Unable To Have Kids

Day 5, Mon, 7/27

Irkutsk, Russia.

Dizzy from lack of sleep, we quickly showered, broke our fast and headed out with sunscreen and swimming shorts. Although JW and I had arrived with different plans and without knowledge of each other’s existence, I convinced him the night before to travel according to my plans. Originally, he had wanted to tour the town of Irkutsk all day and visit Lake Baikal the next, for the lake was over an hour away. But since my train left tonight at 2:54 in the morning, I reasoned that we should have enough time to tour Irkutsk for most of the day and jump in Lake Baikal during the evening. That meant that first we had to go to the train station to make sure there was a seat left for JW on tonight’s transsiberian. It was highly unlikely and both of them said that there was no use; if you wanted a seat on the transsiberian, especially during the summer, you were advised to buy a ticket about a month ahead of time.

There was exactly one seat left. Yesss. This is what I love about the freedom of traveling: if you want to do something, the answer is to do it. Also, like I mentioned in my first entry, since traveling is so dependent on random factors - the weather, meeting travel buddies, accidentally staying up all night, etc. - the best way to plan your trip is to barely have anything planned at all. If, for example, JW had bought a different ticket ahead of time, we wouldn’t have been able to go on a four-day train ride together. In the end, such random, independent events tend to fall into place somehow (like meeting Gyu or getting a seat), and even if they don’t, you can always find another way around it. Always.

There are two types of buses in Irkutsk. One is in the form a family van with just a small number sticker on the window. The other is a normal bus. The hilarious thing about the bus system is that both the vans and the buses are imported from Korea! What’s even funnier is that the Russians never cared to take off the Korean labels covering them. For example, I saw a van that was labeled “충주남부감리교회,” which means that it was a church van in an area in Korea called Chungju. I saw another bus labeled “3420 장지동, 선릉역, 고속터미널” with the door labeled “자동문,” which means automatic door - I used to take this very bus all the time in Seoul!

Church van

Korean bus

A warning about the buses if you ever decide to travel here: there are no signs whatsoever that indicate bus stops. Gyu explained that you just had to know what corner or street the bus stopped on. Without Gyu, it would’ve been nearly impossible to tour the city and figure out the public transportation system. One more thing: you pay when you’re about to get off a bus, rather than when you’re getting on. I feel like that makes it extremely easy to just hitch a free ride and run; would a bus driver with a vehicle full of passengers actually get off and try to chase you down?

The town of Irkutsk reminded me of a typical European one, packed with beggars, century-year-old buildings and cables hanging above the streets. It was also stifling hot, so I spent $40 on sunscreen for the three of us. We passed by a small yard with leftover tanks and missiles from World War II, and despite the chains surrounding them, I just felt the need to jump over and climb on one of the tanks.

Pigeons unusually gathered around a love graffiti

While there are hundreds of rivers that flow into Lake Baikal, the Angara River is the only one that flows out of the lake. For me it was the nicest and most relaxing view in Irkutsk, but also the scariest. The river was as pristine as the very water I was carrying around, but so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. If you dropped a leaf or a small pebble in it, you could see just how quickly the water flowed - yet as fast as it was flowing, the Angara was quiet. Gyu, JW and I leaned our heads over the bridge for half an hour and stared into the bottomless blue bottom, captivated by the river’s stealthy silence and imagining how quickly we’d drown if we all fell in.

Love lockets along the Angara

The sun was still high and bright by six o’clock, and we hopped on a bus (or a Korean church van) headed for Lake Baikal. There are all kinds of tours available to see the mammoth lake, some even that last for weeks. While I would’ve loved to ride a ferry to Aron island - the largest island on the lake - and spend a night there, I was also on a mission to reach the Atlantic Ocean before school started so I had to economize my time (call me a hypocrite because a few paragraphs ago I wrote that you should do whatever you want when you’re traveling). We ended up going instead to Listebianka(?), the closest point on the lake from Irkutsk that was about an hour away.

The bus ride to Listebianka(?) was so exciting that I thought I was on a rollercoaster. The highway was nearly perfectly straight and we went over some of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen an automobile go over. The driver kept his foot on the gas even when going downhill and the van reached speeds up to 95 mph. The back windows were just slightly open but that was enough to put my hair into Einsteinian mode. If a tire treaded on a rock on the road, the van would’ve flipped and we would’ve all died violently in a huge fireball. That’s how fast we were going.

We reached Baikal in just 45 minutes and I paid the driver an extra ten rubles for being so awesome. I wished I had a job where I could drive at ridiculous speeds and get paid for it (except NASCAR - that’s in fact the last thing I want).

I thought we had arrived at an ocean. It was just water for miles and miles until the end of the horizon. When I walked along the shore, I was still convinced that this was an ocean. Since Baikal had just recently melted, the water was frigid - I couldn’t put my foot in the lake for more than three seconds. Gyu explained that the lake was cold enough to be a main habitat for seals. Unfortunately I didn’t have seal fat, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to jump in. I’d get hypothermia or frostbite just by putting in a leg.

Ocean or lake?

“You gotta do it man,” said Gyu. “If you’re at Baikal this is something you just gotta do.”

There were lots of people along the shore, stretched out under the sun, but no one was braving deeper than ankle-deep.

“If I die, I want to be buried in Hawaii, or a desert,” I said. “And tell my parents I said hi.”

And so we changed into our swimming trunks, praying and appreciating life and whatnot. I was already shivering just looking into the water. People were staring at us probably thinking, “stupid tourists.” I handed my camera to a girl named Estella, who was wearing nearly nothing, as her two guy friends glared at me.

As we marched towards the water, the cold air made me feel as if I was entering a freezer. After the first few seconds, my foot was already numb, which was good because I didn’t feel any pain but bad because if the water was cold enough to make my foot go numb that quickly, I should’ve probably turned around. I placed my other foot in, and then entered slowly shin-deep, knee-deep, thigh, and torso. Forgive me for this remark, but a crucial part of my body felt shriveled and I feared the possibility that I may not be able to have kids. Estella was giggling and the boys looked as if they truly wanted me to freeze to death. With a quick shout at the sun and the clouds and the rest of the world, I dunked my head in and officially baptized myself in the Baikal. During the half-second my entire body was underwater, I felt clean. Fresh. Sterile.

Unable to have kids.

When I lifted my head, I had a brain freeze. Gritting my teeth, I waded back towards the shore.

Unable to have kids.

Apparently I stepped on a piece of broken glass but I wouldn’t realize this until a few minutes later because all that was on my mind was:

Unable to have kids.

JW and Gyu were both yelling and swearing as they came out of the water. I picked up my towel when I heard Gyu chatter, “What, don’t tell me you’re going in just once.”

“If I go back I don’t think I’d be able to have kids man,” I replied. To my horror, I saw two wide and incredibly scary Ronald McDonald grins form on Gyu and JW’s faces.

“Grab him!” Each of them held my arms and dragged me back towards icy death. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be as bad since I just experienced it, but no, it was just as bad. Before I knew it my head was underwater again.

Seriously unable to have kids.

Gyu and JW were also in agony but they were still clinging onto me. I looked back at the shore and wanted to slap my camera out of Estella’s hand.

No way in which I could have kids.

After about a minute we came back out and I was graciously allowed to pick up my towel. Never in my life did I remember myself having such powerful, loving emotions towards a piece of fabric. We took several group pictures and I have no idea why I’m smiling in any of them.

Me and JW

Gyu, JW, Me

Once we were nice and dry, I watched JW and Gyu smoke with Estella and the two guys, and we headed off to nearby restaurant. Along the way we ran into the captain of a ship that was docked on the shore, and we thought it’d be fun to make him take a picture with us.

Captain’s ship

Me, captain, JW

At the restaurant we ordered a grilled omul - a fish that is endemic to the Baikal - as well as some skewered steak. The omul was slightly bland, perhaps because it was fished out of freshwater, but it was nevertheless soft and delectable with the steak.

We finished up at around 8:30. As we were licking our fingers that were still cold, Gyu realized that he had forgotten the Irkutsk bus system ends at 8PM. That meant that we had to take a cab home, which would cost a fortune. Luckily Gyu bargained with the cab driver (you usually agree upon a price before you get on the cab) and brought the price down from 1700 to 1500 rubles, or approximately $50. That was a ton compared to the 3-dollar bus ride, and the windows were up the whole time, but the cab driver blasted some nice club music for us and JW and I got some nice shots of the setting sun.

Once we arrived at our home-stay we bode farewell to our tour guide, Gyu, and packed up for our next adventure on the transsiberian. Nothing particularly memorable happened except there was this one homeless person at the station who smelled really, really bad.