Greater-than-Great lake hidden in Siberian expanse

Nearly everyone knows of Siberia, Russia’s vast Asiatic expanse of land. Many people believe… Nearly everyone knows of Siberia, Russia’s vast Asiatic expanse of land. Many people believe it to be a land of frozen tundra, home to the misery of Soviet gulags.

Few deny this, but that is not all of Siberia.

Farther south, away from the Arctic area, lies a strip of tranquil grasslands warmed by the summer sun. One of nature’s great wonders remains unspoiled by its isolation here.

Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater lake, is 400 miles long and holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, as much as all five Great Lakes. Surrounded by mountains, forests and the rivers that feed into it, the lake is often hard to approach. The Trans-Siberian Railroad curves around its southern end, a section that took four years to complete.

Baikal drains into one river, the Angara, which flows from the southwest corner of the kidney-shaped lake. On both sides of the Angara’s mouth are villages, guards of the waters — one from the past and one for the future.

In Listvyanka, on the eastern side, the cultures of the region come together for display. Hotels and restaurants are open for Russian tourists and foreign visitors who stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Kiosks line the streets and sell postcards, native art and other souvenirs.

Some stands specialize in jewelry made from charoite, a mineral unique to the shores of Baikal. Every charoite merchant insists that the stone is rare, but it appears by the ton everywhere along the lakefront.

The interior of Listvyanka sits on the muddy fields away from the stony beaches of Lake Baikal. Small streams come off the hills above and wind between houses. A modest Russian Orthodox church sits in the center of the flats, passed by people and livestock.

Cows, and sometimes reindeer, wander the streets as if unmastered. The Sayats, an ethnic group native to this area of Siberia, still herd reindeer on the shores of Baikal, and many of the other indigenous peoples practice their old traditions.

The Buryats, a people closely related to the Mongolians, went through considerable hardships during the Soviet regime. Stalin’s forces destroyed artifacts of shamanism and stripped them of many of their lands. After the fall of the Soviet Union began in 1990, the Buryats went through a renaissance of art and religion.

Now, many Buryats practice ancient shamanism and study the heroic epics in ancient Buryat poetry. They live in relative harmony with the ethnic Russians around them, but one can occasionally hear the quiet undertones of racism.

“They came from Mongolia, yes?” says one merchant in the nearby village of Nikola. “This isn’t Mongolia anymore. They should go back.”

Where there is charoite being sold, omuls are never far away. Native to Lake Baikal, this herring-like fish is roasted in a large metal bin and sold on a wooden stick to be eaten. One person calls it a “fish kabob.”

“You cannot swim in the lake without one of these swimming next to you,” a merchant says, holding an omul high into the air.

On the sunny spring day, less than a week after the lake’s surface had thawed, dozens of villagers and tourists sit on the shore under Listvyanka’s main road, drinking Baltika beer and eating omul. A marriage procession weaves along the beach, and the people get up to cheer. Some walk up and kiss the bride, and the groom seems too happy to care.

Across the Angara, the cliffs keep the opposite village in shadow from the sun. Port Baikal is a smaller village with few shops and no amenities for tourists. Most of the town consists of docks and shipyards, where vessels of various types and sizes float on the gentle currents, bound for land. Several workmen weld a deck plate onto the side of a large ship as the wake of a smaller white ship bobs the hull up and down. The men yell and curse in the direction of the vessel, but their voices are drowned out by the roar of its motor.

The white ship is a Yaroslavets, the most common boat in Lake Baikal. Tourists hire the boats from Listvyanka and other towns to view the areas less accessible from land. This boat is headed for the mountains on the eastern shores of the lake, still capped with snow in late May.

An old rail yard, left by the Baikal-Amur Railroad, occupies most of the short flats that sit between the lake and the cliffs. Some people have built houses and even gardens into the palisades above the docks. A man drives a battered Minsk motorcycle across the rail yard and to his home, where he picks up a sack of produce he had grown off the cliffs. He then drives back and boards the ferry to Listvyanka.

“Omul leaves your mouth dry,” he says. “People will pay a lot for some moist vegetables.”

After dusk, both towns are little more than glows of electric lights and the occasional fire built on the beach. A group of Australian tourists strip off their clothes and run into Lake Baikal, still chilly from its recent thaw.

“The Russians told us it was superstition that people who run into icy water will live forever,” says one woman as she shivers, a companion wrapping a towel around her. “Now, I don’t have to fear death.”

A couple villagers stand at the road, shaking their heads and chuckling.

“It is ridiculous,” one says. “They’ll probably catch cold and drop dead.”