RUSSIA
BAIKAL
ICE DIVING

Day 1: Arrival day

From all major Central airports, you are flying first to Moscow and from there to Irkutsk. The total flight time from Europe to Irkutsk is about 7-9 hours. From US and Canada about 15 to 18. The visa check is done in Moscow and is very simple and usually takes only a few minutes.

Day 2: Arrival in Irkutsk

The arrival in Irkutsk is depending on if the flight arrives in the early morning or around noon. Here, the tour group meets the tour guide and gets picked up and brought to the hotel only 15 minutes away. After checking in, you can relax or gather impressions of the beautiful city on a walk.

Day 3: Irkutsk at its best

Today you visit the sights, churches and monasteries as well as the old town of Irkutsk with its old traditional houses. Irkutsk is one of the few cities in Siberia in which the merchant buildings from the beginning of the 20th century have been preserved in the city center, as well as other examples of charming Siberian wooden architecture.

Day 4: Fom Irkutsk to Olkhon

After a hearty breakfast, the transfer to Olkhon and the Pribaikalski National Park starts around 8 a.m. The pleasant ride in the modern minibus leads through breathtakingly beautiful landscapes and seemingly forgotten villages and towns along the west bank of the Baikal.

The travel time for the nearly 300 km driving distance is about 5 to 6 hours (including the breaks and the lunch on the route) before we reach Khuzhir on the island of Olkhon in the late afternoon. A short walk brings us to the Shaman Rock where we bring a vodka offering to “Burchan”, the god of the lake, and ask for safety on and under the ice.

Of course, there will be enough time in the evening to prepare your equipment for the next day.

Day 5-9: Ice diving Baikal

For five days you will explore the frozen lake every day in minibuses and SUVs. Together with our local and experienced professionals, we look for the best fissures and ice structures in the vast landscape or even the clearest ice for a promising dive, depending on whether you join on one of our “Black Ice” in February or “Block Ice” expedition in March/April.

The experienced team of Baikaltek then builds a small wagon castle. In the center of these wind break the ice hole is prepared. When the entry hole for your ice diving adventure is ready you can dive under the ice, which is usually about one meter thick – the adventure begins. Depending on the location, you can see the bottom of the lake, or you might have many hundreds of meters of water below you.

You can dive under the ice daily in teams of two or three, but the cold sets limits on dive time and number of dives. On all dives, an experienced dive guide is with you in the water and a seasoned team monitors the processes over water and takes care of the linen at the entrance hole.

But the special highlight is a small “mobile” sauna, which we bring along on a sledge as well as the warm changing room. So it is easy to warm up quickly after the dive.

After the ice dives, there are also short excursions in the area to enjoy even more of the spectacular beauty of the Baikal above the water.

Day 10: Irkutsk, overnight stay and return home

After breakfast we drive from Khuzhir to Irkutsk, where we arrive around 3 p.m. and check in at the hotel for one night. The last evening we spend together with our hosts in a traditional Russian restaurant. After a restful night usually your flight will start early in the morning via Moscow back to the home airport.