigated with all kinds of vehicles. In the Travel tips I give many tips for those interested in Russia. If you fly directly to Irkutsk, you don't even need a lot of time for this adventure (I strongly recommend using the Trans-Siberian, however), and financially everything is kept within limits, Russia has a price level at 1/3 of Germany.

Sylvain Tesson 2011 before his accident, today his face is paralyzed on one side

Sylvain Tesson]: (1972) is a French travel writer in the classic style of Bruce Chatwin or Norman Lewis. He writes very personally and combines travel with history, literature and introspection to create an extremely entertaining read. I also like him because his books tend to be short. Several of his books have been translated into German. Dans les Forets de Siberie]: In the forests of Siberia : diary from solitude. Translation Claudia Kalscheuer. Munich : btb, 2016 ISBN 978-3-442-71343-1

a craftsman like me.

From La Rochelle to Moscow

Naturally, the Frenchman takes the train to the airport and then swings off into the distance. However, at the time of our planning at the end of 2019, there were unforeseeable strikes in France due to the pension reform, and we definitely didn't want our trip to fall victim to a strike. The time-consuming visa procedure also didn't allow us any leeway for the start. So we booked a flight to London from our front door with Ryanair. Unfortunately, Ryanair only flew every 2nd day, so we visited our friends in North London for one night.

England

February 21, 2020

Well, so...

Wake up at 7:30am, last luggage check and off we go to the airport in La Rochelle, where I meet Nicolas, who was driven by his sister Sophie.

9:55am arrival at Stansted, three different trains and £45 later we arrive at Hemel Hemstead at 12:30pm where our friend Paul Jenkins picks us up. The Jenkins house is surprisingly rural in style, a whitewashed brick building with lots of dormer windows and outbuildings, a large house from the inside with a huge lawn, pool and tennis court behind the house and a clear view of the middle of nowhere. The dogs greet us exuberantly, the (grown-up) children Caleb, Del and Joe are not long in coming. We spend a lovely evening together eating Pakistani food and discussing nutrition. Del, as a personal trainer, is naturally just as interested in the subject as the rest of the family.

Buddy and Marley were infatuated with us and didn't want to let us go

 England February 22, 2020

After a good English breakfast coffee, Paul drives us to Heathrow for lunch. As always, the M25 is a cause for concern with a traffic jam, but it clears up in good time. The security at Heathrow is over-the-top, it's unbearable the harassment millions of people have to put up with every day because of our different... politics. After a pizza, we fly on time via Amsterdam to Moscow, where we arrive in the morning around 2am.

-> Moscow