The final stop of our northern Asia tour was Irkutsk and Lake Baikal in Russia. Irkutsk is the biggest city near Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world. It holds something like 15 percent of the world’s fresh water. 
Even though Irkutsk is just north of Mongolia, the east-west change was stark. It was really like we were in a European country. There were lots of white people and the food cost western prices. Things were pretty rundown, but for the most part Russia was nice.
We took a plane from Ulaanbaatar to Irkutsk and it was empty. The Mongolian Airlines 737-800 was way too big for the number of passengers on board. There were only about 30 people riding on the plane so that meant Wendel and I got about 6 rows to ourselves.
It took forever to get though customs in the Irkutsk airport. The place is more like a train station that just happens to have a runway behind it instead of train tracks. By the time we started looking for a taxi on the street it was 2:30am. I had the address to our hostel but the driver couldn’t find it. We looked around some stretchy streets for awhile. It didn’t help that our Lonely Planet guide said the area isn’t so good at night. After looking around for awhile we finally found the place.
