Lake Baikal - The Earth's Blue Eye, Russia (411/418)

Lake Baikal - The Earth's Blue Eye, Russia (411/418)

To the Buryats, the native people of Central Siberia, the "Baygal nuur" or the "rich lake", is a magical place, the cradle and soul of their people. The rest of the world simply sees Lake Baikal as a most magnificent body of water. Located in the heart of Siberia, on Russia's south-eastern border with Mongolia, it holds one fifth of all the liquid freshwater reserves on Earth. Baikal is the deepest and oldest lake in the world, its expanse of water covering a region larger than Belgium. To biologists, the Baikal region is the Galapagos archipelago of Russia, one of the most species-rich freshwater biotopes on our planet.

When Russians speak of the "Osero Baikal", they mean the "great Siberian lake" which extends over a surface area of 31,722 km² at an altitude of 455 m between the south Siberian mountain ranges along Russia's south-eastern border with Mongolia. At 25 million years old and a depth of 1642 meters, it is both the oldest and the deepest lake on Earth, and stretches for 673 km from the south-west to the north-west, measuring 82 km at its widest point.