Irkutsk

They call Irkutsk the Paris of Siberia; which I thought meant the place smelt and the people were rude. The town is actually pleasant enough, with many intricately carved wooden houses, mixed in with fairly European architecture. Of course the main reason tourists get off the train here is for the Lake.

Lake Baikal
It's hard not to talk about this lake in superlatives; it's the worlds oldest lake and stretches for 400 miles, is 40 miles across at its widest point, and reaches a depth of over a mile. It holds roughly 5,000 cubic miles (20 trillion liters) of water – about 20% of the worlds freshwater.

Kirsten and I have differing views of our hike, here's mine:
After some brunch and a clean up, we were given two “4-man” tents for the seven of us (more about this later), and set off with our guide and his son to the hydrofoil. This does the 40 miles from Irkutsk to the lake in a little over an hour, then turns left to Bolshie Koty, where we got off.
Now you'd think hiking round a lake would be easy – being flat and all. However the sides are often very steep, forcing you inland and up over hills (a hiker fell to her death the day after we were here www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2627512/British-woman-killed-in-Siberian-cliff-fall.html). Our guide lied about it only being 2 hours on the first day, and we trudged for three-and-a-half hours before making camp. The guide busied himself making fire while we set up the tent. This tent had to sleep four (us, Rob and Rachel), so the fact that we could only fit three of the bedrolls in it, forewarned of the uncomfortable night ahead.
After a dinner of noddles, we huddled round the fire as the temperature plummeted (you just don't expect that sort of thing in Siberia). Without sufficient vodka to knock us out, and only enough room to sleep on your side, it was a pretty miserable night – at least the rain held off.
After a porridge breakfast we set off like a band of cold, knackered campers. The route was flatter, but did involve a lot of clambering over boulders, which is trickier with a large backpack.
Towards late afternoon it started raining hard – this was a problem as there's no way not to touch the sides when there's four of you rammed in a two-man tent. However the guide reckoned he could find us a hunt. This turned out to be a kind of outhouse in a village – no warmer than the tent, but dry. So it was with surprise and relief when the guide tracked down the owner and talked us in side. I was so happy, I found the village shop and bought some vodka.

Lake Baikal is certainly something to be seen. It would be good to come back in Winter when the lake is frozen solid (factlet: during the 1904 war with Japan, the Russian lay train tracks across the frozen lake to rush troops to the front).

Kirsten's view: I've never really understood the point of hiking when there are other perfectly viable means of transport such as hydrofoil, charted helicopter... Some pretty views though and it certainly helped us bond with our traveling companions.