Most of the time, they are foreigners who wander in the deepest lake in the world in winter. But with many closed borders, Russians are flocking to shoot TikTok videos and take Instagram photos.
ON LAKE BAIKAL, Russia – She has driven 2,000 miles right now: hanging from the sunroof of her white Lexus SUV glistening under the blinding sun, face to smartphone selfie camera, thumping bass, screeching tires, donuts cutting across the blue-black, white veined ice.
“It’s for Instagram and TikTok,” said Gulnara Mikhailova, who drove for two days and two nights to get to Lake Baikal with four friends from the remote Siberian city of Yakutsk.
It was about zero degrees Fahrenheit when Ms. Mikhailova, who works in real estate, put on a bathing suit, climbed on the roof of her car and, lying down, posed for photos.
This is winter on the world’s deepest lake, Pandemic Edition 2021.
The guides mention the Russian season. Mostly foreigners – many from nearby China – flock to Lake Baikal in Siberia this time of year to skate, cycle, hike, run, drive, float and ski across a stark expanse of ice and snow, while Russians escape the cold to Turkey or Thailand.
But Russia’s borders are still closed due to the pandemic, and to the surprise of locals, crowds of Russian tourists have traded the tropical beaches for the icicle-covered shores of Baikal.
“This season is like no other – no one expected there would be such a crush, such a tourist boom,” said Yulia Mushinskaya, the director of the history museum on the popular Baikal island of Olkhon.
People who work with tourists, she said, “are just in shock.”
When you catch a moment of silence on the crescent-shaped, 400 miles long, miles deep lake, the assault on the senses is otherworldly. You stand on a meter of ice so solid that it can be safely crossed by heavy trucks, but you feel vulnerable, fleeting and small.
The silence around you is interrupted every few seconds by the creaks below – moans, bangs and weird techno music twangs. Look down and the imperfections of the crystal-clear ice show up like pale, glittering curtains.
Still, silence is hard to find.
While Western governments have discouraged travel during the pandemic, in Russia, as is so often the case, things are different. The Kremlin has taken coronavirus-related border fences a chance to get Russians – who for the past 30 years have explored the world outside the former Iron Curtain – addicted to a vacation at home.
A state-funded program launched last August is offering $ 270 refunds for domestic vacation travel, including flights and hotel stays. It’s an example of how Russia, which had one of the world’s highest death rates from the coronavirus last year, often prioritized the economy over public health during the pandemic.
“Our people are used to traveling abroad to a significant extent,” President Vladimir V. Putin said in December. “Developing domestic tourism is no less important.”
In recent months there has been a monumental crowds of tourists on the beaches of the Black Sea and ski resorts in the Caucasus. This winter, during what some call the “gender vacation” travel period around Defender of the Fatherland Day on February 23 (when Russia celebrates men) and March 8 (International Women’s Day), Lake Baikal was the place to be.
It’s a distillation of Instagram era tourism.
Some visitors bring their own smartphone tripod and repeatedly jump up and down for the perfect snapshot of themselves in mid-air in front of an ice wall. Others pilot drones or set off brightly colored smoke bombs.
Recently at sunset, a row of tourists on the frozen lake lay on their bellies in a natural cave in the cliffs of the shoreline, taking photos of the pink glittering icicles hanging from the ceiling.
“Get out!” some screamed when another group arrived. ‘Take a walk, everyone! You block the sun! “
“The social networks have led to all of this,” said a guide at the cave, Elvira Dorzhiyeva. “There are those prime locations, and it’s like, ‘All I care about is wanting what I’ve seen online.’ ”
The most requested photos have to do with the clear ice, so some guides have brushes to sweep away the snow.
Nikita Bencharov, who learned English to compete in Soviet-era international table tennis tournaments, runs a sprawling hotel complex on Olkhon and estimates that in a normal year, more than 70 percent of winter visitors are foreigners.
This year just about all of his guests are Russian, which has been a bit of a problem. Russians vacationing abroad are used to cheap, comfortable accommodations that are hard to find in the far reaches of their own country. At Olkhon hotels, modest double rooms have gone for a whopping $ 200 a night this season; at some cafes the toilets are unheated pit toilets outside.
“The foreigners are already a little prepared and thank the Lord that at least there is a normal bed here and that they don’t sleep on bearskins,” said Mr Bencharov. “They understand better than Russians where they are traveling and why.”
Many operators targeting foreign tourists have tried their best to adapt. On Olkhon, the once Chinese restaurant now serves borscht.
At the northern tip of the island, where orange cliffs tower over a blue-and-white labyrinth of ice formations, tour van fleets drop hundreds of people to slide and scramble around, then slurp fish soup heated by fires directly on it. ice have been set.
A couple from Moscow, two engineers in their 30s, said they were visiting Siberia for the first time. One of them said he was enthusiastic about the landscape, but was shocked by the poverty in the region and felt sorry for the people and how they should live.
About 50 miles away, in a fishing camp across the lake, three men sat on the ice in a metal hut, the air inside tinged with the scent of salted fish, damp bedding, and pine nut moonshine in a plastic bottle on the floor. Two of the men, firefighters, said they made about $ 300 a month and took several weeks off in the fall to supplement their income by harvesting pine nuts in the woods.
“We make the minimum and complain and complain – and that’s all,” said one of the firefighters, Andrei, 39 ,. “And what, we listen to Putin on TV …”
He let his voice fade, with a nervous laugh. He declined to give his last name, concerned about retaliation for his government job.
Baikal’s otherworldly landscape offers an escape from hardship and crises – temporary and perhaps deceptive. For example, the coronavirus doesn’t seem to exist, with no mask in sight of the visitors packing tour vans and restaurants. Their dismissive stance echoed an independent poll this month that found less than half of Russians were concerned about contracting the virus and only 30 percent were interested in getting the Russian coronavirus vaccine.
“It’s a psychosis,” said a park ranger, Elena Zelenkina, of global fear of the virus as she served tea and homemade donut holes in a gift shop next to hot springs on the quieter eastern shore of the lake.
A group of music lovers in the nearby city of Irkutsk even continued their annual indoor winter music festival. One of the spectators, Artyom Nazarov, was from Belarus – one of the few countries whose nationals can now easily enter Russia.
Belarus, like Russia, has been beset by protests against the government. But like Mr Putin, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus has persisted and used an overwhelming display of power to quell unrest. Mr Nazarov said he had supported the protesters, but as it seemed that their victory was neither imminent nor certain, he continued.
He had spent an exciting week hiking and skating in Olkhon. He was looking forward to more outdoor tourism, in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula or in Iceland when the borders open.
“We all have our dreams and our goals that we want to achieve,” said Mr Nazarov. “Life goes on.”
Oleg Matsnev contributed research from Moscow.