A Russian Banya Experience in Irkutsk

The next few days in Irkutsk started off with another trip out to the ‘countryside house’ only this time, it wasn’t to work in the garden or harvest some cabbage in sub-zero temperatures. Nope. This time is was strictly to use the Russian banya (sauna) and instead of family this time around, it was friends we’d be meeting up with. However what made things that much more interesting was the amount of snow already on the ground and the fact that it was still snowing quite heavily. That made the drive out there a bit crazy as it was a good 5 miles (about 8 km) outside of the city.

On the Siberian road out to the Banya…

We were rolling out in nothing but a little Toyota with ‘snow tires’ as I was told, though that added fact didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy. If I were in my own city in these conditions, we’d probably call out the national guard for blizzard like conditions. Regardless, it was about five in the afternoon and we were on our way out to spend some time in this Russian banya for the rest of the day…

Inside the Russian Banya

When we arrived, one of our friends already made it out there and had started getting things fired up inside the banya. And everything about this Russian banya was as old-fashioned in its use as it had been 300 years prior. A typical Russian banya is made up of three rooms. This one in particular had one room in which you would change in but also had a couch for sitting. This room of the banya also doubles as the place in which you feed the fire. In the second room of the banya is a setup that is mainly used for mixing water and bathing as there are two taps running into the room. One from the outside which is strictly ice-cold water and the other which runs from the top of the fire which holds several gallons of water and is at near boiling temperatures. There are buckets to mix the two in to get water to just the right temperature that you would use to bathe yourself. In the third room is the actual banya sitting room which is a very small area, just one bench, and which contains the fireplace and chimney surround that extends nearly to the ceiling and has a storage compartment for water that sits on top.

Once we got there, I realized just how much snow had already fallen at this countryside house and it seemed much more than the city, with about a foot of snow already on the ground. You couldn’t even find the path that led to the back of the house towards the banya. About twenty minutes had passed before a couple more friends showed up. It was time to get changed up as the coals should be getting warm enough inside the banya. When we got in, I was personally thinking it was hot enough, about 60 Celsius, but there were some angry folks among us that were eager to get the temperature up to around 97 Celsius. Well, for those of you not familiar with the Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion, that’s about 207 degrees Fahrenheit! Thankfully it never did reach this temperature that day however it did get up to nearly 80 Celsius which was plenty warm for me!

So far though, this entire experience was much different from the one I’d had previously. In no way was it as unknown a process as I’d been through earlier nor was it as traumatizing with the ‘beating’ as I’d described last time!

A ‘quick’ dip in the snow…

Yes, there was another beating but it was not near as intense and without it being a new experience, it was more tolerable this time around. What was a new experience however were the ‘snow runs’ we would make from this Russian banya, out into the snow!!! About every 10 to 15 minutes inside the banya, we’d then run outside and take a dip into the snow. And as damn hot as it was inside that banya, I didn’t need much convincing to take part into this Russian tradition. And after about an hour or two in the banya, all six of us had all gotten into the act.

Well… had they made fun of my shorts, it was all said in Russian

It was a good day out here but night had soon fallen and it was an awkward hike back to the car in the near pitch black in almost a foot and a half of snow. The drive out of there was even worse and I was amazed the little Toyota made it. These were back country roads we were on and absolutely no clearing of the snow had taken place. In fact, many side roads we took getting out of there hadn’t even been driven on yet that day and we were blazing our own path. Some of the snow was even hitting on top of the front bumper. After going up a fairly large un-plowed hill without even slipping, I was impressed, this car and its tires were amazing.

I was not the only one….

We got back into town late that night and with car theft such a big problem in this city, we had to park about a mile away from where we were staying and make the hike through the snow storm just as we do every night. The car parking security lots make a killing off the cars in this city. But I guess the thieves do too!