Baikal

• Original post

It was 2013. My workmate & schoolmate advised me & my wife to raft down Irkut. Irkut is river in asian part of Russia not far from Baikal. We prepared the journey: We bought inflatable catamaran & 4 paddles because it was cheaper than rent it.

• We created route, it included Arshan, Irkutsk & Listvyanka.
• We bought outdoor staff: a camp, knifes, led flash-lights, sleeping bags, hiking boots, outdoor trousers, an outdoor cooking pot.

The first point of the trip was Arshan. We visited Datsan and hiked in different locations, during we were preparing to rafting. Some days later we arrived in Tibelti. There was our slipway, because we built our inflatable catamaran from scratch. We spent 5 hours on the catamaran building. During rafting there were a lot of different obstacles:

• Vast majority of time it was cold, especially at night.
• There were some riffles & rapids.
• I lost my glasses when I was swimming, fortunately I had spare one.

This part of the journey took 5 days. We arrived in Shimanka & after that arrived in Irkutsk in deep night. Next day we headed to Listvyanka & stayed 3 days there. Listvyaka is small village on the Baikal shores. One day we decided to lay on the shore & sunbathe. Stranger had swum and I decided to swim too… it was really cold, about 4 degrees… A few days later we headed home