We thought Yekaterinburg was unique in having a line painted on the floor around the city, guiding tourists around the main attractions, yet when we arrived in Irkutsk we found they had exactly the same set up in place. As it worked well in Yekaterinburg why not have it in Irkutsk (which is the administrative capital of Russia) too! Although Irkutsk is in Siberia, we had come at a fortunate time of the year, as the weather was fair and excellent for wandering around the city.

One of the main reasons visitors get off the Trans Mongolian/Trans Sibertain train at Irkutsk is to use it as a base camp to make a trip to Lake Baikal which is the largest freshwater lake in the world and we were no exceptions. So after a day of walking 5km along the green line tourist trail, in the evening we went out for dinner and enjoyed a cocktail for a little bit of luxury before we spent a few days in a more basic, rural settings.

Our journey took us several hours by a combination of a minibus to the edge of Lake Baikal followed by a Ferry to take us onto Olkhon Island which is a 280 square mile (730 square kilometres) island in the middle of the lake, the fourth largest island inside a lake in the world.

Olkhon Island was like being transported to a different world; surrounded by beautiful views and landscapes in all directions; really wide dust track style roads with basic buildings sporadically constructed at the sides and a view of the incredible Lake Baikal which whilst nearly entirely liquid did still have some patches of ice yet to melt as the seasons transitioned away from the freezing Siberian winter. On our first afternoon/evening on the island, we wandered around the beach area near to our accommodation and ultimately took in the amazing sunset (vowing to make a timelapse of it the following day).

The following day we had a full day excursion going around the island and getting views from various vantage points, we were taken around in an offroad van which was most certainly required for the rough roads/tracks and enabled to reach views where there is nothing but rugged landscape behind and Lake Baikal and mountains in front.

Everywhere we visited on the island left us looking around in amazement, the natural beauty surrounds you wherever you are, from towering mountains to deserted beaches and from melting ice to miles of untouched rugged land.

For lunch, some soup was prepared for us traditionally over a fire, whilst we looked over the beautiful scenery and our guide cooked, a group of three French people who travelled with us put some music on in our van, it was quite surreal listening to their musical tastes whilst sitting in such an amazing setting.

After a long day of driving and hiking around various parts of the island, we returned to our accommodation for dinner, all our meals were cooked for us by Olga the owner of our guesthouse and were delicious. On this occasion we couldn’t sit around for long afterwards and relax as Steve was determined to get a time-lapse recording of the sun setting based on how spectacular it was yesterday – sadly it wasn’t meant to be, clouds covered the sky which admittedly creates an interesting pattern in the sky, but not quite the bright orange sunset we had seen the night before (but we aren’t too disheartened, we hear that the sunsets in Fiji that we’ll experience later this year are second to none).

It is hard to appreciate that people live on Olkhon Island, it is like nowhere else we have been, a little village in the middle surrounded by green with a few houses dotted around. The closest we had ever seen to Olkhon Island is pictures of the wild west from TV programs. When we were briefly lost on the island a local was keen to help, he didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t know the name of our guesthouse (which proved to be hard to find at first, given there aren’t any street signs or road names) he asked to see a photo of our guesthouse, which seemed like an unusual request but we had one from our booking confirmation, he looked at it blankly and pointed at his face and asked again for a photo, we flipped to the next photo on our smartphone which showed Olga, the owner of the guesthouse, and immediately he knew who she was, and where her guesthouse was. With such a small community it is no surprise everyone must know each other.

We only spent a couple of days on Olkhon Island but we loved every minute of it. Other than the music our French travel companions had played in the van it had been a couple of days of tranquillity, hearing only the sounds of nature as birds flew around or trees rustled and creaked in the wind, even when we spoke with other travellers in the guesthouse, the island had instilled a sense of calm which meant everyone talked quietly, more interested to hear what each other had to say rather than talk about their own experiences. We could have easily spent several more days exploring other parts of the island, but we had a train to catch, so we had to say our farewells and then travel back to Irkutsk for a final night there before we got back aboard the Trans-Mongolian train to head to our next destination: Mongolia.

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