Camping in Siberia!!

We have spent the last week camping and trekking the Circumbaikal railway. It runs around Lake Baikal, the biggest fresh water lake in the world. The lake is beautiful, it is really cold and looks more like the sea due to its size. The trekking was flat but difficult because there was little path so we had to walk along the sleepers of the railway line jumping out the way for passing trains and we were carrying heavy packs. We walked 20km most days with the lake on our right and steep grassy hills to the left. David Attenbrough would have loved it, there were so many strange bugs at one point Glen had over 100 bites!! Each night Glen made a fire and we cooked noodles and ate nuts (the lack of fibre in our diet certainly didn't go unoticed!!) and we drank from and washed in the lake.

After 5 days we arrived in Port Baikal, it was a very small town of several wooden houses, a school, a train station and a boat dock. Most of the boats and buildings seem derelict and rotten and there were horses and dogs wandering around wild. It must be so hard to live here, Glen and i stand out with big rucksacks and waterproof coats when the locals are wearing shorts and t-shirt and flipflops with socks. Lots of the people of this town look hardend to the cold of the winter, it goes down to minus 40, and the lack of basic hygine shows. Many people have wonky or missing teath and in the citys lots have whole mouthfuls of gold caps. The roads are basic and people use motorbikes with side cars. We got a boat across the water to another town, Listvyanka. It felt so luxurious to have a bed in a small wooden house even though there was no running water and the toilet was outside.