Thursday, November 03, 2005

The Great Baikal Trail

Today I did a lot of research on the Lake Baikal area.
A few weeks ago, I was surfing the internet for info on the Trans-Siberian Railroad journey, and I found an awesome hiking tour that starts in Irkutsk, by Lake Baikal, and goes up north along the coast and into some of the mountains surrounding the world's deepest lake. You hike the whole way, or you can choose to kayak part of the hike. You camp over-night, and the excursion was 5 days.
The problem was the price. On the website, they advertised $310/person. That was great! But when I e-mailed them, they said the price changed to about $700/person, which didn't include hourly rent of kayaks, or the guide! What a rip off!
Then I found another website that offered a very similar tour, for about half the price. But today, I found the PRIZE!
I've been searching for a website that just has info for hiking/outdoor activities around Lake Baikal without the whole "tour" thing. The site is BaikalHostels.com and its packed with lots of great info, including a site which just sells hiking maps of different regions of Siberia: shop.baikalplan.de. Its great!

Well, today I bought this map, called "Great Baikal Trail from Listvyanka to Buguldeika," and it includes 4 hikes that those two tour companies were charging hundreds of dollars for:

1) Listvyanka - Bolschoi Koty (18km)
2) Bolschoi Kotuy - Bolschoi Goloustnoye (35km)
3) Bolschoi Goloustnoye - Bukhta Peschanaya (46km)
4) Bukhta Peschanaya - Buguldeika (45km)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good comments. But, I do not agree with most of them. People sure have a lot of time on their hands.