Travel and Recreation company Eastland offers you unique assembly tours on Lake Baikal. Together with us you will make an unforgettable journey around Baikal Small and Big Rings highlighting some reserved localities of the holy sea.
Tour dates:
Starting point of the tour is Irkutsk city – the capital of Eastern Siberia! It’s an ancient city with fascinating history which started as ostrog (Siberian wooden fortress) in taiga (Siberian dense coniferous forest) and soon developed into a modern city. In 2011 Irkutsk will celebrate its 350-th anniversary of origin.
The double-topped rock Shamanka on Olkhon refers to 9 holy places of Asia. In the part of the mountain exposed to the shore there is a through-cave used for sacrificial offerings and religious rites in the past. You will go on a tour along the picturesque Baikal mountain ranges.
The city was established in 1666 as a Cossack winter quarters on the right bank of the Selenga River. In 1678 it already became known as ostrog (local name for Siberian wooden fort) – outpost within the eastward sweep of Russian Cossacks. Today it is a modern city numbering the population of 373 000.
Listvyanka is an ancient settlement on the shore of Baikal.
You will set out on a picturesque road to Listvyanka. You may have a stop at the 47-th km of Baikal motorway and to visit an amazing open-air museum “Taltsi” featuring preserved monuments of wooden architecture.
Listvyanka attracts tourists by its proximity to the lake and the river head of the Angara. In this locality you can visit St.Nikolas church made of logs, Baikal museum which boasts genuine Baikal nerpas (seals) and also souvenir and fish markets.
Here dishes of Siberian cuisine are available for you to taste, particularly the so called sagudai – amazingly tasty dish made of fresh omul.
The Chersky stone is an observation ground located at the height of 700 meters. You can get up there either by chair-lift or on foot – the latter will take you some 30 minutes.
Olkhon is a sacred place on Lake Baikal. This first large island is often called a small planet for being abundant in landscapes: unique steppe areas, sandy dunes, mountainous terrains, relic spruce grove.
Tusk-shaped cape Khoboy is the very northern point of the largest Baikal island overlooking peninsula Holy Nose.
Within your tour you will feast your eyes with fascinating sandy bays, have a stop at the spots sacred for the locals of the island: The Three Brothers Rock, The Cape of Love and Sagan-Khushin.
Ogoy Island features a Buddhist stupa of Enlightenment which was erected here a few years ago on private donations. Moreover, you will visit a Buryat settlement which enables you to learn about way of life and traditions of local inhabitants. Olkhon is an island where legends and stories will do for every single one. You will get to know everything about shamanism as the island is thought to be the motherland of shamans of the Northern and Central Asia. You will hear a legend about a white-headed eagle living upon the highest mountain of the island – Zhima Mountain, about the master of Olkhon – Khan Khutae Baabay who chose Shamanka Rock as his spiritual earthly palace.
Severobaikalsk is a young city which popped up during the construction of Baikal-Amur Mainline. The North of Baikal has a reputation with tourists for its hot springs. Thousands of tourists keep coming here in order to view this natural wonder.
Hot water of the Khakusy springs is radon and sulphurous in composition. The water temperature of the spring is 46º. The springs aid rheumatism, radiculitis, arthronosos, deseases of bones, nervous and skin deseases. “Khaku” (or “akushi”) is Evenki for “hot”.
Old Believers – Semeiskye present a bright and ancient branch of the Russian people, a piece of pre-Petrine Moscovia.
The land of singular beauty spreads down the south from the capital of Buryatia – Ulan-Ude: high mountains and mountain ranges, century-old pine-forests, sandy nicks and water-meadows in river valleys. Tarbagataiskiy district is located right here. Totally 22 villages and settlements of the district number over 18000 people. For the most part they are made up by Old Believers – “semeiskye”.
Old Believers are a part of the Russian population who gave up on the innovation and kept practicing their old faith, rites and way of life. In return they were subject to cruelest repressions, many more of them had to run away to free lands to Terek, the Don, beyond the Urals and a lot of them even escaped abroad, to Poland.
Ingenuity and peculiar polyphonic singing technique which embodies a lot of quite special methods should be highly estimated.
Ivolginsky datsan was founded in 1946, at present it houses the residence of head of the Russian Buddhist church. The datsan covering the area of 3 hectares is 30 km distant from the capital of Buryatia. Ivolginsky datsan keeps the incorruptible body of Dashi Dorzho Itigelov. Up till 1917 he was the leader of Russian Buddhists. Itigelov died in 1927 in the pose of lotus during meditation and was berried afterwards. According to his will, they opened the sarcophagus with his body in 2002. It appeared that the body was without any decay. The joints are moving and the skin is firm. By means of infrared spectrophotometry the protein fractions of Khambo Lama were detected to have preserved vital characteristics. The following phenomenon lacks any scientific explanation and from the medical point of view is considered to be absolutely impossible.
Exciting tour program featuring getting off the train in the most interesting localities along the Old Baikal Railway in the company of a guide is reserved for you.
The Old Baikal Railway is the unique monument of engineering architecture. It is “a golden buckle on the steel belt of Russia”. This section of 84 km was the hardest on the entire Transsibirean Railway (from Kultuk to Baikal stations). From the point of the number of various works carried out for 1 km of the cut the Old Baikal Railway left behind all the railways in the world. This rout section numbers 424 engineering structures which include 38 tunnels with the total length 9063 m., 15 stone galleries 295 m long totally and ferro-concrete galleries with holes, 248 bridges and viaducts, 268 retaining walls. Tunnels and galleries of the Old Baikal Railway are unique for being constructed by non-typical projects and were not reconstructed in the following years thus preserving the initial idea of architects and engineers of early XX-th century.
Sluydyanka is a large railway point of Eastern Siberian Railroad, the center of marble mining.
The name of Slyudyanka speaks volumes about it being rich in mica which one used to extract in the past (the Russian for “mica” is “sluyda”).
Slyudyanka railway station was opened in 1905, the locality gained official town status in 1936.
It is Baikal that lures you tempting peoples’ souls by its mightiness, wondrous beauty, crystal-clear water, legends, by its great power. Anyone who ever comes to Baikal for the first time feels almost as high as rapture for getting here and giving a touch to eternity, for having grasped their way in this world and gone through enlightenment and purification. Mountain ranges with snow-covered peaks, the azure of water, bright colors of the steppes, trees growing from the sand, intoxicating sense of freedom, endless wides taken the breath of those living in suffocating megapolices away – all this will float before your eyes over and over again attracting you to these places like a magnet. And you will definitely come back to Baikal for these sensations.
You will visit Orthodox and Buddhist sacred places, shamans’ (witch doctors) Meccas. You will be introduced to a sacred spot – Olkhon Island. This powerful place boasts the so called Shamanka rock which was included in the list of 9 Asian sacred places. You will visit Ivolginsky datsan – the center of Russian Buddhism keeping the incorruptible body of Khambo-Lama Dashi-Darzho Itigelov. Besides, visiting the capitals of Irkutsk Oblast and Buryatia – Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude is reserved for you.
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