Nikola Hotel

We stayed for 3 nights at Nikola as part of a Trans-Mongolian trip. The village itself is about 7km from Listvyanka. Don't let that put you off though as it's only a couple of hours walk along the lake to get there or a 10 minute ride on the very cheap bus. As we visited out of season it didn't look like Listvyanka was a better place to stay in any event. We were met at 6am from the train by Anastasia and Igor as planned to be transferred to Nikola. Anastasia has really good English so there is no problem in organising things. I would recommend the transfer from Irkutsk as it would be difficult to find by bus. Doing the trip in reverse back to Irkutsk was easy though so we just got on the public bus. The village itself is tiny so expect to eat at Nikola each night. That's a bonus though as the home cooked breakfasts and dinners are really tasty. There is also a shop 5 minutes away which sells water and very cheap beer! The rooms are very cozy and the one we were in was fairly big. It is a communal shower but plenty of hot water and water pressure. Overall a great place to stay very close to the lake.