Locked Up Abroad: Part 2 - Swim Baikal in Magical Realism

After the stillness of that first encounter with Baikal and its waters, I was launched back into a flurry of frantic activity with other humans.

Meeting up with my teammates and the larger team. Briefings, press conference, test swim, vertical hike up a small mountain in a birch forest to a Russian Orthodox church service where I almost fainted from standing up for so long in the airless space. If you ever have a choice between betting on a big strong american girl or a tiny, wizened russian grandmother, I would have to recommend the latter.

Finally it was time for the swim to depart - we brought all our stuff onto the ship and it was tight quarters with all our gear and everything, but the boat was super well equipped. Natalia and I as the only 2 female swimmers bunked together (I notice here how much I am skipping, so please ask questions if you have any.)

We went upstairs and were treated well with brunch and fruit and cheese plates…all sitting together, me with several teammates I knew for years but I was tired and stressed and just felt off. A few hours and we all jumped off the boat and swam to land for the start and more interviews but it was draining for me. One of the video journalists knew my name and said she’d heard my goal was to swim the lake on my own, I had no good response and kind of wanted to cry so I just stammered something and tried to smile.

We jumped off the boat, left from shore together and swam maybe 20 minutes together and then began the cycle rotations. Andrei went first (organiser, moldovan/russian ridiculous huge man, a friend of many years and few if not the only person I know who can easily lift me? IDK. I think Andrei, then Hassan (young moroccan guy, friends for a few years), Paolo (italian friend of many years from milan) then me, then Adrian (guerney native repping the UK, had met him once before), then Natalia, Colin (south african with russian girlfriend living in netherlands) and Steve (french guy arrived with his partner Frederique and his own crew from french TV,) Ilya for the ship cameraman, Natali #2 - organiser, Natalia #3 as the captain of the ship, Katya 1 (russian/ukrainian girl living in London now) translators Katya 2 (russian/french girl from the same hometown of Katya 1 but married to a frenchman , Alain - older than me.) And Olga (amazing sports/fitness doctor) and Vitali (helper) and Dimitri (Dima) local swimmer (substituting in for Andrei intermittently.)

We had a table/chart that prescribed lengths that we would swim at each temperature. For each swim, we would go from the main boat onto a small boat before swimming, getting pulled back onto the small boat and ferried back to the large boat before popping into sauna.
Everything was dependent on water temperature. So if water is below 5C, we swim for 10 minutes tops then go into the on ship sauna for 10 min, then have a few minutes to drink/rewarm, before heading back out. If the water goes above 10C, we swim for 30 min and everyone has a much nicer stretch of a couple hours to regroup. But that never happened, I think we did 70k in ridiculously short repetitions - 5 minute swim, 5 min back on the boat (pulled up with no ladder - bruising my breasts and ribs and hip bone, hurting us every single time) then back onto main boat…so bad, there were only 8 of us. I felt even worse for the support team members, especially in the night it was freezing cold and damp and no one really had the right clothing.

Amidst the difficult situation, I was visited by something magical in just my second rotation. There is a unique type of seal living only in Baikal, the local term is “nerpa.” The Baikal seals are a special species of earless seal endemic to Lake Baikal. They are related to Arctic ringed seals and are the smallest true seals and the only exclusively freshwater pinniped species. There are other freshwater seals but all the others also live in the sea too. On my second or third shift two nerpas came to me, diving under and frolicking in my wake. Ilya even got some photos of the seals swimming with me. Read more about these fascinating little creatures here.

The swim itself was really difficult. Even though it was mid-July, the water never got ever above 10 degrees C - 50 fahrenheit and usually below 5c - 40f. I was the second youngest person on the swim crew except for Hassan and after 20 hours was increasingly convinced one of us would die if we continued with this cycle of cold cold water and extreme heat. I’m pretty sturdy but this was terrible. We made it across the length and then started up the river, when it was supposed to get warmer and get a bit of push from the river current.

But that never happened, when we got into the river the water temperature actually started dropping and the water was now 3c / 37f. Our prescribed swim duration were so short at this point we were basically back in the water every 40 minutes. After about 30 hours I checked in with Paolo and Adrian as I was freaking out. It was bad. The swim wasn’t continuous anyway, we had to stop twice, once when we got lost in the fog, and once as directed by the coast guard equivalent. I spoke up because I was pretty much convinced one of us might die before we made it back to Irkutsk, and we decided collectively to end the swim before reaching our destination.

After the aborted swim, we still had to jump off the boat and swim to shore for a celebration/another press conference. It was muddy and pissing rain and I was just exhausted. I felt awful physically and mentally. The next day was another event at the governor’s office, including a very traditional awards ceremony where the mayor of Irkutsk was incredibly kind and hospitable to us all. The mayor spoke to each of us so kindly in our own languages. I was presented with a stuffed animal toy seal in honor of the nerpas coming to swim with me.

At the party Katya #2 told me in confidence that she was pregnant, so I presented her with the stuffed animal seal for her upcoming baby. (Katya and Alain’s son was born on Valentine’s Day of this year. He is named “Baikal.”) We all partied a bit, most notably at an extravagant dinner and then a nightclub that was beyond decadent but had kids and old people on the dance floor. It was crazy loud and I spent most of my time outside, wandering the grounds, feeling awful and disconnected and just, over everything. Doctor Olga was leaving around that time and took pity on me and gave me a ride back to the hotel.

Everyone else had stayed out ages longer but even with a good night’s rest I still felt like garbage. We did another day of sightseeing (architecture, military monuments, and all the russian orthodox churches.) At one point a guy gave us a ride in a truck/car that was about 6 feet (2 meters) off the ground and had antlers on the hood. Got our COVID tests done, walked around some more and then they took us to lunch waiting for our results.

At the restaurant we got onto wifi and got an email with our test results.

We were all positive for COVID.

Last updated April 27, 2022