Listvyanka is a small village, about an hour from from the city of Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia. It's on the shore of Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. It's great to be out in the countryside for a while

I'm in a 'home stay' with a Russian lady named Olga who's feeding us well (though she did give us dumplings stuffed with mashed potato one day, which was strange). She's been taking in tourists for ten years and has lots of trinkets from previous visitors - little koala bears, clogs, a teaspoon from York and teatowels and keyrings from Ireland. Her house is a traditional izba, a square shaped wooden building with a huge stove in the centre that keeps the whole place toasty warm, even in the Siberian winter of -40oC. The toilet is outside (which is a real pain at night) and they bathe in the banya, a little building out the back with a stove that heats it up like a sauna - to clean yourself, you take cold water from a bucket and hot water from the stove, mix them in a basin and then pour it over yourself.

A couple arrived at the same time as me - Louise (from Australia) and Frans (from New Zealand) - the first English-speaking tourists I've met since I set off! They both have PhDs and were working in science in New Zealand before they decided to go travelling - they're planning to settle in Europe for a while and look for work when they arrive. They're doing almost exactly the same route as me but going in the other direction so they've given me loads of great tips about Mongolia, China and Southeast Asia

Our local guide, Tatiana, took us around the Limnological Museum (the study of lakes, don't ya know...) so we learned lots about Baikal and even saw some of the local fish and seals in tanks. The omul fish is unique to Baikal - and quite tasty, Olga made us some for lunch afterwards. Apparently the last traces of this winter's ice just disappeared from the lake last week - in winter the ice can be as thick as two metres in places and people walk, skate and even drive over the frozen lake. The area is on a fault line in the earth and they have around 3,000 tremors a year, usually small and imperceptible but every 5-7 years they have a bigger earthquake, they haven't had a big one for about 7 years so I was just hoping the next one didn't happen while we were there!

The next day Frans and I went on a hike through the Taiga forest on the mountain - this was definitely the highlight of my stay here - it was a pretty energetic trek, the weather was great and the views were amazing. We had a local guide, Sasha, who's been taking people hiking there for years (and loves it so much that he does it in his spare time as well). Every so often he would pause and tell us about the plants and animals, or tell us a story about the area or his life. We tasted juice from the bark of the birch tree (it didn't taste of much) and picked wild garlic leaves to have with lunch (they're great dipped in salt!). We carried some wood down to a secluded pebble beach by the lake where Sasha lit a small fire and made us a nice lunch.

Tatiana had told us that people are worried about the adverse impact of tourism on the village, which seemed puzzling as we could see very little evidence that any tourist had ever been there at all. However, on the way back from the trek on Saturday evening it became apparent - the other end of the village was choc-a-block with cars and people, mostly coming from Irkutsk for the weekend. There's a picnic area, lots of huts on the beach that people can rent out and some cafes and whatnot. Unfortunately the visitors leave a lot of rubbish and there's broken glass everywhere. It's in stark contrast to where we were staying, only about 15 mins up the road, which was relatively undisturbed.