Our hostel in Irkutsk arranged our transport to Orkhon Island on Lake Baikal, and other than an incredibly uncomfortable drive there (we were packed into and old minivan on tiny seats), we made it safe and sound to our guesthouse for the next four nights. It was nice to stop somewhere for a while.

Lake Baikal is a highlight, and classic stop for everyone doing the trans-Siberian route. The lake itself is 636km long and has a maximum width of 74km. It contains c.22% of the world's fresh water and is considered one of the clearest and cleanest in the world. So clearly (haha get it?) it is unmissable if you are in the area.

Khuzhir, the main town on Okrhon Island can only be described as un-lovely. It had a real ramshackle nature about it with messy wooden houses lining the dusty dirt roads. Given it is a big tourist destination, I somehow expected something a little more tidy. Usually, you can say that places like that are "charming", but this wasn't. Anyway we weren't here for the town, we were here for the scenery and the lake.

Unfortunately the smoke from the horrendous wildfires burning out of control in Siberia (relatively near to us) were shrouding the island in smoke haze. For the first two days we couldn't see the hills that surrounded the town, nor the other side of the lake.

Despite this, we had a good wander round town, and booked on an excursion to see the north of the island.

My Russian (and Google translate) were now coming in handy as there was very little English on the Island and whilst we were lucky with our first couple of meal options (they had English on the menu), the supplementary things meant I had to try and remember words.

The day of our tour was not only smokey, but foggy too! Still, with everyone else we went on the tour.

At this point I will pause to tell you about "everyone else". Lonely Planet mentions that Chinese tourism has increased massively over the past few years as a song about Lake Baikal won a contest in China. It wasn't lying! I can't give you numbers or a percentage, but if I use our bus over to the island as an example, there were 17 of us on the bus. Five of us were not Chinese or Korean. This was pretty representative of what we saw on the Island.

We also met a really nice Argentinian girl on the bus over, we would bump into her again (and again) on the tour. We also managed to give her our remaining Mongolian money (and enthuse to her about how wonderful we found Mongolia).

On our tour we had two French and five Russians in our UAZ (good ole UAZs, they were all the tour vehicles on Orkhon as the roads were even worse than Mongolia!). It took a little while to warm up, but we finally met some friendly Russians!!

I feel really bad as I can't remember her name, but Sasha and his wife could speak a little bit more English than I could speak Russian, but we got through! In a mixture of sort of English and sort of Russian, we did the: where are we all from (I know that one), where were we going (I know that one too), how old were we (going well so far) did we have kids (we showed them Monkey and bonded with Sacha's wife who showed us a picture of her "daughter", a lovely fluffy tabby cat). They asked us about sharks and crocodiles. We got given Russian brandy, it wasn't too bad.

It was just a shame we couldn't see anything.

The boat ride back was very slow, but because of the fog and smoke (and a little bit of rain), at least we didn't get burnt...

The next day of course was clear and sunny, the smoke haze was minimal and no fog. We therefore went and took all the photos again around town (and discovered there were wooded hills surrounding the town), and went for a swim in Lake Baikal. The scenery was very beautiful, when you could see it (the town was still unlovely).

You may remember the quick dip we took in Lake Khuvsgul, well in comparison Lake Baikal which is a lot deeper and wider was a warm bath. Well, it was probably about 18-20 degrees. We even took our waterproof fake go-pro for a swim with us to prove we were there! I can't really portray how surreal it was sunbathing on a sandy beach, having gone for a swim in the world's largest fresh water lake, in Siberia. I guess because, travelling.

Next day it was back to Irkutsk for a few hours (where we saw it in the sun and rain) to wait for our overnight train to Krasnoyask.

Whilst we were in Irkutsk, the best thing we saw was some Hare Krishna's singing and playing instruments at the base of Lenin's statue... Hahaha I bet the old man was spinning in his mausoleum!