The most detailed guide around Circum-Baikal Railroad: Irkutsk, Listvyanka, Slyudyanka, Shelekhov. A. D. Katashevtsev
Until 2008, it was a very popular holiday destination, which today is in disrepair.
Kazan spring in Uladova valley
Among the numerous gardens located on this hill, on the right bank of the Korolok River in the taiga, 4 km from the highway, lies the old village of Lebedinka, founded at the beginning of the 20th century by settlers from Belarus. Here in 1929—1939 lived the famous intelligence officer and Hero of the Soviet Union D.K. Lytin, after whom one of the main streets of the village of Bolshaya Rechka is named. An old cemetery has been preserved in the village. Earlier in these places there were farms of the Irkutsk bakery and the Institute of Reconstructive Surgery, the potatoes was planted.
Hero of the Soviet Union D.K. Lytin
Below the swampy lowland, along which the Baikal Tract now runs, on the banks of the river of the same name, there used to be the village of Karolok (from Turkic language korolok – «snowy»), from which at the end of the last century there were several houses in the allotment «Optimist». It was founded at the beginning of the 18th century as a winter hut of the Znamensky Monastery in Irkutsk. Perhaps the name of a small settlement and the Dukhovnikova Valley on the opposite bank of the Angara River were connected with this.
A little upstream was the village of Poshki, founded in 1807. From the end of the 19th century it had its own school, and since 1938 the village council, the collective farm «Kolos» and the children’s regional sanatorium were located. In addition, in 1936—1952. The first psychiatric hospital for 150 people in the Irkutsk region was located here, which, after the flooding of this territory, was transferred to the village of Sosnovy Bor.
Karolok and Pashki villages on the map
After the source, the Angara outpour most widely precisely here (about 1 km) near the Volchiy Islands. Nowadays, it is twice as wide, and the village has disappeared under water at a depth of 11 m. Now in its place is Burdakovskiy Bay (from the Russian burda – «cattle swill»), where the village of Burdakovka (population 444 people), founded in 1926 by immigrants from the small Ukrainian village of Malyutyanka, which still stands 30 kilometers to south from Kyiv today. On July 4, 2001, on the fields outside the village, during the landing approach, the Tu-154M aircraft fell into a flat tailspin, all 136 passengers and 9 crew members died. In 2005, an obelisk made of black dolerite with the names of the victims was set at the site of the crash; nothing is planted now on two hectares of farmland.
Monument at the airplane crash site in Burdakovka
Moving further along the Baikal tract, we reach a large river called Burduguz (from Buryatian language burdu – «swill» and us – «water»). Once, timber was rafted along it from logging areas upstream. Today, the river has become shallow, but a fish breeding plant is still based at its mouth, which is engaged in the restoration of the number of valuable fish species (omul, grayling, peled, pike, etc.) in the Irkutsk reservoir. Previously, on the site of the bay in this part of the Angara River, there was an ancient village of Burduguz, founded in the second half of the 17th century by Irkutsk Cossack Ivan Isakov.
Park Hotel «Burduguz»
Now the four-star park-hotel «Burduguz» is located on the bank, it operates the best bath club in the Irkutsk region with an area of 400 m2, the stoves of which are built of tsaren times brick, preserved from the old Kurbatov’s baths in Irkutsk. In addition, right on the territory of the complex there is a source of medicinal sulfate-salt mineral water with a mineralization of 3.5 g / l, which is very close in composition to the waters of the former resort of all-Union significance Truskavets on Western Ukraine. Elite accommodation facilities are offered, which have long become a favorite vacation spot for the management of the «Irkutskenergo» and «RUSAL» companies.
Sauna in the park-hotel «Burduguz»
In the past, on the opposite left bank, there was a small settlement called Glubokaya, and a 64 m long Trans-Siberian iron bridge passed through the following river, Piterikha. Today, at that place is the Zmeiny Bay, which houses the «cemetery of ships» and several country houses. Last summer, the wreck of the steam tug 574 «Dmitry Donskoy» (built in 1958) and the bulk-carrier «Klara Zetkin» (1933) were visible.
«Cemetery of ships» in the Zmeiniy Bay
Meanwhile, on the right bank, near the Baikal tract, at the mouth of the Malaya Gryaznukha River, there is a semi-abandoned village of Butyrki (founded no later than 1873 as Molodova, population 17 people). It is one of the few remaining in its original location. After it, on a hill beyond the Bolshaya Gryaznukha River in a cozy pine forest, there is the sanatorium «Elektra» with 120 rooms, built in 1996 by company «Irkutskenergo» specifically for employees of hydroelectric power plants in the Irkutsk region. Absolutely unusual places with healing and tasty air begin from here.
Sanatorium «Electra»
Museum «Taltsy»
Having overcome the Tyrygino river, we enter a spacious valley, where another large river, the Taltsinka, flows into the Angara. In 1784, thanks to the genius of E.G. Laksman, who discovered on Baikal the world’s second lapis lazuli deposit, as well as to his partner and sponsor, the Kargopol merchant A.A. Baranov, known as the «King of Alaska» (the permanent ruler of Russian America in 1790—1818), opened a glass factory here. This production was the first in Russia that mastered the production of glass not with wood soda (potash), but with glauber salt, which was mined in the Tazheran steppes on Baikal, as well as along the banks of the Barguzin and Selenga rivers. Firstly, it helped to save forests, which were mercilessly exterminated for the needs of such manufactories, and secondly, it made it possible to obtain transparent and even colored glass. Simple convicts began to master the new production under the guidance of the Barnaul glass maker Y.I. Makarov.
Academician E.G. Laxman (1737—1796)
However, due to the fact that the plant’s products were initially in demand only in Eastern Siberia and Transbaikalia, and the Nikolsky sands deposit 25 km from the enterprise was of poor quality and raw materials had to be brought from afar – the plant was very soon sold by the Laksman family due to debts to an Irkutsk merchant Y.P. Soldatov. He owned a factory in 1811—1831 and opened a faience and cloth production here. After his death and until 1868, the enterprise passed into the hands of the joint-stock company of merchants of Irkutsk. In this difficult era for the plant, in 1841, the already familiar to us Decembrist A.N. Sutgof, got here and became the manager of the factory. At the same time, the second lieutenant of the Chernigov Infantry Regiment, Decembrist A.A. Bystritsky got a job as a supervisor of the workshop. He was also among those sentenced to death after the uprising.
King of Alaska A.A. Baranov (1747—1819)
In 1859, a wooden Kazan church was built at the plant in the center of the village of Taltsinskoye, near the bridge along the Baikal tract. It was closed in 1935 and after the alienation of land in 1952, already in a rebuilt form, it was transferred to the village of Bolshaya Rechka,