Ok, first the facts: Lake Baikal is the deepest fresh water lake in the world (1,632m at deepest point), also the largest volume of fresh water is located in this water – like it totals at 20% of each Earth surface fresh water resources! This lake is long – it stretches for 640 km from one side to another, so it might be even called “a sea” rather than a lake. There are even seals in it, yes the unique fresh water seals! They also say it’s the world most ancient fresh water lake with more than half of the animals and plants around it unique only to this region.

And now the photos, one of my favorite bloggers, Slava, has visited this place and photographed it in his own style – from the helicopter!

So the Baikal lake is the deepest, but not the biggest: it’s surface is sixth among the world’s biggest lakes.

And amongst all its surface there are only six or seven islands. All except one are uninhabited. This is an Olkhon island – the only island on the Baikal where people live. It’s the biggest island too – it is 71 km long and 21 km wide.

This straight between this island and “the big land” is called “the Olkhon Gate”.

There are ferries coming back and forth. Today there are two of those and they go each one hour.

Olkhon island has different landscapes: sand dunes, forest hills, swamps and marble rocks.

A cape on the island is one kilometer long and 100 m high.

Those are marble rocks.

The Northernmost point of this island. It’s over 40 km to the other coast from here so you can’t see the coast except the days with crispy clear air.

And this hill is a top high point of the island its almost 1km high.

And near this cape there is a deepest point of the Baikal lake – 1642 m deep.

Village on the island. This is the biggest village here – over 1.3 thousand people live in the small town.

These days their main work is to serve the tourists coming here.

Electricity got here only in 2005. Just imagine!

Another island – 3km long.

They call it “a power spot” – hundreds of tourists come here in search of spiritual powers, and recently the buddhists has erected this “stupa”. They say if you walk around it three times your wish might come true.

Because of so much water they say it affects climate a lot. The winters are warmer and summers more cooler.

This island is 55% – sand dunes and 45% is forest.

Slava says that the biggest problem for the island is uncontrolled littering – there are no official disposal control here so trash is dropped in uncontrolled manner.

Over 236 different bird species live on the Baikal lake. 29 of those can swim, mostly different ducks.

They say that there are only 48 cloudy days in the year here.

A Tagai bay.

Zuunkhan – another village on the Baikal.

See those neat houses – those are for tourist accommodation.

Dunes.

To get from one place to another you can use this multiple lane road. Choose the one you like and go!

Here – it’s almost 300km of road till the nearest biggest city Irkutsk.

And this “Shaman cape” is the Western most point of the Baikal.

Khamar Daban – the ancient forest going from East to West for over 350 km. Those names sound to me like they come from Tolkin book.

Those hills separate two different Russian regions.

Khamar Daban is the dampest place near Baikal.

And this is a train road around Baikal. We had a report from it!

Another tourists facility.

Also some campers.

House facades face Baikal.

It’s a fast lake transport – its speed is over 50 km/h.

And this is astrophysicist lab. Main scientific research points are: watching sun, registering sun flares etc. – things connected with our star.

Ok that’s it!

Hope you liked it and I believe some of you already have an urge to visit this place some day!

Many thanks to Slava for his effort and awesome photos and story.

Also if you want to see some more photo reports from Baikal on our website you can see this , Buddhist Mecca of Baikal and People of Lake Baikal. Or just click here for all posts connected with the Baikal.

And if you want to see more Slava’s photos then see Awesome and Unique Russian Atomic Icebreaking Fleet or Nizhnekamsk: Russian Oil Refining Capital and Russian City Where Submarines are Built.

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