Kultuk
Only a few visitors will stay in Kultuk for a longer time, although the settlement was already founded in 1647 by a group of Kosacs and thus forms the oldest settlement situated at Lake Baikal.
Almost immediately in front of the city, when coming from Irkutsk, you will enjoy a wonderful view over the entire Lake Baikal. With multiple serpentines, the road leads now down into the valley.
Positioned at the numerous viewpoints, expensive and sometimes quite aggressive merchants offer smoked fish and different kind of goods, more or less useful.
The road M55, as well as the rails of the Transsib, are heading further towards Sludyanka respectively to Ulan-Ude; respectively the road in Kultuk is also branching off to the Eastern Sayan, accordingly to the Mongolian border, at Mondy.
Kultuk itself is a "typical" village at Lake Baikal, which has not been touched by the
Soviet industrialisation and almost any tourism activities until now, therefore its appearance is still characterized by small farm houses with directly bordering fields. Only several magazines (produkti) respectively a half-closed socialistic shopping centre are directly situated next to the road.
AOn both sides of the small harbour a quite nice sandy beach is extending, which is however quite crowded during summer.
A small, narrow, 400m long peninsula is preliminary to the village, its peak had been used as a cult site by shamans.
Being banned to Siberia for 15 years, Benedykt Dybovski and Viktor Godlevski lived here from 1868 till 1872. They both used the time to systematically investigate the flora and fauna of Lake Baikal for the first time. Only through their work other scientists started to pay attention to the immense biodiversity of the lake. Until then it had been assumed that because of its geographical location only few species are living in Lake Baikal.
