The JaYmes Escape

The sweat is pouring down me and the heat is permeating to the bottom of my lungs. My new comrades jump up and run out into the Siberian drizzle, grabbing a towel on the way, and I follow. It’s not cold by local standards but the I can feel the blood pumping through my veins. One of the guys laughs as he fills a small bucket from a large barrel of water and tips it over himself. He laughs harder as he fills it again before running and throwing it over me.

I’m in Listvyanka on the western shores of Lake Baikal, home to 20% of the world’s fresh water and a unique species of fish called Omul. Litsvyanka is one of the few places in Russia to have a tourist information office, though this is rather a grand name for a desk in a room by the bus station that’s staffed by a friendly lady who doesn’t speak English. Ya Khauchu Deshovy Gastinitsa (I want a cheap hotel)”, has led me to an outside room in the garden of a local family, who have invited me to join some friends in their Banya. It’s a bit like a sauna, but hotter and with the addition of leafy branches which are boiled before being used for an all-over scrub, or more accurately, thrashing.

As you might expect, the Banya experience is followed by another authentic Russian experience. The group sit me down, feed me fresh Omul and keep filling my glass with local Vodka. We talk in a mixture of pidgin Russian, pidgin English and the odd word of pidgin French well into the night; they tell me all their names and professions which I immediately forget, and I reiterate the tale of my journey from Australia, which by now is getting quite detailed in Russian.

I awake the next morning and find myself comfortably in my bed, but without much memory of how I got there. Nor do I have much memory of how I managed to break the roughly made table that was beside me. Still, there’s nothing quite like an authentic Banya and vodka session on the shores of Lake Baikal. Having paid my board on arrival, I carefully write out a thankyou note (in Russian) and leave it with some bottles of beer before I slip away to have a walk beside the water and look for some sort of bus to take me back to Irkutsk.