Winter Trekking at Lake Baikal, Siberia

Siberia. The name conjures up images of a desolate, wild space. It's a word I associate with tundras and steppes, both of which sound equally foreign and uninhabitable, all the more so to a girl who grew up in an overcrowded city. It's where, in World War II, the Polish were deported by the hundreds of thousands and left to die. In short - not a place I ever imagined myself visiting.

Thinking back now I'm not sure exactly what gave rise to this trip. Did I decide on Siberia because it was close to Mongolia? Or was it vice versa? I don't remember, but one way or another, I found myself in Siberia, in winter, in Lake Baikal, in the middle of an ice diving course. 

The journey to Siberia wasn't particularly difficult. It took a little over twenty-four hours by train, and some time in the middle of the night we crossed the border between Mongolia and Russia. An agile team of women in military uniforms scoured the compartments for contraband while burly men in fur hats paced the corridors with their dogs, before they all swept back out into the bitter cold. 

By daylight, the scenery that sped by our windows remained constant for hours - swathes of white broken by dark streaks of birches and pines and the occasional wooden house. Then, as we rounded a bend, the great Lake came into view. This would be home for the next seven days.

After I was done with my ice diving course, I took a day to explore the little village of Listvyanka. Village may be a bit of a misnomer. What it is is a stretch of road about five kilometers long, along which houses have sprung up between a ski resort at one end and a market at the other. Around the halfway mark there is a pub with a taxidermied grizzly bear. You have to pay ten roubles to take a photo with it.

The next day, my guide picked me up at my guest house and we started our trek. In winter there are two options when trekking around Baikal: over ice (pro: flat; con: slippery) and over land (pro: not slippery; con: hilly). I chose what seemed like the easier option - an ice trek.

Boy, was I ever wrong! The surface was nowhere near as flat as it seemed, and I must have fallen at least five times over six hours. Each step had to be so measured and deliberate that I woke up every morning with muscle aches. My entire shin was one horrible bruise. We ended up walking in a meandering fashion from snow patch to snow patch, which gave us slightly more grip against the slipperiness.

Along the way there would be these crazy booms and creaks as the ice shifted under us. At times we heard the crack heading in our direction, getting louder and louder with every snap, and we would stop in our tracks and wait for it to quieten back down. I didn't think our weight would make much of a difference, but you never know - on our return we heard that the Ukranian ex-President's son had drowned that very day in Baikal, when his vehicle had fallen through the ice.

We settled down for the night at Chernaya Valley, a place whose name translates to "Dark Valley" in English because, nestled between two hills, it gets only a few hours of direct sunlight each day. It houses a collection of log cabins with musty bedsheets, and a surly caretaker stays alone there for the large part of the year.

I managed to get some time in a traditional Russian banya, which may be the singular best invention in the shower industry. I must have stayed in there for over an hour. And when I stepped out - the night sky absolutely blew me away.

The next day we continued our trek to Bolchie Koty, a gold mining settlement that sprang into existence two hundred years ago. The mines have since ran dry though, and the village is now in a semi-abandoned state. There are houses with doors hanging off their frames and broken tractors littering the landscape, and decidedly more dogs than humans the day we were there.

So why Bolchie Koty? Only because it is surrounded by hiking trails, making it a good base from which to explore this stretch of Baikal. Unfortunately the trails were made precarious this particular month by heavy snowfall and unseasonal warmth, which transformed the surface of the tracks into icy layers of mud. It was a shamefully tough climb up to Scripper's Cliff. Towards the end we even had to walk along a pointy ridge, and I have to admit my legs went a bit wobbly .

After that we headed into the alpine forest to look for the old mine. The snow was knee-deep at times, and you could tell no one had been here in a while. The mine - or what remained of it - turned out to be nothing more than a pile of rubble; locals had chopped it up for firewood, since the surrounding forest is protected as part of a National Park.

The highlight of the trip dawned with the sunrise on the third day. A dog-sled ride! I was already waiting eagerly by the pier as the sound of dogs barking drew nearer and nearer.

When they finally came within sight, I was surprised at how small they were. And no Siberian huskies!

If you think this is cruel though - and I did have some misgivings initially - don't worry. You can tell that the dogs thought of this as play. Part of the way they were tossing an old boot amongst themselves, and they were constantly nuzzling each other as they ran. After every break, you could actually hear the excitement in their voices as they whined and strained to start running.

As we neared Listvyanka, there was the most beautiful sight of a fog rolling in over the mountains. Then, in a rush of events I hardly remember, I was back in town and getting into a car that would deliver me to Irkutsk International Airport, and back home.