Five Days in Listvyanka: Lake Baikal’s Stunning Shores
Stunning Scenery, Delicious Fresh (and Smoked) Fish, Cute Freshwater Seals, and Dodgy Accommodation
Listvyanka is a small village on the banks of Lake Baikal, about 1.5 hours from Irkutsk. Thanks to its proximity to the city, it’s a popular summer holiday spot for Russians and is now appearing on Chinese tour bus routes.
We arrived around lunchtime and checked into our guesthouse — which, quite frankly, was a dive. We had hoped to rent an apartment but couldn’t find one. Later we realised we had arrived just before the main season, so many rental properties were still closed.
The family-run guesthouse was poorly built: doors didn’t close properly, the toilet leaked, and people were crammed in everywhere. It wasn’t ideal, but as travellers we rolled with it. Unfortunately, both places we had stayed in Russia so far had been well below average.
Yet none of that could diminish the beauty of Lake Baikal. The lake is absolutely stunning — crystal-clear blue water dotted with fishing boats, framed by huge snow-capped mountains. Listvyanka felt like a frontier town: scruffy and a bit unkempt, but the Russians love it. Hundreds flock here on weekends to sit on the pebble beach, take boat rides, and even swim in the freezing water (it was only about 5°C when we visited).
The town has a lively fish market selling the local speciality, Omul. This lake fish is delicious when smoked, and during the season you can buy it from the market or from locals who set up smokers right at their front gates.
One day we walked a couple of kilometres to the Baikal Museum. It’s quite science-heavy and the two Nerpa seals in a small dark tank were a bit disturbing, but it gave us a real sense of the lake’s enormous size and incredible volume of water.
After the museum we took the chairlift up the hill for breathtaking views across the lake toward Port Baikal. From the lookout we walked back down, staying on the roads — encephalitis-bearing ticks are common in the nearby forests, so we didn’t take any chances.
We spent five days in Listvyanka: eating fresh fish, drinking beer at a café with a deck over the water, and by day five we were ready to move on.
Despite the dodgy accommodation, our time on the shores of Lake Baikal was unforgettable. The scenery, the smoked Omul, and the sheer scale of this ancient lake made it one of the highlights of our Siberian journey. The next morning we headed back to Irkutsk to catch the train to Krasnoyarsk — 18 hours and 1,062 km away.