russia: severobaikalsk

When I planned this trip I knew I wanted to see as much of Lake Baikal as possible, from different viewpoints. It made sense to visit Severobaikalsk, which is at the northern end of the lake, but is not listed on tourist web pages.

Severobaikalsk has around 25,000 people, it's not big. I didn't see any Lenin statues, which says something as well. (It's entirely possible I missed the man, if he was somewhere in the city park, but he was not marked on a map, not even by Yandex.)

Severobaikalsk is not close to anywhere. If you want to, it's a 76 hour drive, covering 5500 kilometers from Moscow. Or if you start out at Irkutsk, it is still 800 kilometers, with 12 hours of driving time. I assume these times are assuming good driving conditions, so it would probably take longer in reality.

Severobaikalsk was founded in 1974, so it's a really new city, which explains the monotonous look of everything. The location was picked so it could be a support base for the building of the BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline) train line.

I doubt I'll ever ride the 'traditional' Trans Siberian railway, since I've seen cities all along the route and I'm not keen to ride the train just to say I did. That being said, I'd consider riding the rest of the length of the BAM, because it goes through a different part of the country, with different landscapes to see.

My train from Irkutsk was 38 hours. It arrived at 0950 or so in Severobaikalsk, a couple minutes late. Though it was just a couple minutes, that's not the norm for the Russian train system, no matter how long the train had been going.

The train station is unique, to say the least. Apparently it is supposed to look like a boat, but I don't see that at all. To me it just looks 'modern.' The guidebook only lists three sights in the city, the train station is one of them, and it didn't have a good ceiling!

The walk to my accomodation didn't take long, only 10 minutes or so. During that ten minutes I realized Severobaikalsk is boring. Really really boring. Given what I know of the history and founding of the city, that makes sense. It was purpose built, and still serves the same general capacity.

Checking into my hostel was challenging as the lady behind the desk didn't want to look at her computer to check me in. Maybe the computer wasn't linked to any sort of system, but it was frustrating to try to say yes, I have a reservation, I made it three weeks ago.

Eventually I got into my bed, which was in a female dorm. I ended up having the whole room to myself, which was nice. I discovered the floors were heated, so guess who laid on the floor for a while, just because it felt good.

Eventually I got back out the door to start exploring what little there is to see in Severobaikalsk. 

I wanted to find a memorial to 35 years of the BAM railroad, but I couldn't find it. Oh well. When I tried to find it on the map I ended up finding a Buddhist temple instead.

The outside of the temple wasn't very interesting, but there were prayer flags and wheels all over. The inside was as colourful and faith filled as I've come to expect from a Buddhist temple. There was a small Buddha on the front wall of the temple, as well as benches and cushions to use in prayer.

Almost directly across the street from the Buddhist temple was a small Orthodox church.

Well, I can't say the size for sure, as it was behind locked wooden walls. The domes looked nice though, from what I could see.

My next stop was a church I could actually enter. The church of Kazan, or something along those lines. The outside of the church was white, with gold crosses on top. The inside was white as well, except for the chandeliers and iconostasis.

From there it was a 30 minute walk or so to my last official sight of the day: the BAM history museum. There was also an art gallery to look through. Both of them were only one room, and both had an entrance fee and a photo fee. REALLY? Argh. 

Neither was all that impressive, though I was able to buy postcards, which was awesome.

From there I walked across the pedestrian bridge over the train station and tracks, and followed the path down to the lakeshore. I'm pretty sure there is a beach there in summer, but this was most definitely NOT summer. There were a couple picnic table like things, with 'umbrellas' over them, but they didn't very inviting while covered in snow and icicles.

I walked a bit, then turned around and came back. Like my first day around Olkhon Island, the sky was white, so there wasn't much of a different between the sky and frozen lake. 

I wanted to go further, but knowing my sense of direction, I wouldn't have made it back to town as intended.

I walked back toward my hostel, stopping at a supermarket along the way. Traveling by myself makes dinner a lot cheaper :)

The original plan for the next day was to go to a small town called Nizhneangarsk for a day trip, but I couldn't figure out the transportation for that to happen. Oh well. Instead I took my sweet time getting out of bed, playing around online, organizing photos a little, and eating breakfast before packing up and checking out.

Since there was nothing left in town for me to see, I walked toward the lake front again, following a path through trees up on the hill. It was a quiet walk, a nice one. There were clear paths, so I know I wasn't the only one who had wandered around over the past days. The walk wasn't that long though, partly because it was snowing the entire time.

At that point I went back to the city center, found a cafe, and spent the next few hours there. Then I picked up my pack from the hostel, went to another cafe, and spent a couple more hours there. Finally I spent the last two hours before train departure at the train station.

I doubt I'll be back to Severobaikalsk, though I wouldn't mind seeing some of the hot springs in the area.