GBT

Great Baikal Trail (GBT), or Great Bloody Trial, has put our survivalist skills to the test this past couple of weeks. From the lethargy and lounging of four days and nights on the Trans-Siberian Railway, we were walking 11km a day and digging a trail on a precipitous coastal cliff. Now back in the relative comfort of the train to Vladivostok, GBT seems like another world.

On 1st August 2008, twelve strangers were dropped off on a remote shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia. As the boat sailed away we looked at each other and the bags in front of us and realised that this was literally it for the next two weeks. We cooked in a bucket over a fire, drank water from the stream and washed ourselves and our clothes in the lake.

Lake Baikal is the world’s deepest lake. At 1,637m it holds 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, enough to quench the thirst of homo sapiens for 40 years. Consequently a dip in the pure, turquoise waters chills you to the core. The nature is stunning. Colourful flowers, interesting grasses and unique animals such as the rotund nerpa seal. Eighty per cent of the lake’s flora and fauna can be found nowhere else in the world. At night the stars reflect in the water and the moon sets in shades of orange. It’s captivating, and now that we are gone I miss the lake.

The aims of the Great Baikal Trail organisation are commendable - to open up the lake to hikers and campers and encourage responsible tourism in the region - and their methods are light on the environment. However, in sharing the secrets of the lake come problems that are beyond the scope of GBT. Russian tourists seem to think that it is acceptable to leave all their rubbish along the lake shore. Lake Baikal’s sponges may be capable of filtering the water to drinking standard, but cannot purify the piles of vodka bottles, tinned meat cans and plastic left behind by happy campers. So whilst the need for a safe path was apparent, and I was happy to contribute to its construction, I felt a twinge of dread as to what else it may bring. There is zero recycling in Russia and appreciation of nature appears to be mainly utilitarian. I hope that environmental education and behaviour improves at the same time as the path lengthens. Either way, in building 200m more of the Great Baikal Trail we have truly left our mark on Siberia.