Show Lake Baikal. Where is Lake Baikal located? Dark rings on the lake

Posted Sun, 12/10/2014 - 08:27 by Cap

What boy, since his vagabond childhood, has not dreamed of visiting this Glorious Sea! From school geography lessons we all knew that fate had not harmed our Motherland, giving Lake Baikal!!!

And so, the long-standing dream of the Nomads came true - after the walking and water part.) - We spent 4 days on the shores of the legendary Baikal, approximately between the villages of Slyudyanka and Listvyanka.

I’ll repeat myself a little and tell you about our journey along the shores of blessed Baikal!

We spent the night in the Ministry of Emergency Situations camp on the shore of Lake Baikal in Slyudyanka.

From Slyudyanka we went along the Circum-Baikal Railway - the Trans-Siberian Railway used to pass along the Circum-Baikal Railway, but then the line from Irkutsk was straightened and led directly to Slyudyanka. And the Circum-Baikal Railway is now a tourist single-track road! We recommend everyone to ride it!

Sergey Karpeev
The miracle of Russia and the glorious sea!
There is no limit to your shores!
The wind rejoices in the endless space,
Sluds ascend across the islands.

Waves caress careless stones,
A forgotten volcano lies dormant for centuries.
In the ethereal haze of forest ridges
The Khamar-Daban chain stretches.

Rocks, backwaters, taiga distances,
The hills have a cedar slope.
An ancient Buryat sanctuary beckons
Wonderful, mysterious island of Olkhon.

Storms, winds, buckets, bad weather -
What does the shaman foretell to us with his tambourine:
In a frenzied dance he conjures under the power
The spirit that everyone calls Burkhan.

Pink-delicate sunset blush
The clouds are drowning in your mirrors.
Melting, blue, evening fog
Hidden on the other side of the shore.

The water is like crystal, deep and transparent.
The fisherman throws his line.
Yarburst, burning like fire,
Pulls the crimson line in the sky.

The night begins full of stars:
The ladle sparkled with its seven stars.
With a heart and vision surpassed
You will shout: Our Baikal is beautiful and great!

Train around Baikal

The train runs along it 4 times a week, and also back. The windows of the carriages offer wonderful views of Lake Baikal and the surrounding mountains!

It is advisable to arrive at the station an hour before the train, but we did not do this. There were no more tickets for the train - I had to go to the carriages, where I could negotiate with the conductors to ride the train while standing.

The train itself consists of several comfortable carriages, where everything is decorated for a foreign tourist, and there are also TVs that show films about Lake Baikal, and also minibars with drinks!

For ordinary tourists, there are other carriages, ordinary Sovkov ones, but we were very happy with them, since in the cool carriages the price was more than 700 rubles. per person, and in a simple carriage we agreed on the same price, but for the entire Team!

Moreover, we managed to successfully navigate the train - so that almost everyone got seats! The carriage was packed almost to capacity! In the crowd, no one bothered to figure out who had what seats, and we rolled along Lake Baikal!

However, we didn’t have to sit for long; after Kultyk, the train stopped near the Roerich Museum. There was also a Pure Water Museum there! The viewing cost literally 10 rubles! We looked at the pictures with interest and listened to the lecture!

The train was moving quite slowly, the road was old, but very interesting; in addition to views of the lake, the train passed through a whole system of tunnels that pierced mountain ranges, and then again took us to the steep and picturesque shore of the sacred Lake!

The train stopped a couple of times so that passengers could get out of the cars and take pictures on its shore!

At the same time, Baikal souvenirs were sold, usually made from local gems.

Lake Baikal

On the way, we met one woman and got into conversation with her - she was going to visit one of the stops. She advised us to go down with her, as it was a very beautiful place! I think it was km 146, and there were several houses there. There was a valley in this place - a stream flowed out of the mountains, and there were houses, barns and vegetable gardens. Mostly pensioners lived there. Lake Baikal

The place was really worth it! From here there was a picturesque view of Lake Baikal, 500 meters from the stop there was a good tourist stop with a fire pit and a table, and also an excellent view of the Lake. The descent to the water was quite steep, you had to either go down the steep slope using a wire (that someone had strung) or go around through the lower parking lot.

But the main thing is real natural silence, even though there was a railway station nearby, the trains ran here once a day, and you can only hear the splashing of waves and the cries of seagulls!

Lake Baikal- sunset

LAKE BAIKAL - THE MIRACLE OF RUSSIA

Baikal. Amazing beauty a lake, a unique creation of nature, crystal clear water... Probably every person has, to a greater or lesser extent, heard about the deepest lake on our planet. What else do you know about Baikal?
Baikal is located almost in the very center of Eurasia, among the high ridges of the Baikal mountain region. The lake stretches 636 km in length and 80 km in width. Baikal's area is 31,470 km2, which is comparable to the area of ​​Belgium (in this European country with large cities and industrial centers home to almost 10 million people). The maximum depth of the lake - 1637 km - rightfully allows us to call Baikal the deepest in the world (average depth - 730 m). African Lake Tanganyika, one of the deepest lakes on the planet, is 200 m behind Lake Baikal. Of the thirty islands, Olkhon is the largest.

Baikal is filled with three hundred and thirty-six permanent rivers and streams. One flows out of the lake. To estimate the volume of Lake Baikal, imagine that under ideal conditions (assuming not a single drop falls or evaporates from the surface), the Angara, which carries out 60.9 km3 of water annually, will need 387 years of continuous operation to drain the lake!

In addition, Baikal is the most ancient lake on our planet, its age, according to various estimates, is 20-30 million years.
Clean, transparent Baikal water, saturated with oxygen, has long been considered healing. Thanks to the activity of living microorganisms living in it, the water is slightly mineralized (almost distilled), which explains its crystal transparency. In spring, water transparency reaches 40 meters!
Baikal is the repository of 20% of the world's and 90% of Russia's fresh water reserves. For comparison, this is more than the water reserves of the five Great American Lakes combined! The Baikal ecosystem produces about 60 km3 of clean water per year.

Amazing and diverse animal and vegetable world Lake Baikal, which makes it unique in this regard among other fresh lakes. Who hasn't heard of the famous Baikal omul? In addition to this, the lake is home to whitefish, lenok, and taimen - representatives of the salmon family. Sturgeon, grayling, pike, carp, catfish, cod, perch - this is not the entire list of fish families living in Baikal. It is impossible not to mention the Baikal seal, which is the only representative of mammals in the lake. In autumn, on the rocky shores you can see numerous breeding grounds of these Baikal seals. The seal is not the only inhabitant of the coasts; many gulls, mergansers, goldeneyes, scoters, scorches, white-tailed eagles, ospreys and other birds nest along the coasts and on the islands. In addition to all of the above, on Lake Baikal you can observe a massive emergence of brown bears onto the shores.
The flora and fauna of Baikal is endemic. 848 species of animals (15%) and 133 species of plants (15%) are not found in any body of water on Earth.
The uniqueness and beauty of Baikal every year attracts an increasing number of tourists, including foreign ones. This is also facilitated by developing infrastructure. That's why main task is to preserve the integrity of the lake ecosystem. Lake Baikal

BAIKAL - THE MIRACLE OF RUSSIA
One of the amazing wonders not only of Russia, but of the entire globe - Lake Baikal - appears on the geographical map as a narrow blue sickle thrown into the mountains of Eastern Siberia.
People composed many songs and legends about him. The Yakuts named the lake Baikal, which means “rich lake”. It splashes in a huge stone basin, surrounded by taiga overgrown mountain ranges. The lake extends from northeast to southwest for 636 km, which is approximately equal to the distance between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The greatest width of Lake Baikal is 79 km. In terms of its area (31.5 thousand sq. km), it is approximately the same as the Western European countries of Belgium or the Netherlands, and ranks eighth in size among the lakes of the globe.
Baikal is a truly unique lake. Its coastline and surrounding mountains with their unique fauna, flora and microclimate, as well as the lake itself with rich supplies of clean fresh water are an invaluable gift of nature.
You, of course, know that Baikal is the deepest lake on our planet. Its depth reaches 1620 m and exceeds the depth of some seas on the globe. However, as reported in 1991, hydrologists made an amendment, finding a deeper level of 1657 m.
It contains 20% of the fresh water reserves on the globe (23 thousand cubic km). To desalinate the same amount of moisture from sea water, it would be necessary to spend 25 times more money than the cost of gold mined so far on Earth.
Imagine: the Baikal bowl can fit all the water of the Baltic Sea, although its area more area lakes approximately 10 times.
You can pour water from 92 seas such as the Azov Sea or water from all five American Great Lakes into the Baikal basin, total area which are 8 times larger than the area of ​​Lake Baikal.
According to the latest information, 1123 rivers carry their waters here, the largest of which are the Barguzin and the Upper Angara, and flow out.
The lake level rises 378 m above the mouth of the Angara, which creates a large fall energy. A cascade of powerful power plants has been built here. There are 27 islands on the lake, all of them small. Only Olkhon, which is located almost in the middle of the lake, has an area of ​​729 square meters. km.

Olkhon Island Lake Baikal

Such a high-water reservoir cannot but influence the climate of the surrounding area. In summer, Baikal moderates the heat, and in winter there are severe Siberian frosts. Therefore, the climate here is milder than in neighboring areas. For example, Peschanaya Bay is the only area in Eastern Siberia where average annual temperature air is about 0 degrees C (more precisely +0.4 degrees C). Baikal freezes only in January. However, even in hot weather the water is no more than +12 degrees Celsius.
Since the difference between air temperatures and atmospheric pressure above the surface of the lake and in the surrounding mountains is very large, storms often occur on Lake Baikal. There are more sunny days a year here, for example, than in some resort areas of the Black Sea region.
There is no lake on the globe whose water is clearer than Lake Baikal. The white disk, lowered here to determine the transparency of the water, is visible from a depth of about 40 m.
In addition, lake water tastes very pleasant. “Whoever has taken a sip of Baikal water at least once,” say the Siberians, “will definitely return for another sip.”

Baikal is the oldest lake on Earth. Its basin began to form 25-30 million years ago. The age of the modern outlines is over a million years. Scientists have recently studied the origin and structure of the lake bottom, as well as the processes that occur there, using the Paisis deep-sea apparatus. Unique photographs of the bottom of Lake Baikal were taken at a depth of 1410 m. The increased seismicity of the basin and the associated change were proven coastline lakes.
It has been established that every year the shores of the lake move apart by an average of approximately 2 cm, and its area increases by 3 hectares.
Earthquakes, and sometimes there are up to 2000 of them a year, are mostly small. Quite noticeable ones also happen, such as in 1862, when part of the coast collapsed and a bay called Proval was formed. And during the 1958 earthquake, the bottom of the lake near Olkhon Island dropped by 20 m.
The active life of the subsoil is evidenced by the presence on the shores of the lake and in the adjacent mountains of numerous hot springs with temperatures from +30 degrees. up to + 90 degrees C. And at the same time, the age of the rocks in the mountainous area around Lake Baikal is approximately 2 billion years.

And Lake Baikal

One of the amazing features of the lake is its truly unique animal world. It has more than 1,500 species, and 75% of them live only on Lake Baikal. There are more fish here than in some seas - 49 species, and almost all are indigenous “Baikalians”, for example, the famous omul. “There is no Baikal without omul” - this is the local saying. The viviparous golomyanka fish is very interesting. It is so fat that washed ashore by a storm, it almost completely melts under the sun's rays. Its fat contains many medicinal organic compounds and vitamins, which is why it is also called “medicinal fish.”
Of the other species of Baikal fauna, there are 80 crustaceans alone, among which the epishura crustacean is very valuable for the ecology of the lake. Small in size (the mass of a thousand crustaceans is only 1 mg), this baby, while obtaining food, works tirelessly for the benefit of the lake. It filters water through a special organ, purifying it from various bacteria and algae. Over the course of a year, these microscopic “orderlies” manage to filter about 1,500 cubic meters several times. km of water to a depth of 5-10 m, which is 10 times more than what enters the lake from all the rivers, and the annual flow of the lake through the Angara is only 60 cubic meters. km. It is thanks to the tireless activity of the epishura crustacean that the unusual purity of Baikal waters is maintained.
A variety of berries, mushrooms, flowers and herbs grow in the coastal taiga forests. The decoration of the animal world is the famous Barguzin sable.
Unfortunately, due to the development of industry in Siberia, including in areas adjacent to Lake Baikal, the construction of a number of large enterprises in the woodworking, forest chemical and other industries, as well as non-ferrous metallurgy, often with gross violations of the environmental situation, over unique lake a mortal threat loomed. Saving Lake Baikal from pollution is an urgent task of our time.

GEOGRAPHY OF LAKE BAIKAL
Baikal (Bur. Baigal Dalai, Baigal Nuur) is a lake of tectonic origin in the southern part of Eastern Siberia, the deepest lake on the planet, the largest natural reservoir of fresh water.
The lake and coastal areas are distinguished by a unique diversity of flora and fauna, most of the animal species are endemic. Local residents and many in Russia traditionally call Baikal the sea.
Baikal is located in the center of the Asian continent on the border of the Irkutsk region and the Republic of Buryatia in the Russian Federation. The lake stretches from northeast to southwest for 620 km in the form of a giant crescent. The width of Lake Baikal ranges from 24 to 79 km. The bottom of Lake Baikal is 1167 meters below the level of the World Ocean, and the surface of its waters is 455.5 meters higher.
The water surface area of ​​Lake Baikal is 31,722 km² (excluding islands), which is approximately equal to the area of ​​countries such as Belgium or the Netherlands. In terms of water surface area, Baikal ranks sixth among the largest lakes in the world.
The length of the coastline is 2100 km.
The lake is located in a kind of hollow, surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges and hills. At the same time, the western coast is rocky and steep, the terrain east coast- more flat (in some places the mountains retreat from the coast by tens of kilometers).
Baikal is the deepest lake on Earth. Modern meaning the maximum depth of the lake - 1642 m - was established in 1983 by L. G. Kolotilo and A. I. Sulimov during the performance of hydrographic work by the expedition of the Main Directorate of National Research and Oceanography of the USSR Ministry of Defense at a point with coordinates 53°14′59″ N. w. 108°05′11″ E. d. (G) (O).

Tributaries and drainage of Lake Baikal
According to research in the 19th century, 336 rivers and streams flowed into Baikal; this number took into account only constant tributaries. There are no more recent data on this issue, but sometimes figures are given as 544 or 1123 (which are the result of counting valleys, not permanent watercourses). It is also believed that due to anthropogenic impact and climate change on Lake Baikal from the 19th century to modern times About 150 watercourses could have disappeared.
The largest tributaries of Lake Baikal are the Upper Angara, Barguzin, Turka, Snezhnaya, and Sarma. It flows out of the lake. There are 336 permanent watercourses in total. Lake Baikal

ICE OF LAKE BAIKAL
During the freeze-up period (on average January 9 - May 4), Baikal freezes entirely, except for a small section of 15-20 km in length located at the source of the Angara. The shipping period for passenger and cargo ships is usually open from June to September; Research vessels begin navigation after the lake is cleared of ice and complete it with the freezing of Lake Baikal, that is, from May to January.
By the end of winter, the thickness of the ice on Lake Baikal reaches 1 m, and in the bays - 1.5-2 m. In severe frost, cracks, locally called “stanova cracks,” tear the ice into separate fields. The length of such cracks is 10-30 km, and the width is 2-3 m. Breaks occur annually in approximately the same areas of the lake. They are accompanied by a loud crash, reminiscent of thunder or cannon shots. To a person standing on the ice, it seems that the ice cover is bursting just under his feet and he is about to fall into the abyss [source not specified 539 days]. Thanks to cracks in the ice, the fish on the lake do not die from lack of oxygen. Baikal ice, in addition, is very transparent, and the sun's rays penetrate through it, so planktonic algae that produce oxygen rapidly develop in the water. On the shores of Baikal you can see in winter ice grottoes and splashes.
Baikal ice presents scientists with many mysteries. Thus, in the 1940s, specialists from the Baikal Limnological Station discovered unusual forms of ice cover, characteristic only of Lake Baikal. For example, “hills” are cone-shaped ice hills up to 6 m high, hollow inside. In appearance, they resemble ice tents, “open” in the direction opposite to the shore. The hills can be located separately, and sometimes form miniature “mountain ranges”. There are also several other types of ice on Baikal: “sokui”, “kolobovnik”, “osenets”.
In addition, in the spring of 2009, satellite images of different areas of Lake Baikal were distributed on the Internet, in which dark rings were discovered. According to scientists, these rings arise due to the rise of deep waters and an increase in the temperature of the surface layer of water in the central part of the ring structure. As a result of this process, an anticyclonic (clockwise) current is formed. In the zone where the current reaches maximum speeds, vertical water exchange increases, which leads to accelerated destruction of the ice cover.

Oltrek Island, Small Sea, Baikal

Islands and peninsulas
There are 27 islands on Baikal (Ushkany Islands, Olkhon Island, Yarki Island and others). The largest of them is Olkhon (71 km long and 12 km wide, located almost in the center of the lake on its western coast, area - 729 km², according to other sources - 700 km²). The largest peninsula is Svyatoy Nos.

Seismic activity
The Baikal region (the so-called Baikal Rift Zone) is an area with high seismicity: earthquakes regularly occur here, most of which are one or two points on the MSK-64 intensity scale. However, strong ones also happen; Thus, in 1862, during the ten-magnitude Kudarin earthquake in the northern part of the Selenga delta, a land area of ​​200 km² with 6 uluses, in which 1,300 people lived, went under water, and Proval Bay was formed. Strong earthquakes were also noted in 1903 (Baikal), 1950 (Mondinskoye), 1957 (Muyskoye), 1959 (Middle Baikal). The epicenter of the Central Baikal earthquake was at the bottom of Lake Baikal in the area of ​​the village of Sukhaya (southeast coast). Its strength reached 9 points. In Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk, the strength of the main shock reached 5-6 points, cracks and minor destruction were observed in buildings and structures. The last strong earthquakes on Lake Baikal occurred in August 2008 (9 points) and February 2010 (6.1 points).

schematic map of Lake Baikal

Origin of the lake
The origin of Lake Baikal is still a matter of scientific debate. Scientists traditionally estimate the age of the lake at 25-35 million years. This fact also makes Baikal a unique natural object, since most lakes, especially those of glacial origin, live on average 10-15 thousand years, and then fill with silty sediments and become swampy.
However, there is also a version about the youth of Baikal, put forward by Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A.V. Tatarinov in 2009, which received indirect confirmation during the second stage of the “Worlds” expedition on Baikal. In particular, the activity of mud volcanoes at the bottom of Lake Baikal allows scientists to assume that the modern shoreline of the lake is only 8 thousand years old, and the deep-water part is 150 thousand years old.

What is certain is that the lake is located in a rift basin and is similar in structure, for example, to the Dead Sea basin. Some researchers explain the formation of Baikal by its location in the transform fault zone, others suggest the presence of a mantle plume under Baikal, and others explain the formation of the depression by passive rifting as a result of the collision of the Eurasian plate and Hindustan. Be that as it may, the transformation of Baikal continues to this day - earthquakes constantly occur in the vicinity of the lake. There are suggestions that the subsidence of the depression is associated with the formation of vacuum centers due to the outpouring of basalts onto the surface (Quaternary period).

Borg-Dagan grottoes, Olkhon island

Flora and fauna
Baikal is home to about 2,600 species and subspecies of aquatic animals, more than half of which are endemic, that is, they live only in this body of water. These include about 1000 endemic species, 96 genera, 11 families and endemic subfamilies. 27 species of fish from Lake Baikal are found nowhere else. This abundance of living organisms is explained by the high oxygen content in the entire thickness of Baikal water. 100% endemism is observed among nematodes of the family Mermitidae (28 species), worms Polychaeta (4 species), sponges Lubomirskiidae (14), Gregarinea, isopod crustaceans Isopoda (5), stoneflies Plecoptera. Almost all species and subspecies of amphipod crustaceans (349 out of 350, 99%) and scorpionfish (31 out of 32, 96%) are endemic to the lake. 90% of the species of turbellarian worms (130 out of 150) and barnacle crustaceans (132 out of 150) are endemic. Many fish are endemic to Baikal: 36 out of 61 species and subspecies (59%), 2 families (13.3%) and 12 genera (37.5%).
One of the endemics, the epishura crustacean, accounts for up to 80% of the zooplankton biomass of the lake and is the most important link in the food chain of the reservoir. It performs the function of a filter: it passes water through itself, purifying it.
Baikal oligochaetes, 84.5% of which are endemic, constitute up to 70-90% of the biomass of zoobenthos and play an important role in the processes of self-purification of the lake and as a food supply for benthophagous fish and predatory invertebrates. They participate in soil aeration and mineralization of organic matter.
The most interesting fish in Baikal is the viviparous golomyanka fish, whose body contains up to 30% fat. It surprises biologists with its daily feeding migrations from the depths to shallow waters. Fish in Baikal include Baikal omul, grayling, whitefish, Baikal sturgeon (Acipenser baeri baicalensis), burbot, taimen, pike and others. Baikal is unique among lakes in that freshwater sponges grow here at great depths.

Origin of the toponym “Baikal”
The origin of the name of the lake is not precisely established. Below are the most common versions of the origin of the toponym “Baikal”:
From the name of the nationality and country Bayyrku (bayegu, bayirku, bayurku)
From the Buryat bay - “stand” and gal “fire” (according to legend, Baikal was formed on the site of a fire-breathing mountain)
From Buryat “mighty standing water”
From the Buryat baikhaa “natural, natural, natural, existing”
From Buryat “rich fire”]
From Yakut baai “rich” and kyyol “lake”]
From Yakut baykhal, bayg'al "sea", "big, deep water"]
From the Arabic Bahr-al-Bak "the sea that gives birth to many tears", "the sea of ​​horror"
From the Buryat “Baygaal-dalai”, “a vast, large body of water, similar to the sea,” where dalai also means “immense, universal, supreme, supreme.”
From Yukaghir Vayguol “fin: forest washed ashore by water”
The first Russian explorers of Siberia used the Evenki name “Lama” (sea). From the second half of the 17th century, Russians switched to the name adopted by the Buryats - Bur. Baigal. At the same time, they adapted it to their language, replacing the “g” characteristic of the Buryats with the “k”, which is more familiar to the Russian language, as a result of which the modern name was finally formed.

Neutrino telescope
A unique deep-sea neutrino telescope NT200, built in 1993-1998, was created and operates on the lake, with the help of which high-energy neutrinos are detected. Since 2010, construction has been underway on the NT1000 neutrino telescope with an effective volume of 1 km3, the construction of which is expected to be completed no earlier than 2017.

"Worlds" on Baikal
In the summer of 2008, the Foundation for Assistance to the Conservation of Lake Baikal conducted a research expedition “Worlds on Baikal”. 52 dives of the Mir deep-sea manned submersibles to the bottom of Lake Baikal were carried out.
Scientists delivered to the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences samples of water, soil and microorganisms raised from the bottom of Lake Baikal.
The expedition was continued in 2009 and 2010.

Lake Baikal, Cape Khoboy

Tourists on Lake Baikal
You can get to Baikal in different ways. As a rule, those who want to visit it first go to one of the nearest large cities: Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude or Severobaikalsk, in order to plan their route in more detail from there. Traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway between Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude, you can spend hours admiring the views of the lake stretching right outside the train window.
70 km from Irkutsk, on the shores of Lake Baikal near the source of the Angara, the village of Listvyanka is located - one of the most popular tourist destinations on Lake Baikal. You can get here from the regional center by bus or boat in just over an hour. Holidays in Listvyanka are valued due to the huge number of excursions and active recreation; this is where most sea-lake cruises originate. The most popular routes run from the village to Bolshie Koty, to the Svyatoy Nos Peninsula, Olkhon Island and other places.
Also on the shores of Lake Baikal are the cities of Slyudyanka and Baikalsk. In Slyudyanka there is a railway station built entirely of marble. In Baikalsk there is ski slope, in the summer there is a lift; in sunny weather you can see the opposite side of the lake with the spurs of the Baikal ridge.
On east coast The Barguzinsky Bay is especially popular, next to which the construction of the Baikal Harbor tourist and recreational zone continues. In the village of Maksimikha you can take a tour with a visit to the Svyatoy Nos Peninsula. Horseback riding and hiking tours are available. To the south are the villages of Novy Enkhaluk, Zarechye, and Sukhaya. Here, private individuals organized receptions for guests, including in yurts, and comfortable holiday homes appeared. Between Enkhaluk and Sukha there is hydrogen sulfide thermal source Zagza.
, which is rich in picturesque bays, mysterious islands, and healing springs. A good view of the bay opens from the tops of the Holy Nose, which can be reached from the village of Ust-Barguzin.

Thirty kilometers south of the mouth of the Selenga River is Posolsky Sor Bay, where two tourist camps are located - Kultushnaya and Baikalsky Surf. Many camp sites provide tourist services there.
Almost in the very north of the lake there is a resort called Khakusy, which can only be reached by boat from Nizhneangarsk or Severobaikalsk or in winter on ice.
The Great Baikal Trail passes through various sections around the lake. ecological trails and one of the most beautiful ways for tourists to see unique nature and enjoy breathtaking views and panoramas of Lake Baikal.

Attractions
On and around Lake Baikal there are many natural and cultural monuments, as well as historical and archaeological sites. Below are just a few of them.
Northern Baikal
Rock Shaman-stone

Barguzin Bay
Ushkany Islands
Peschanaya Bay
Cape Skala Shamanka on Olkhon Island
Cape Ludar
Cape Ryty
Chersky Peak - 2090 m above sea level
Circum-Baikal Railway
Frolikha (tract)

port Baikal

Interesting Facts
If all the water contained in Baikal (23,615.390 km³) is divided among all Russian citizens (141,927,297 people), then each person will have about 166.4 thousand cubic meters of water, which is approximately 2,773 railway tanks of 60 tons each.
According to the estimates of the famous lake researcher Ph.D. L. G. Kolotilo “The Price of Baikal”, the utilitarian value of water in the lake is 236 trillion dollars. His article aroused some interest, including from Greenpeace Russia, and its main provisions were announced on November 27, 2012 (without reference to the author) in an interview with V.V. Zhirinovsky on the Vesti 24 TV channel.

Myths and legends about Baikal
There is a legend that Father Baikal had 336 son rivers and they all flowed into his father in order to replenish his waters, but his daughter fell in love with the Yenisei River and began to carry her father’s waters to her beloved. In response to this, Father Baikal threw a huge piece of rock at his daughter and cursed her. This rock, called the Shaman Stone, is located at the source of the Angara and is considered its beginning.
Another variation of the legend says that Baikal had an only daughter, Angara. She fell in love with Yenisei and decided to run away to him. Baikal, having learned about this, tried to block her path by throwing the Shaman-stone to the source, but Angara ran further, then Baikal sent his nephew Irkut in pursuit of her, but he took pity on Angara and turned off the path. The Angara met the Yenisei and flowed further along with it.

Bolshoi Kyltygei Island (Shaggy)

Circum-Baikal walking trail
Information for tourists
Section 1: village. Kultuk - st. Marituy - port Baikal, 84 km, 22 hours of net time, average speed - 4 km/h.
There is no such place on Baikal anymore - there are no slopes on it, and from the very beginning, the 156th kilometer to the port and Baikal station at the 73rd kilometer, the traveler theoretically does not rise a single meter. It was about this site that Irkutsk resident P. Taimenev spoke in his travel notes “A few words about the Siberian Railway,” published in the magazine “Nature” and People in St. Petersburg in 1890: “In our deep, unshakable conviction, the Siberian Railway is an indestructible monument culture of the 19th century, this is a manifestation of Russian national greatness, this is the fulfillment of the moral duty of contemporaries in the face of future generations, this is one of the best pages of modern Russian history, this is the entry into the twentieth century."
Surprisingly, the tourist boom on this section of the Circum-Baikal Railway began only after its “discovery” by a number of newspaper publications in Irkutsk regional newspapers in the seventies. This is partly due to the development of rock climbing on the shores of Lake Baikal. Previously, this was the most exotic section of the Trans-Siberian Railway only for train passengers, especially those traveling to the east, for whom at the Baikal station the sacred lake suddenly and immediately opened up, in all its gigantic beauty and power. Of course, this is still unlikely to be seen anywhere, not only here, but also abroad: on one side, the rearing aquamarine waves of the surf literally lick the carriage wheels, on the opposite side, no matter how hard you try, you will not see the top of the vocal cliff from the window. And every now and then the train plunged into the darkness of endless tunnels; at short stops at numerous stops, there was a brisk trade in the no less exotic “scented” omul.

The builder, who came here in 1899 along the Angara valley, encountered extraordinary technical difficulties. The Olkhinskoye Plateau breaks off like a wall into the lake throughout the entire section; the shore has largely preserved its tectonic relief. Composed of very strong crystalline rocks - granites, gneisses, crystalline schists - it has undergone relatively few changes over millions of years, is little rugged in configuration and has practically no deep and convenient bays for receiving and settling ships. Nevertheless, harsh climatic conditions, which contribute to intense processes of physical weathering, and high seismic activity favor the development of rock falls and screes.
That is why the line had to be laid on shelves carved into the rocky slopes, sometimes with the reinforcement of mountain slopes to great heights with stone facing. Often this required such a significant amount of work that it was more profitable to lay the route on embankments using retaining walls high altitude, sometimes on bridges across bays and valleys, and most often it was necessary to erect these structures in combination. Often the construction of a tunnel was the only way out (the route was created at both ends). They were built for two tracks at once, using cladding made of natural stone, and today the circular arches of the tunnel portals with key stones, on which the dates of construction are forever inscribed, amaze with the thoroughness of finishing and beauty, fused in harmony with the surrounding wildlife. Rockfall areas caused a lot of trouble - the roadbed was then protected by reinforced concrete or stone galleries. The destructive work of waves was also taken into account - breakwaters and wave-breaking walls follow the contours of the coast almost along their entire length.

Ust-Anga Bay, Lake Baikal

Sometimes not only in one place - in one cut! - up to ten structures had to be built. There is just such a place in front of the Marituy station: the watercourse had to be drawn over the structures and taken to Lake Baikal, but this is not easy to do on a cliff. And today, when you approach from the port of Baikal to this puzzle, brilliantly embodied in stone and concrete from an engineering point of view, with involuntary admiration you trace the path of the stream: high above, where not only to place building structures, materials and mechanisms - there seems to be nowhere to stand - he was sent into a concrete bypass, then he fell into a stone water well, from where, behind the tunnel portal, he was enclosed in a flume bypass, then placed in a canal, and since there were high retaining and then wave-breaking walls on the way, he had to be carried over them into cantilever reinforced concrete spillway.
Weekend hikes are the great future of the Circum-Baikal Road. In the meantime, good transport connections make it accessible mainly to residents of the cities of Shelekhov, Irkutsk, Angarsk, Usolye-Sibirsky, as well as Cheremkhov and Sayansk. If you use Friday evening for access, then in two days you can make both short trips starting from stations and stopping points of the pass section (Rassokha, Orlenka, Taezhny, Podkamennaya, Pereezod, Andrianovskaya, Angasolka, etc.), and transitions crossing Olkhinsky plateau and access to the coast. In winter, ski travel comes down to a very popular one-day “family” route from Moving along the valley of the Bolshaya Krutaya Guba river to the Temnaya Pad stopping point or to the city of Slyudyanka, crossing Baikal in its southern part. The tradition of Irkutsk residents firmly includes one-day throw-transitions (running and skiing on ice) from the source of the Angara to Slyudyanka (to the Staraya Angasolka stop) over a distance of 70 - 80 km.

So, no matter what type of tourism we choose, the task before us on a weekend hike is the same - the need to cover the site in two days. It is advisable to start at the port of Baikal. It is connected with Irkutsk by numerous means of communication (motor ships, hydrofoils, buses to Listvenichny), and from Kultuk it is convenient to travel to Irkutsk by train in the evening (stop point "Strawberry"). It remains to add that boat trip provides an excellent opportunity to look at the panorama of coastal structures from an unusual perspective. Particularly impressive are the magnificent arched bridges across the Shumilikha, Bolshaya Polovinnaya, Marituy, Bolshaya Krutaya Guba, and Angasolka rivers, their outlines reminiscent of Roman aqueducts. As for the organization of bivouacs, here in any place at almost any time you can organize “both a table and a house” - there are many convenient sites within the roadbed. You can also count on the truly Siberian hospitality of the local population at numerous posts and villages, which, by the way, we had to use more than once. On a hiking trip, this will eliminate the need to carry a tent and sleeping gear with you for two nights. Apparently, the administration should take into account the mass interests and build huts and shelters.

It’s worth staying a little longer at the port of Baikal, the final point of the route, marked by the kilometer post “73” (for the Circum-Baikal Road, the same kilometer, starting from Irkutsk, has been preserved). It was from here that the construction offensive against the rocky “fortifications” of Baikal unfolded in 1898; here began the famous ferry crossing across Baikal, which had no equal in the whole world and which was designed to ensure uninterrupted train service throughout the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok during the construction of the route to Kultuk. For this purpose, two icebreakers were ordered in England and assembled in Listvenichny; for transportation of goods - "Baikal" and passengers - "Angara".
In terms of its size, the icebreaker-ferry "Baikal" was considered the second in the world: its length was 100 m and its width was 16 m, with a crew of 200 people. Three railway tracks housed 27 two-axle freight cars and a steam locomotive. Three main steam engines and 20 auxiliary engines served two stern and special bow propellers; it covered the distance from Baikal station to Mysovaya station, 72 km, in 4.5 hours and was able to break ice a meter thick. Over five years of operation ferry crossing only once, in the severe frosts of January 1904, the icebreaker was unable to cope with its duties. We had to build an ice railway. The carriages were moved along it by horses, which were mobilized together with the owners from the villages of Transbaikalia and the Irkutsk province. "Baikal" was lost in the civil war at a combat post, "Angara" has survived to this day: by decision of the Irkutsk regional committee of the Komsomol it was proposed to create a museum of military and revolutionary glory on it.

Cape Maly Kolokolny, Baikal

Natural monuments
The White Recess is a wonderful geological natural monument, the object of excursions of the 27th International Geological Congress, located at 105 km. It is simply impossible to pass by it without noticing: especially on a sunny day, its slopes dazzle with a powerful glow, the marble bottom is not immediately lost in the blue of the depths. For ease of study and inspection, all exploration excavations and wells are numbered with red paint; for those who love mineralogy, last years it is becoming increasingly famous for the presence of numerous crystals of the precious spinel, a hard mineral, reaching several centimeters in length. Located at 104 km of the Circum-Baikal section of the East Sib. railway An outcrop of marbles with a rare combination of rocks and minerals in the coastal part of the lake, a place for excursions of the International Geological Year (IGY), monuments of all-Russian significance.
Bird Bazaar - this is how it was decided to call this zoological natural monument, the only nesting site of the herring gull on a steep 300-meter cliff in the southern half of the lake, located at 133 km. For local residents the arrival of seagulls on it in May is a sure sign that Baikal will soon disperse (that is, the ice on it will melt). From a boat or kayak, you can clearly see from May to August how the entire cliff, from the water’s edge to the wooded top, is dotted with white columns of birds, their hubbub deafening at a great distance. And naturally, during the period of nesting and growing chicks, the colony cannot be disturbed by visits. Located near the station. Sharyzhalgai Circum-Baikal section (133 km) East Sib. and. e. A place of permanent mass nesting of herring gulls, the only place in southern Baikal where nests are located on the coastal walls.

In recent years, due to restrictions on shooting, flocks of seals often appear along the coast. And although this is a sure sign that everything is fine with the composition of the water here, and the factor of concern is small, one should not be deluded by this (the mass death of animals in 1987 leads to disappointing thoughts).
On February 25, 1985, among 26 natural objects, by decision of the Irkutsk Regional Executive Committee, the source of the Angara River, the only watercourse that drains all the water entering Baikal, was approved as a natural monument.
The source of the Angara is a natural monument of republican significance. The width of the river here reaches a kilometer, and it is here, at the exit from the lake, that there is a peculiar ledge in the form of a rocky threshold, above which the water depth is on average only 3.5 m and the water speed is 12 - 15 km/h. The relatively warm bottom waters of Baikal, entering the threshold, do not allow the surface of the source to freeze in winter. At the same time, the source is a kind of wind chimney, serving as a place for cold northwestern air currents to invade the lake, while in the opposite direction the cooled air of the Baikal basin flows through it. This climatic feature of the source noticeably restrains the development of phenological phenomena here. However, it is included in the section “Zoological Natural Monuments”, and this was made possible by the only mass permanent wintering of lamellar beaks in all of Northern Asia, numbering annually 8 - 12 thousand waterfowl. In the huge polynya, which stretches for 3 - 5 km and exists thanks to high speed and constant positive water temperature, mergansers and ducks predominate, and dippers constantly winter. Severe winters can significantly reduce the size of the polynya (winter of 1983), but only once in 200 years has its short-term complete freezing been abolished. The rarest wintering area of ​​lamellar beaks in northeast Asia, different from its surroundings climatic features at all times of the year. All-Russian significance.
According to scientists, the wintering of waterfowl is the same historically ancient phenomenon as the presence of the polynya at the source, and the peculiar behavior of the birds wintering here suggests that a special ecological group winters here, which has long adapted to extreme living conditions (it has been established, for example, that ducks spend the night in hummocky ice). That is why scientific interest in this wintering is exceptional.

Output of marbles in the port of Baikal. Located in the port of Baikal, on the coastal cliff of the Olkha plateau. Outcrops of marbles in the oldest Precambrian complexes of the world, 3.4-3.7 billion years old. The object of excursions of international and all-Union geological forums.

Krutogubsky outcrop. Located at the mouth of the river. Big Krutaya Guba on the Olkha plateau. Petrographic-mineralogical object.

Shaman's Stone - a tiny rocky island at the source of the Angara, a geomorphological natural monument, the top of a rocky threshold, is tightly connected with the poetic Buryat legend of the hero Baikal and his beautiful daughter Angara. Located at the source of the river. Hangars. The only ledge of the Angarsk threshold protruding above the water is known from a colorful Buryat legend. It is also connected with the unrealized project for quickly filling the Bratsk reservoir, which could have had fatal consequences for the fauna of the lake. It was developed by MOSGIDEP and provided for the construction at the source of the Angara, in its bed, of a canal up to 9 km long, with a top width of up to 100 m and a useful depth of 11 m, for which a massive explosion was designed to release using 30 thousand tons of TNT. The explosion, which was supposed to lift 7 million cubic meters into the air. m of soil, it was proposed to carry out in 1960 with the aim of reducing the period of filling the Bratsk reservoir from four years to a minimum, obtaining additional energy in the amount of 32 billion kWh. The implementation of the project, according to calculations, could lower the level of Lake Baikal to 11 m, but even lowering it by 3 - 5 m would cause widespread reshaping of the banks, a change in the normal living conditions of fish, ports, timber transshipment bases, and the railway would suffer. Due to the fact that it was difficult to foresee all the possible consequences of this bold in engineering, but apparently adventurous project, it was rejected.

And here is what I got for the first section - from Kultuk to the source of the Angara, having carefully summed up the data scattered across the pages of diary entries: streams - 41, rivers and rivulets - 13, river - 1 (Bolshaya Polovinnaya), in total - 55.
Conclusions: section of the village. Kultuk - Port Baikal is not so much a ready-made section of the Baikal trail, easily accessible due to developed transport communications, as a real tourist “road”, a highway with extremely grateful natural resources and rare technical history. A lot of work still needs to be done for the Circum-Baikal to become a road for millions, but so much has already been done by man that it is mainly up to the reserve, the owner, who would turn this fertile corner into a paradise for tourists. And it would be urgent to start providing tourists with firewood, since due to the lack of dead wood and the small amount of driftwood on the shore in places of intense influx of tourists and vacationers, threatening conditions are created for the forest, especially in the area that is maximally congested from the mouth of Bolshaya Krutaya Guba to Kultuk. Things got to the point where all picket and kilometer posts disappeared from the village of Angasolki to Kultuk.

Cape Svyatoy Nos, Zmeevaya Bay

TRADES AND LEGENDS OF LAKE BAIKAL
The emergence of Khamar-Daban
I have already told you how the Sayans arose. Mountains such as the Sayans were not created by a small force; from that force, probably, the whole earth trembled. Yes, a small force would never have created them. Then, probably, it was like this: that power burst out of the Earth, and it had been accumulating for perhaps millions of years, it threw everything out at once, and the Sayans were ready. When the Sayans cooled down, there was still a lot of strength left in the Earth, they dispersed in different directions and began to push the earth above them along the entire road. But this was no longer the same force that worked on the Sayans. So, in small tremors, the underground force came from the Sayans closer to sunrise and on its way raised the earth. Where the shock was stronger, the mountains rose higher; where it was smaller, the saddle remained.
In a word, the mountains from the Sayan Mountains to the east began to resemble a humpbacked nose, for which the Buryats nicknamed them “Hamar-Daban”. Many years after Khamar-Daban arose, a lot of earth was blown onto it from the plain by the wind. The mountains were not high, so they were covered with earth. All the cracks that were created by the tremors when the earth rose up the mountain were covered with earth from the valleys.
The sun did not scorch the earth very much on Khamar-Daban, and soon it was covered with forest. Then animals and birds spread out in the forest, people migrated there, closer to the mountains, and they began to live and prosper and make good.

Bezymyannaya Bay, Baikal

About how Baikal came to be
Old people used to talk about how Baikal came about. There is not much land on Earth. Everyone knows that if you dig a hole several fathoms deep, or even less, all kinds of sand, clay, stone and other different rocks will immediately come out. The deeper you dig a hole, the less soil there is, the more stone there is, and different soil that is not visible on the ground. And further, in the very depths of the earth, there are only stones, and even further water. Various stones lie in the ground. There is also one that if you drop water on it, it starts to boil and fall apart. There is a lot of such stone in the depths of the earth, much more than on the surface. So it happened a thousand years ago: water and stone came together deep in the earth. As soon as they got together, they began to boil. Where should the couple go? He climbed in different directions and moved the earth from its place, and it went like a wave and, even more than that, shook the whole earth. So the earth seethed in the depths, seethed, and then water and steam rushed up, and the water covered low places. She could not go further, there were mountains all around, and so it turned out to be Baikal. It never decreases, because it is always supported by water from underground, and that water, they say, lives in kin with the Arctic Ocean. Previously, old people often easily said: a boat would break on Lake Baikal, but boards were found in Ledovity, or something that would sink in Ledovity floated up on Baikal.

How Olkhon Island was formed
Not everything that is said in legends is true. There used to be talk that everything was created by God, as the scripture says. Some believed him and some didn’t believe him. Most of all, people did not believe those fairy tales. The priests were angry at this, they cursed with anathema, but what was the use: a curse is not smoke - it won’t eat your eyes. Let’s take our Olkhon, it’s called an island. Where did he come from? God would not have had enough strength to lower him from heaven. This means that it did not fall from the sky, but came from nature itself.
When Baikal appeared, all the places here were filled with water and there was not a single island. A million years passed, the water settled down, fish began to be found in Baikal, the forests all around began to rustle - in a word, real life began here. After this, strong winds began to blow on Baikal, so strong that they made the whole of Baikal boil, as if in a cauldron. The waves reached to the very bottom, from where all the stone and sand were driven to the shore. But the waves did not reach the stones all the way to the shore; they got caught on the underwater rock. The waves worked for many years, they kept pushing stones and sand towards the sakla. And so a whole mountain, large, wide and long, washed up near that rock. Other waves washed away that mountain and little by little made it flat. This is where Olkhon Island came from. Old people say that Olkhon is higher in years and lower in years. This is because it stands on the rock. When the rocks are washed away, the island sinks a little, and when there is a lot of water under the rocks, it rises a little. At first they thought that some evil spirit was at work here, and then they themselves became convinced that it all depended on the wind. So believe the priests that the island was created by God. Why didn’t he then create it in the middle of Baikal, where there is no rock? That’s why the priests are silent, and the Holy Scriptures don’t say anything about it. That everything was created by God in a week is said by those who don’t want to think, or that intoxication is beneficial to them.

Failure on Baikal
There was a failure at Lake Baikal under my father. He often reminded me about it, and from him our whole village knew how and what went on there. It’s not only scary to talk about failure, but it’s also very painful to remember. In those days of failure, many people remained crippled for the rest of their lives: some had their legs or arms broken, some lost their minds, and some, out of grief, when they were left naked and did not get out of bitter poverty, went to the next world poor.
Where could the poor man go at that time? There is nothing to live for, lie down and die. When all this happened, faith in God was lost. Apparently he is weak before the force of nature. Those who used to say that everything is done by God's will have stopped believing in it. It became clear to us, simple men, that mountains, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans were created not by the power of God, but by the will of nature, which conceals enormous power within itself, and while a person is weak, she will do whatever she wants with him.
It is God’s will that saves you when you don’t know what to do and when you don’t know what’s going on around you. After the Baikal failure, all the old people began to say that Baikal itself happened just like this failure. This means that the grandfathers also correctly conveyed that from the columns of fire and water between the mountains, the water flooded the valley, and in that place the sea-Baikal became. People now firmly believe this truth.

Peschanaya Bay, Maly Kolokolny Cape

Why did Barguzin flow in the other direction?
My grandfather was the first to settle in the village of Tolstikhino, when there were only three houses in Barguzin itself. My grandfather lived here for eighty years, my father lived for about a hundred years, and I’ve been living here for ninety-four years. In short, our entire family has been living here for a long time. We all knew how to speak Buryat and Tunguska. This passed from my grandfather to my father, and from him to me. From the Buryats and Tungus they heard how our river Barguzin used to flow, from them I learned from childhood and I will tell you what I remember.
Previously, a very long time ago, the Barguzin River flowed not to Baikal, but from Baikal to the Arctic Ocean, and then it turned back and began to run back to where it came from. It was not done by God, it was the will of the earth. It happened like this: Baikal stood, stood, surrounded by high mountains, nowhere on Earth higher than them, and between these mountains the water kept accumulating and accumulating. In the mountains, the ice and snow melted, it rained, and it all flowed into Baikal. A lot of water rose in it, it covered half the mountains, and there was nowhere for it to go, and the mountain rivers kept pouring their water into the sea. And then one day one mountain could not stand it and burst. The water broke through and flowed through it into Baikal. She washed away the entire taiga, made a level place from mountain to mountain and reached the Arctic Ocean itself. Back then, Baikal held a lot of water, the river flowed wide and deep, and when it became smaller, it began to gather in a narrow channel. The water flowed and flowed down the river and flooded the entire shore near the ocean, it was very cold there, and ice mountains began to grow from that water. At first the water broke through them, because there was a lot of it in Baikal, but when it got rid of it, the water lost its power. After many years, the ice mountains prevented water from Lake Baikal from going straight into the ocean. The frozen ice began to approach Lake Baikal closer and closer. The river became shorter every year and washed away its top. In the end, it washed out its valley through which it flowed in the first years to such an extent that the valley rose above Lake Baikal. Water stopped flowing from Baikal into it, and at that time other rivers from the mountains and char began to flow into the old channel. There was nowhere for that water to go, the river turned back and went to Baikal. When the water went to the ocean, a lot of silt was deposited into the valley, and the entire forest at the bottom of the river rotted. The river became narrow, the banks became wide. Now, where the Barguzin River flows, the whole place is called a valley, and there is no richer region than this valley. When the Tungus and Barguts arrived in the valley, the river was already running into Baikal; instead of the former wide river, a narrow one flowed, along which the hunters descended to the sea. The valley was overgrown with taiga, animals and birds multiplied, and it became more beautiful than before the river appeared. That’s why later the Buryats and Russians came to these places, and my grandfather settled here.
We lived here and in the bar, for example, Karlych (M.K. Kuchelbecker) really loved such stories, he took them from me on paper. I just don’t know if they went into books. He wrote a lot here and visited all the villages under Muravyov. It’s a pity that I lived my life illiterate, otherwise I at least read his books before I died. He didn’t really believe in God and didn’t rely on the Tsar, he hung out more with our peasants here, and thanks to him for that - he treated them for illnesses. He was able to tell such stories about the past, and he did not tell us that we were sinners before God.

Primorsky Ridge

From the history of the development of the Barguzin Valley
What our Russian peasant has not endured, what he has not experienced. My grandfather came here, my father lived here. I remember them, I’ve lived here for over a hundred years. If you count how long we, the Elshins, walked here, how many mountains we crossed, then, probably, during this time we could walk around the globe on foot, and from the forest that our ancestors uprooted, we could build a second Moscow.
When my grandfather came here, there was a continuous taiga here, under the arable fields there were only small circles of land, but now, look, there are such fields all around that you can’t see them with your eyes. That’s why the land is dear to us here because it smells of the sweat of our ancestors, is watered with their blood and tears.

Barguzin Bay, Baikal

Where did the name "Baikal" come from?
Russians have long heard that somewhere in the middle of Siberia there is a huge lake. But no one knew what it was called. When Russian merchants, and then Cossacks crossed the Urals and began to big rivers When the Ob and Yenisei approached, they learned that people lived around the lake, which boiled day and night. Those Russians learned that that lake was rich in fish, and that various animals walked along the shores, and such expensive ones that could not be found anywhere else in the world. The Cossacks and merchants began to hurry to that sea-lake, they walked, did not sleep, did not feed their horses, did not know when the day ended and when the night began. Everyone wanted to be the first to get to the lake and see what it was like and why it was boiling without rest.

Those merchants and Cossacks walked to the sea for a long time, several years, many of them died along the way, but the living ones still reached it and saw the Shaman Stone in front of them. He blocked their way and blocked the light. You can’t turn away from it to the right or to the left; there are such mountains all around that if you throw your head back, your hat will fly off, but you won’t be able to see the top. The Cossacks and merchants hung around the Shaman-stone and thought that they would not be able to get to the sea, but they themselves heard it making noise, rising and beating against the rocks.
The merchants were sunbathing, the Cossacks were sad; apparently, their entire long journey had been lost without a sniff of tobacco. They drove back, pitched the tent and began to think hard about how they could cross the Shaman Stone or go around the mountains. They cannot go around the mountains - the sea will swallow them. So the Cossacks and merchants stopped and began to live not far from the sea-lake, but they could not get to the shore.
They had to live here for a long time, perhaps their bones would have rotted there, but then, fortunately for them, an unknown man approached them and called himself a Buryat. The Russians began to ask him to take them to the shore, lead them around the sea and show them the way to land where they had not yet been. The Buryat didn’t say anything to them, he folded his palms into a tube, then raised them to his face and went into the forest. The Russians did not detain him and let him go with God. The merchants and Cossacks were sad again, what could they do next, apparently they would die. They lived like this for who knows how long, no one counted the days or months. The merchants and Cossacks became emaciated and haggard, and grief overwhelmed them worse than before. They wanted to gather their last strength and go back, but then the Buryat came again and brought his son and said:
- I can’t go around Baigal with you - I’ve become old, I can’t go around the Shaman Stone - the years are long gone, take your son, his eyes are light, and his legs are like a deer.
The old man went into the taiga, and his son led the Russians along a new road, brought them to the seashore and said:
— Baigal.
The Russians asked him what it was, he answered them:
“In our opinion, it means a place of fire; there used to be a continuous fire here, then the earth collapsed and it became the sea.” Since then we have called our sea Baigal.
The Russians liked this name, and they also began to call this sea Baikal.

Ushkany Islands

Who can know when this was? Yes, no one probably remembers. Many years have passed since then, during this time mountains have grown on the plains, deep lakes have overflowed in the lowlands, forests have grown on the rocks. At that time Baikal stood calmly, so quietly that the water did not move, like a mirror, the surface shone from shore to shore. Sometimes only early in the morning, at dawn, the fish splashed. But Baikal is not angry about this, he loves various living creatures and, like a father, gives them food.

How long Baikal lived in silence and bliss, only he knows. And then, unexpectedly, a terrible storm fell on Baikal. Baikal has never seen such a storm before. The water of Baikal is covered with terrible bubbles, it seems that it has become higher than before and is trying to spill over the coastal valleys and lowlands. Old man Baikal became angry at the storm and said:
“Don’t make me angry, you won’t be able to defeat the old man, you won’t be able to disperse my bright water in all directions, you won’t be able to dry up my dear home.”
But the storm didn’t even want to listen to the old man. Know walks and walks along the crests of the waves, which have already risen from the heights of the cliffs.
“You, old man, cannot cope with my strength,” says the storm, “I raise the seas and oceans, I destroy the taiga, I uproot the eternal forest, I destroy rocks, and I will splash you like a puddle, and drain you like a drop.”
After such impudent words, Baikal became furious. Evil gives strength. Baikal straightened its mighty shoulders, it remembered its sons and daughters, gathered strength into its heroic chest and let’s fight the storm. He began to build rock after rock around himself, and mountains began to rise behind the rocks. The storm sees that the old man is not to be trifled with and that he cannot be defeated so easily, she called upon the winds Kultuk and Barguzin to help her. The storm immediately increased in strength. Then Baikal resorted to cunning and began to block the storm’s path away from the shore. Rocks began to rise from the bottom, so many of them rose above the water that they began to obscure the sun. The storm hits the rocks with all its force and rolls back; it arrives weakly on the shore.
This is how rocks appeared in Baikal, in spite of the storms, to the delight of the shores that they protect. Well, once the rocks appeared, they were later covered with sand and silt. From year to year the rocks became overgrown and grew so large that they turned into islands. This one island was nicknamed Ushkany. Why was he called that? I'll tell you about this now. This island was more successful than others; a forest soon appeared on it: pine, birch, foliage, aspen, but the bushes didn’t even have a name. There will be so many berries here that there will be enough berry jelly to cook berry jelly for the entire Baikal water. The island is also rich in wild rosemary and flowers. In autumn on the island, the aroma takes your breath away.

The island has its own climate, its own weather, and there is no such thing anywhere around Baikal. When autumn is all around, everything withers and freezes everywhere, on the island everything is in bloom, as far as the eye can see, everything is green: the berries are ripening, wild rosemary is blooming for the second time, and is blooming. The ushkans, which means hares in Siberian, saw about such an island, and they flocked to the island in droves. What are the little cowards used to, and when necessary, they swim and end up on the island. There were so many ushkans bred there that there was nowhere to go.
But a person does not sleep, he is also cunning. I found out that the island was rich in nature and made my way onto it. People were amazed at how many Ushkans lived here. That’s how the island was called Ushkanim. Then the Ushkans spread to the small islands that stand next to the big ones. Now these small islands are also called Ushkanii.
Many years ago, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers wanted to settle on these Ushkany islands, but they were not suitable for life: winter and summer are not suitable here at the same time as around Lake Baikal. The men wanted to start a farm, but they didn’t have enough urine, and there was no need for it.
People have been protecting the Ushkany Islands from time immemorial, and the animals there are preserved by the hunters themselves. The old people told how a long time ago several thieves came to the island to harass the Ushkans. The hunters agreed among themselves to hire an old man to keep all living things on the island. An old man lived on the island for more than a hundred years, he killed all the thieves, he punished his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren: “Just as a fox does not hunt near its hole, so you take care of all living things around you. Without nature, a person is naked, and you cannot live naked for long.”

Suvo
Some old people said where the name of the village of Suvo, which is not far from Barguzin, came from. One elderly Tungus explained the name in his own way. The Tungus have not lived forever in the upper reaches of Barguzin. Long before them, different peoples roamed here, but no one remembers them. Those distant peoples left the Barguzin Valley in that old time when the Chuds first began to come here, and then the Tungus, the Orochons and the Barguts began to migrate. After them, the Russians began to appear. But that was quite recently, about three hundred years ago.
The Tungus gave names to rivers, mountains and places most of all here, because there were more of them here than other peoples. There are many stories about the name of the village of Suvo, but the truest of them is this. Once upon a time, many Tungus lived near Lake Kotokel. They lived around the lake, fished, killed animals, and lived like this for years. The Tungus were very fertile in those years, because it was very cold, and they love the cold. When warming began, they began to die out, genus after genus completely disappeared from the earth. Warmth, after all, multiplies all kinds of infection, but before there was nothing to escape from it.
At that time, when many Tungus were born, life around Kotokel became crowded, they began to little by little and slowly climb up the Barguzin. The Barguzin road is wide, there are a lot of tributaries near Barguzin, and the Tungus scattered along these tributaries. They are hardy people, they will soon get to know a place, the Tungus will never get lost in the taiga, they will get out of any wilderness straight to where they need to go. They have such an instinct, they know where things grow, they smell where animals are found, where to go hunting, and where there is no need to break legs in vain. Everyone here knows about their affairs, and for this reason the Tungus enjoys respect here.

One such Tungus clan walked for many days along the left bank of the Barguzin and saw a path that stretches along a tributary up the mountain. That taiga path led the Tungus to the mountains. The Tungus do not like the steppes and swamps, what should they do there; at that time they did not deal with livestock. At the very top of the mountain, the Tungus stopped, set up yurts and went to check where the path went next. Soon the Tungus returned and told their prince that the taiga path ends here not far from the mountain, and beyond lies the dense taiga, where, apparently, no man has gone before. The prince thought and said:
- Suvo.
This means the end of the road in Tunguska. All the Tungus who stood near the prince repeated at once: “Suvo, suvo, suvo.” Since then, who knows how many years have passed, but the name Suvo has stuck to this place. Even before the arrival of the Russians, all the Tungus said that the Suvo River and the place of Suvo were found and first inhabited by Prince Shoningo, who was famous among all people for his strength and courage. In memory of the Tungus, a Russian village grew up on the very spot where the prince and his Tungus once stood.
The village was founded more than two hundred years ago. Here is how it was. Two Cossacks, Misserkeev and Kozulin, escaped from the Verkhneudinsk fortress. The Cossack ataman did not like them; they refused to serve him or work for the tsar’s treasury. So they took it and left. How long did the Cossacks walk through the taiga, but they ended up on the Barguzin River, and here they met the Belovodsk Tungus. The Tungus advised the Russian Cossacks to settle in the Suvo area near the river itself. The river here then flowed rapidly, there were so many fish in it, you could even pick them up with your hands. Suvo Misserkeev and Kozulin liked the area, they became related to the Tungus and began to build here and raise children. The men lived their own lives, they didn’t bow to anyone here, they considered themselves masters.
The good news went around the world that Cossacks had settled far beyond Barguzin and were living happily. Rumors about them reached the Cossacks beyond the borders, and they flocked one after another to Suvo. The village began to grow day by day and expanded so quickly that the banks of the river were no longer enough, the men began to build along the slopes of the hills. The Suva grain fields turned green, herds of horses and herds of cows appeared. The people began to live where the taiga had just rustled and the wolves howled. This is the story of the Russian village of Suvo!

About the pedigree of the Barguzin Buryats
Our Barguzin Buryats live in great friendship with us. We speak Buryat, they speak Russian to us. Our ancestors knew well where the Buryats came from. It was given. All the Barguzin residents talk about that old thing like that. Listen here.
From time immemorial, our great-grandfathers and grandfathers still told us that these places were inhabited long before the arrival of the Russians, when birch trees did not grow here, by Buryats. All our Buryats are from Lena, and now their relatives live there. Buryats Bukha Savonov, who lives immediately behind Ina, tells to this day: the sixteenth generation of Buryats was born from those ancestors who were the first to come to Barguzin. The Savonov family now has hundreds of generations. All the Buryats who live near Karolik, in Yasy, descended from the Bargut family. Their ancestors first lived on the Angara, then moved to the Lena, and from the Lena to the Upper Angara, then they came to Vitim, and from Vitim to Barguzin. That’s how it used to be, the old people didn’t tell lies in vain.
I remember how my other good neighbor, Badma Dilgyrov, used to talk about his relatives, so he kept almost everyone in his mind until the tenth generation of his old people. Now there are few such storytellers left. Those who are more educated and have received a diploma probably read about the Buryat descendants in books. And we, old people, all rely on our old man’s memory.

Master of Olkhon
There is a scary cave on the island of Olkhon. It's called Shamanic. And it is scary because the ruler of the Mongols once lived there - Gegen-Burkhan, the brother of Erlen Khan, the ruler of the underground kingdom. Both brothers constantly terrified the inhabitants of the island with their cruelty. Even the shamans were afraid of the formidable rulers, especially Gegen-Burkhan himself. The islanders knew that if this heartless and merciless ruler got out into the world, then expect trouble: the blood of many innocents would definitely be shed. Many ordinary people suffered from him.
And at the same time and on the same island, on Mount Izhimei, lived the wise hermit Khan-guta-babai. He did not recognize the authority of Gegen-Burkhan, and he did not want to know himself; he never descended into his possessions. Many people had the opportunity to see how at night he lit a fire on the top of the mountain and roasted a lamb for dinner, but there was no way there - the mountain was considered impregnable. The formidable owner of Olkhon tried to subjugate the hermit sage, but retreated: no matter how much he sent soldiers there, the mountain did not let anyone in. Anyone who dared to climb this mountain fell down dead, because huge stones crashed down on the heads of uninvited guests. So everyone left Khan-guta-babai alone.
It so happened that Gegen-Burkhan executed the husband of one islander, a young herdsman, because, as it seemed to the ruler, he looked at him disrespectfully.
The young woman fell to the ground in grief, burst into burning tears, and then, inflamed with fierce hatred of Gegen-Burkhan, began to think about how to rid her native tribe of the cruel ruler. And she decided to go to the mountains and tell Khan-guta-babai about the severe suffering of the island’s inhabitants. Let him stand up for them and punish Gegen-Burkhan.
The young widow set off on her journey. And surprisingly, where the most dexterous warriors fell, she rose easily and freely. So she safely reached the top of Mount Izhimei, and not a single stone fell on her head. After listening to the brave, freedom-loving islander, Khan-guta-babai told her:
- Okay, I will help you and your tribe. Go back now and warn all the islanders about this.
The delighted girl descended from Mount Izhimei and did what the wise hermit told her to do.
And Khan-guta-babai himself, on one of the moonlit nights, landed on the land of Olkhon on a light white-foamed cloud. He pressed his ear to the ground and heard the groans of the innocent victims killed by Gegen-Burkhan.
“It is true that the land of Olkhon is completely saturated with the blood of the unfortunate,” Khan-guta-babai was indignant and made a promise, “Gegen-Burkhan will not be on the island.” But you must help me with this too. Let a handful of Olkhon land turn red when I need it!”
And in the morning I went to the Shaman’s cave. The angry ruler came out to meet the hermit sage and asked him in a hostile manner:
- Why did you come to me?
Khan-guta-babai calmly answered:
- I want you to leave the island.
Gegen-Burkhan boiled even more:
- This won’t happen! I'm the boss here! And I will deal with you.
“I’m not afraid of you,” said Khan-guta-babai. He looked around and added - There is power for you too!
Gegen-Burkhan also looked around and gasped: not far away stood a dense wall of frowning islanders.
“So you want to settle the matter with a battle?” cried Gegen-Burkhan.
“I didn’t say that,” Khan-guta-babai said calmly again. “Why shed blood?” Let's fight better, it will be peaceful!
- Let's!
Gegen-Burkhan and Khan-guta-Babai fought for a long time, but neither of them could achieve an advantage - both turned out to be real heroes, equal in strength. With that we parted ways. We agreed to settle the matter the next day by drawing lots. It was agreed that everyone would take a cup, fill it with earth, and at night, before going to bed, everyone would place their cup at their feet. And whoever’s land turns red overnight must leave the island and migrate to another place, and whoever’s land does not change color must remain in possession of the island.
The next evening, according to the agreement, they sat down side by side on the felt laid in the Shaman’s cave, placed a wooden cup at their feet, filled them with earth and immediately went to bed.
And then night came, and with it came the insidious underground shadows of Erlen Khan, for whose help his cruel brother firmly hoped. The shadows noticed that the earth was colored in Gegen-Burkhan's cup. Immediately they moved this cup to the feet of Khan-guta-Babai, and his cup to the feet of Gegen-Burkhan. But the blood of the ruined turned out to be stronger than the shadows of Erlen Khan, and when a bright ray of the morning sun burst into the cave, the earth in Khan-guta-Babai’s cup went out, and the earth in Gegen-Burkhan’s cup turned red. And at that moment they both woke up.
Gegen-Burkhan looked at his cup and sighed heavily:
“Well, you will own the island,” he said to Khan-gut-babai, “and I will have to migrate to another place.”
And he immediately gave orders to his Mongols to load property onto camels and dismantle the yurts. And in the evening Gegen-Burkhan ordered everyone to go to bed. And so at night, picked up by the powerful shadows of Erlen Khan, the Mongols with camels and all their property were quickly transported beyond Baikal. The next morning they woke up on the other side.
But many poor Mongols remained to live on the island. It was from them that the Olkhon Buryats, who inhabit this island today, descended.

Rock trunk
In distant, distant times on the shores Glorious sea- Baikal - it was very warm. Large, unprecedented trees grew here and huge animals lived here: giant rhinoceroses, saber-toothed tigers, cave bears and shaggy giants - mammoths. The lingering trumpet sounds of mammoths shook the mountains. Mammoths were considered the largest and most powerful among all animals on earth, but by nature they were modest and peace-loving.
And only one of the Baikal mammoths was distinguished by a tough temperament, exorbitant boasting and arrogance. He always walked alone, important and proud, and woe to those who crossed his path. He grabbed smaller animals with his long trunk and threw them into the bushes, and he picked up those that were larger with thick tusks and threw them to the ground. For fun, the boastful mammoth uprooted giant trees, turned out huge boulders and blocked the rivers running to Baikal.
More than once the leader of the mammoths tried to reason with the braggart:
“Come to your senses, obstinate one, do not offend weak animals, do not destroy trees in vain, do not muddy the rivers, otherwise you will suffer.” The arrogant listened to the speeches of the old mammoth, and he continued to do his own thing. And one day he completely lost his belt. “Why are you teaching me all the time!” he roared at the leader, “why are you scaring me! Yes, I’m the strongest here, and if you want, not only the rivers, I’ll throw stones at all of Baikal, like a puddle!”
The leader was horrified, and the rest of the mammoths waved their trunks at the braggart. Baikal also rushed in, washing the shore with a wave and burying an unkind smile in its gray mustache.
But the dispersed mammoth no longer saw anything. He ran up, stuck his tusks into the rock, lifted it to throw it far into the sea, and suddenly the rock became heavy, heavy. The tusks broke from the excessive weight and fell into the water along with the rock. Here the mammoth roared in grief, stretched out its long trunk to the water to get its tusks, and froze, petrified forever.
Since then, a huge rock has stood on the shore of Lake Baikal, hanging over the water like a trunk. And now people call it that - Khobot rock.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND PHOTO:
Team Nomads
http://ozerobaikal.info
Baikal // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional ones). - St. Petersburg, 1890-1907.
http://www.photosight.ru/
Galaziy G.I. Baikal in questions and answers. — 1989.
Grafov S.V., Kolotilo L.G., Potashko A.E. The navigation of Lake Baikal. Admiralty No. 1007. - St. Petersburg: GUNIO, 1993.
Grushko Ya. M. Around Baikal: A Guide / Prof. Y. M. Grushko. - Irkutsk: East Siberian Book Publishing House, 1967. - 252 p. — 1,500 copies. (in translation)
Gusev O. K., Ustinov S. K. Along northern Baikal and the Baikal region / Photo illustrations by O. Gusev, V. Lomakin, M. Mineev, L. Tyulina. - M.: Physical culture and sport, 1966. - 104 p. — (Around native expanses). — 17,000 copies.
Gusev O.K. Sacred Baikal. Reserved lands of Baikal. - M.: Agropromizdat, 1986. - 184 p.
Kozhov M. M. Biology of Lake Baikal / Responsible. ed. G. I. Galaziy. - M.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1962. - 316 p.
Pounded L.G. Baikal // Marine encyclopedic dictionary. - St. Petersburg: Shipbuilding, 1991. - T. 1. - P. 108.
Navigation and physical-geographical sketch of Lake Baikal / Ed. F. K. Drizhenko. - St. Petersburg: Publication of the Main Hydrographic Directorate, 1908. - 443 p.
Rossolimo L. L. Baikal. - M.: Nauka, 1966. - 170 p. — (Popular science series). — 20,000 copies. (region)
Taliev D.N. Baikal: Biological and geographical essay. - M.; Irkutsk: Ogiz, 1933. - 64 p.
Tivanenko A.V. Around Baikal. - Ulan-Ude: Buryat Book Publishing House, 1979.

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For most people, Lake Baikal is somewhere very far away. The origin of Lake Baikal is shrouded in legends about great catastrophes on a planetary scale, about gods and their deeds. The scientific point of view also exists - of course there is no mysticism in it.

Lake Baikal is located on the territory of the Irkutsk region and Buryatia. It is considered a lake of tectonic origin. The age of Lake Baikal is estimated differently. Some scientists put it at 35 million years. But Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A.V. Tatarinov in 2009 put forward the version that the deep-sea part of Lake Baikal was formed 150 thousand years ago, and the modern coastline is only 8 thousand years old. Tatarinov justified such results with the results of the “Mirov” expedition on Lake Baikal. So, with the age of Lake Baikal, everything is also very ambiguous.

Lake Baikal is also called the Siberian Sea.

Lake Baikal contains 19% of the world's fresh water. How much water is in Lake Baikal - estimated at 23,615 km³. There is only one lake in the world, the displacement of which is greater than that of Lake Baikal - the Caspian Sea (not everyone knows, but there is a lake on this sea).

Despite the fact that Baikal is located in, there is a lot of sun here. The climatic conditions on Lake Baikal have their own unique characteristics: either the sun is mercilessly hot, but cold winds blow, then fierce storms blow in, then in the summer the weather is calm and hot and tens of thousands of tourists flock to Lake Baikal for beach holiday. In terms of the number of sunny days, Lake Baikal surpasses many resorts on the Black Sea and Mediterranean coasts.

The maximum depth of Lake Baikal is 1642 m. Many people write that Lake Baikal is shaped like a crescent. Rather, sorry if something is wrong, a banana. But very big. The length of Lake Baikal is 620 km (about the same as from Moscow to St. Petersburg), the width reaches 80 km. The length of the coastline is 2100 km.

Lake Baikal has 27 islands, the largest of which is . Many islands are sacred to local residents and are protected by law. There are generally many sacred places on Baikal, the history of which is shrouded in mystery and legends. The predominant religion here is rather Buddhism, at least Buddhist symbols and objects of worship are found everywhere.

Lake Baikal water

The water temperature in Baikal is a phenomenon. In summer, only the upper layer of water and shallow coastal bays warm up in the lake. But at depth the temperature is always constant - about +4 °C.

The waters of Baikal are generally a separate mystery. Lakes of this age do not have such crystal clear water, but in Baikal it is very clean. Usually, over time, lakes silt up, and after 10-15 thousand years there are swamps in their place. Baikal not only does not become shallow, but also contains clean water that can be drunk directly from the lake without fear. In addition, the water of Baikal is saturated with oxygen to a very high degree compared to other freshwater bodies.

Lake Baikal owes its purity largely to a tiny (1.5 mm in length) crustacean called epishura. There are a lot of these crustaceans in the water of the lake. They both clean the water and provide food for the famous Baikal omul and predatory invertebrates.

The transparency of the water in Lake Baikal is also very high. IN good weather through the 40-meter water thickness you can see the bottom of the lake! In winter, Lake Baikal also has surprisingly clear ice. You just need to find a place not covered by snow, and so to speak - feel like God - walk on the water. The water above is really frozen, but below there is still the same picture - the bottom, the fish, and you are walking above them.

Baikal is fed by the waters of more than 300 rivers, and only one river flows out of Baikal -.

Ice of Baikal

Lake Baikal freezes unevenly in winter. Bays and bays, as well as Northern part The lake freezes in November - December. And in the south, ice appears only in February, and if the winter is warm, then at the end of February.

The thickness of the ice on Baikal by the end of winter reaches 1 m, and in the bays - 1.5–2 m. On Baikal there is a phenomenon that the locals call “stanova cracks”. This is when cracks appear in the ice in severe frost. They tear the ice into separate large fields. The length of these cracks is amazing - from 10 to 30 km, and the width is only 2-3 m. As you understand, it is better not to be in such a place at the time of the rupture. Breaks occur every year and in approximately the same places in the lake. Sound effect like gun shots.

Such breaks save fish in the lake from lack of oxygen. This is such a mysterious, but necessary natural mechanism for the lake. And due to the transparency of the ice, sunlight penetrates through it, due to which planktonic algae, which produce oxygen, develop rapidly in the water even in winter.

Another amazing ice phenomenon on Lake Baikal is the ice hills. These are hollow, cone-shaped ice hills that reach a height of 5-6 meters. In some of them you can find an “entrance”, and it is usually located in the direction opposite to the shore. It looks like an ice tent. Sometimes such tents stand alone, but often they are grouped together, resembling mountain ranges, only in miniature.

Another mysterious phenomenon was discovered using space photography - dark rings.

The rings have a diameter of up to 7 km. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the rings are formed due to the rise of water from the depths of the lake. Due to the difference in temperature, a clockwise flow occurs, reaching different speeds in certain zones. As a result, the ice cover is destroyed, and the shape of the destroyed areas is ring-shaped.

Shores of Lake Baikal

The coastal landscape is very diverse. Most It is occupied by taiga, and in some places it is swampy. There are many difficult to pass places where there are no roads or settlements. But there are also many areas that look quite hospitable, sand, pine trees, cedars, wild rosemary. But from the side of the Tazheran steppe, in the surrounding area and on the island, the landscapes of the Baikal region are different - steppes, cliffs with forests of Siberian larch.

The terrain on the coast of Lake Baikal is generally mountainous and the transport infrastructure suffers greatly because of this. In many places to travel by road from one settlement located on the shore, to another located, you need to make a long detour of tens of kilometers. A quarter of the coast of Lake Baikal does not have public access highways generally and practically uninhabited (there is somewhere for the Chinese to settle, I think they would be happy).

Bottom relief

Lake Baikal is also unique in its bottom topography. It has its own underwater mountain ranges, the largest of which are Academichesky and Selenginsky. These ridges divide the lake into three basins.

Earthquakes are also possible on Lake Baikal. More precisely, this is a common thing. But tremors usually do not exceed 2 points. But there were other cases:

• in 1862, a magnitude 10 earthquake was recorded, as a result of which a section of land in the northern part of the Selenga delta went under water
• there were points about 9 points in 1903, 1950, 1957 and 1959
• in 2008 - 9 points
• in 2010 - 6 points

Fauna and flora of Baikal

The flora and fauna here are unique. The lake serves as a reliable shelter for almost three thousand species of animals and thousands of plants. Many species are found only here. And this despite the fact that, as scientists suggest, of the living organisms living in the lake, more than 20% are still unknown to science. Fishing lovers will have a good time on Lake Baikal (if the bite goes well, of course). Common species include grayling, taimen, whitefish, sturgeon, omul, lenok, and golomyanka. There are about sixty species in total.

The top of the biosphere on Lake Baikal is occupied by the Baikal seal. There are no other mammals in this body of water. There are still heated debates about how the Baikal seal, a purely marine mammal, got to Baikal and comfortably took root here. It is assumed that it came here in distant times of the Ice Age, moving from the Arctic Ocean along the Angara and Yenisei. Now tens of thousands of animals live here.

Many animals and birds live along the shores of Lake Baikal. Here you will meet seagulls, goldeneye, razorbills, mergansers, white-tailed eagles, and other birds. You can see mass swimming of brown bears (just be careful!). In the mountainous part of the Baikal taiga lives musk deer - the smallest deer on Earth.

Where does the name Baikal come from?

Researchers are still arguing about the origin of the name of the lake. There are several assumptions:

• Bai-Kul - translated from Turkic means “rich lake”;
• Baigal - from the Mongolian “rich fire”;
• Baigal Dalai - in the same Mongolian means “big lake”;
• Beihai - means "north sea" in Chinese;
• Baigal-Nuur - Buryat name;
• Lamu - that’s what the Evenki called the lake.

It is believed that the first explorers who appeared here in the seventeenth century eventually adopted the Buryat name, but softened the letter “g”, giving the name the sound that now exists.

Tourism and recreation on Lake Baikal

There are a lot of beautiful places on Lake Baikal. On my website you will find many stories from our tourists about trips and holidays on Lake Baikal (see the “Stories” section). A peculiarity of tourism on Lake Baikal is that the places that one would like to see are often located at large distances from each other. So if you want to see not all, but many of the beauties of Lake Baikal, you need to work out a competent route. If you feel that you cannot do it yourself, contact private guides or buy a comprehensive tour to Lake Baikal.

In any case, you won’t be able to see everything on Lake Baikal at once. Baikal is so big that it would take more than one vacation to travel around it all.

The largest number of tourists visiting Lake Baikal occurs, of course. in summer. The most popular places— Listvyanka village, Maloye More and Olkhon Island. People with a small budget, and even the most demanding ones will find a place for themselves. Lake Baikal is visited not only by Russians, but by many tourists from all over the world. The latter sometimes pay exorbitant amounts of money for such a vacation, but they still go.

In general, judging by the reviews, a holiday on Lake Baikal is not one of the cheapest, especially if you need to travel from places other than nearby cities. But nevertheless, Baikal sets records for attendance - the number of tourists reaches seven figures per year.

In summer, people relax on the beaches, go on bicycle and car excursions, and go hiking along the coast. There are rafting trips on the rivers flowing into Baikal, and much more.

Climbing cliffs, mountains and descents into grottoes and caves are popular in all seasons.

Fishing

There is a lot of fish in Baikal and lovers find a variety of places in the hope of catching omul or other fish on their own. For the most adventurous, there are specialized bases with varying levels of comfort. They go fishing on rented boats.

The most popular places for fishing on Lake Baikal are Chivyrkuisky Bay, Mukhor Bay, shallow bays of the Small Sea and, of course, the rivers flowing into the lake.

Lake Baikal in winter

Despite the severity of the Siberian climate, there are people who like to come to Baikal in winter. The fantastic ice world of Baikal is fascinating. Snowmobiling and dog sledding are popular.

Most Popular Attractions

Baikal is home to many historical and architectural attractions, and even more natural and cultural monuments.

One of the most famous attractions is Shaman stone. These are a couple of boulders rising above the water at the source of the Angara. Locals have been worshiping these stones since time immemorial and consider them endowed with special powers.

Another rock, the photo of which is unusually widespread on the Internet for the search “Baikal” and “Olkhon Island” - Shamanka rock. Also sacred place for the Buryats, access here for tourists was not always open.

There are also many other religious and historical places on Olkhon Island. The good thing about Olkhon is that in the summer you can sunbathe there, swim, visit a bunch of excursions, or travel around the island on your own.

Holiday seasons on Lake Baikal

Baikal is beautiful at all times of the year. Summer, as throughout Russia, is the most popular season. The warmest weather is from the second half of July to the beginning of August. From November it becomes not very hospitable here until the ice stops. In March and early April, tourists flock to Lake Baikal, especially those who like to take photos. The reason for this is the sparkling, transparent ice of Baikal. There is another one - ice fishing. In spring, Baikal is also very beautiful, there are no longer severe frosts and winds. Fans of winter holidays find the combination of weather conditions and the beauty of the scenery very attractive.

Relax on Baikal, enjoy its nature and energy. Take care of Lake Baikal, don’t leave landfills behind, don’t organize logging. This lake is thousands of years old and in many, many more years it needs to be as beautiful and attractive as it is now.

A lake is a body of water with slow water exchange, with specific physicochemical, hydrological, biological processes and closely interacting with the environment. Lakes are classified according to various criteria: by origin (tectonic, volcanic, dammed, glacial, sinkhole, karst); by salinity (fresh, brackish, salty); by trophicity (oligotrophic, mesotrophic, eutrophic); by position in the landscape (lowland, floodplain, highland); by depth (shallow, deep, extra-deep); by morphology (round, elongated, ribbon-shaped, crescent-shaped, etc.); by flow (drainless, low-flow, periodically flowing, temporary, relict); by type of use (for water supply, fisheries, for the extraction of salt, sapropels, medicinal mud, etc.); according to condition (clean, dirty, overgrown, etc.).

How many years do lakes live?

Most often, it is relatively short-lived—several thousand or tens of thousands of years. This applies, first of all, to glacial and oxbow lakes. Karst, volcanic and especially tectonic lakes can exist for millions and tens of millions of years. How many lakes are there on Earth? There are about 117,000,000 lakes in the world up to 0.2 hectares in size, occupying almost 4% of the land surface (according to new research from Uppsala University, Sweden).

How many lakes are there in Russia?

Over 2 million lakes with a total area of ​​more than 350 km2 (excluding the Caspian Sea). Mainly small lakes area less than 1 km2.

How many largest lakes are there on Earth?

Where is Lake Baikal located?

Baikal stretches like a crescent from south to north for 636 km almost in the center of the Asian continent. His permanent registration is coordinates: 51o 029’-55o 046’ N. and 103o 043’-109o 056’ E. Its greatest width is 79.5 km, its smallest is 25 km. sea, and the Buryats of Baigal-Nuur are Lake Baikal. But these are rather translations into their own language of an already existing name. The name Dalai-Nur is also found in literature, also supposedly referring to Lake Baikal. But there are lakes with this name—Dalai Nuur in northern Mongolia and Dalai Nuur in China—and, in essence, it can refer to any large lake. Researcher D. Stakhaev (1895) believes that this name could come from the Chinese Bei-Hai (or Pe-Hai) - northern sea. In our opinion, this assumption is also not sufficiently substantiated, since it may be distorted by Biy-Kham ( Big water) – this is what Tuvinians call the Yenisei and its upper reaches. In general, this issue has not yet been resolved and awaits its researchers. E.G. Laxman (1769), I.G. Georgi (1775) - one of the first naturalists who tried to find out the meaning of the word Baikal - as well as A.L. Schletser (1769) gave only one interpretation of it – rich waters (Turkic).

When was Baikal named Baikal?

There is no reliable information about this yet. Probably, the name appeared from the time of settlement of Turkic-speaking tribes in its vicinity. The peoples who inhabited the territories adjacent to Lake Baikal led a nomadic lifestyle and either did not have a written language and did not leave written sources, or their rock runic records remain unread. The mention in the notes of the Russian ambassador to China Nikita Yakovlevich (Iakinf) Bichurin that the name Baikal appears in one of the prehistoric Chinese chronicles of the 2nd century BC is, presumably, not the earliest. It was found in a note by the Chinese minister of the Sui-Gao dynasty Fan about the Turks living at that time in the Baikal region: “Since the time of Xuan-Yuan, the Hun-Yuni have caused a lot of trouble to our borders. Now they have become our “vassals” all the way to the North Sea.” By the northern sea (Bei-Hai), some historians believe, Chinese sources mean Baikal. But after all, the territory of China is washed by the South Sea, why is Baikal opposed to it, and not the North Sea (Arctic Ocean)? Archaeological excavations have made it possible to establish that in the late Neolithic, and probably also in the Bronze Age, in the Baikal region

What does the word Baikal mean?

Baikal is a Turkic word from Bai-Kul, which means a rich lake (similar to Issyk-Kul - a warm lake, Kara-Kul - a black lake). Some authors believe that this word comes from the Mongolian Baigal (rich fire) or Baigal Dalai - large lake (sea). But these hypotheses are not scientifically substantiated and have not received wide acceptance. The peoples living in the Baikal region probably each called the lake in their own way; the Evenks called it Lamu, i.e. Map and satellite image of Lake Baikal BAIKAL in questions and answers G.I. Galaziy 42 43 lived Turkic-speaking peoples - the Kurykans. They mastered the runic writing of the Turks and Yenisei Kyrgyz. They may have been the first to give Lake Baikal its name. The Evenki, who lived in the Baikal region, gave the name to many rivers flowing into Baikal, but the word Baikal is not in their language, it is alien to them. The phrase Baikal and Nuur indicates that Baikal already had its own name when the Buryats learned about it, since the phrase itself already contains information that this name came to them from some other language.

When was Baikal first shown on the map?

In the “Drawing of the Siberian Land”, compiled in 1667 by order of the Tobolsk governor P. Godunov. Baikal is also schematically depicted in the handwritten “Drawing Book of Siberia” (1699–1701) by the Russian cartographer and historian of Siberia S.U. Remezova. This is the first Russian geographical atlas. It consisted of 23 large format maps, was distinguished by the abundance and detail of information and summed up all the available geographical materials of that time. Atlas S.U. Remezov preserved the handwritten works of many unknown Siberian explorers, who with their experience and real knowledge of the area made a great contribution to the development of Russian cartography.

Who is the author of the first instrumental map of Lake Baikal?

The first relatively reliable map of Baikal was prepared in 1773 by navigator Alexey Pushkarev on a scale of 10 versts per inch, or approximately 1:420000. The map was compiled in two stages: first, after surveying Lake Baikal north of the source of the Angara in 1772. This map was not printed, but its handwritten original is kept in the library of the Russian Academy of Sciences. After completing the survey of the rest of the lake, A. Pushkarev in 1773 compiled a map of the entire Baikal - “A special flat map of the Baikal sea showing the flowing rivers and streams, as well as the Angara falling out of it...”. Its handwritten original has not yet been found; only a copy made by Mikhail Khudyakov has survived (incompletely). Before Pushkarev’s map, there was a map of Baikal, compiled earlier under the leadership of Frauendorf in 1766, but it had many errors, and A. Pushkarev had to make the map of Baikal anew, therefore his map should be considered the first instrumental marine map of Baikal. It has served a very important service for researchers of the history of the relief and outlines of the shores of Lake Baikal.

What is the average and greatest depth of Lake Baikal?

Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. Its average depth is about 730 m. It was first calculated quite accurately by G.Yu. Vereshchagin in the 30s. XX century According to research by the Limnological Institute, carried out in 1959 using a magnetostrictive echo sounder and a control check in winter from the ice with an ordinary lot on a cable, the maximum depth of Baikal was determined to be 1620 m. Subsequently, an amendment was made to the data on the greatest depth of Baikal. Currently, a depth of 1637 m is considered to be the greatest depth of Lake Baikal and the greatest depth for lakes on the globe. As for the depth of 1642 m near the southern head of the Holy Nose pva on the map published by GUNiO in 1992, it raises doubts.

What is the area of ​​the water surface of Lake Baikal?

31,500 km2 is approximately equal to the area of ​​countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands or Denmark. In terms of water surface area, Baikal ranks eighth among the largest lakes in the world. In our country it is surpassed only by the Caspian Sea. On other continents – Victoria and Tanganyika (in Africa), Huron, Michigan and Superior in North America.

How much water is there in Baikal?

The total volume of surface water on the planet is about 1406 million km3. The volume of Baikal water is about 23,000 km3. This is more than the volume of water contained in all five Great Lakes of North America (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario) combined in the Baltic Sea. The Baikal volume of water is almost twice that of Lake Tanganyika; 90 times than in the Sea of ​​Azov; 23 times than in Lake Ladoga. Baikal contains about 1/5 of the world's reserves of surface fresh water (excluding glaciers, snowfields and ice of Antarctica, Greenland and other reserves where the water is in a solid state). Thus, Baikal is the largest reservoir of liquid fresh water on the planet and the largest factory for maintaining its purity. To imagine how large the volume of Baikal water is, let us recall that if it were necessary to drain Baikal using a pump like the Angara, it would take almost 400 years for all the water in Baikal to flow out, provided that it did not enter during all this time not a single drop would come from its tributaries or from the atmosphere. If it were necessary to fill the Baikal basin by sending water from all the rivers of the globe into it, this could be done in only 300 days. And finally, if you freeze the water of Baikal, cut it into ice cubes with a volume of 1 km3 and lay them in one row, then this kilometer-thick ice belt will stretch from the north to the south pole of the Earth and 3 thousand km beyond the pole.

At what altitude above sea level is the modern bottom of Lake Baikal located?

The modern bottom of Lake Baikal at its greatest depth is located 1181 m below the level of the world ocean. Although tectonics can change! Where is the coastline (line) of Lake Baikal? The coastline is the boundary between the land surface and the water surface. On the map it is conventionally drawn along the line of the average low water level and is located at an altitude of 456 m above sea level. The real boundary of land and lake - the shore line - is in continuous change due to fluctuations in water levels. Slow, long-term movements of the coastline are caused by tectonic movements, or secular fluctuations in level associated with changes climatic conditions. Taking into account all the bends, torn by bays, quarrels and lips, the length of the Baikal coastline is about 2100 km.

How did the level and coastline of Baikal change after the construction of the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station dam?

According to research by G.I. Galazia of high historical horizons (HIH) of water in Lake Baikal justified the height of the dam of the Irkutsk hydroelectric station. The average level of Lake Baikal rose by 1 m. However, the amplitude of level fluctuations and its highest levels remained within the former limits. Over the past 10–15 years, the water level in Lake Baikal has noticeably decreased, and its minimum values ​​have approached those that were before the construction of the dam. Due to the flooding of low-lying coastal areas, the coastline has moved somewhat towards the coast. The area of ​​Lake Baikal, according to geomorphologists, has increased by approximately 500 km2. Due to the rise in level, abrasion processes intensified and the coast was somewhat reshaped - the spits separating quarrels were washed away, some landslides on coastal slopes and screes on the slopes became more active, coastal shallows were filled with sediment, etc. Currently, the shores of the lake have largely stabilized. Only in abrasion areas does the formation of the water-shore equilibrium continue. As the level rose, the water temperature dropped somewhat in summer, and the composition and quantity of food organisms for fish in Proval Bay and in the litter changed. In some areas, coastal spawning grounds for gobies, especially yellowfin gobies, have been eroded or covered by sediment. Currently, with a stable water level in the lake, all these disturbances have been completely restored or their restoration is being completed. If the level is not stable, then the processes of reformation can continue indefinitely. In recent years, the level of Lake Baikal has sometimes been below the critical level due to the lack of water in its tributaries.

How many capes are there on Baikal?

I.G. Georgi (1775), in addition to many nameless ones, counted 80 named capes. They stand out among others coastal forms by appearance or color, by the plants growing on them, the most common animals or fish, etc. Almost at each of the capes there are bays, or lips, used by ships for settling in certain winds. I.D. Chersky (1886) counted 174 capes, of which 101 are on the northwestern coast, and 73 are on the southeastern coast, in addition, there are more than 30 capes on Olkhon Island. I clarified the sizes of the capes, the distances between them and the names of F.K. Drizhenko.

Which lake is Baikal's twin?

Based on the origin (rift) and size of the basin of Baikal’s twins, it can be considered a lake. Tanganyika to east africa. The length of the lake is about 650 km, width 40–80 km, area 34 thousand km2. The maximum depth in the southern part is 1470 m (after Baikal, Tanganyika is the second deepest lake on Earth). The water in it has a high content of magnesium salts. The total mineralization of water is 5 times higher than in Lake Baikal. The water temperature on the surface is from 23.6 to 26.5o C. Deeper than 400 m and to the bottom, the temperature is constant - about 23o C. Only the upper 100-200-meter layer of the lake is enriched with oxygen and suitable for life. About 75% of the fauna is endemic (there are especially many of them among fish, shrimp, ostracods, decapods, copepods, and gastropods). There are hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and a lot of waterfowl. The main fishery object is idagala (dagaa) of herring fish.

Why is Baikal considered a model of the ocean?

Baikal has many features inherent in the ocean - great depths; a huge mass of water; internal waves and seiches; tides; severe storms; high waves; expansion of the basin due to the spreading of the coasts, similar to the origin of the continents of Africa and South America; large magnitudes of magnetic anomalies, etc.

Bay, bay, litter. How many are there on Baikal?

The bay is a well-defined depression in the coastal zone. Its size must be in such a combination with the width of the entrance (throat) that the water of the bay is surrounded on almost all sides by land. The bay provides refuge from different directions winds. There are six large bays on Baikal. The largest and deepest is Barguzinsky (its area is 725 km2, maximum depth is 1284 m). It is followed by Chivyrkuisky (270 km2), Proval (197 km2), Posolsky (35 km2), Cherkalov (20 km2), Mukhor (16 km2). A bay is a section of a lake that extends deep into the land. The ratio of the size of this depression to the width of the entrance at the bay is smaller than at the bay; it is more open. The bay can protect ships not from all winds, but only from one or two directions. There are quite a lot of bays on Baikal, at least two dozen – Listvennichnaya (the deepest, maximum depth about 1000 m), Goloustnaya, Peschanaya, Babushka, Aya, Bazarnaya, etc. Quarrels on Lake Baikal are closed, shallow, usually well-warmed bays. The greatest depth in quarrels does not exceed 7 m. Unlike litters in semi-desert and desert areas, Baikal quarrels never dry out and salt marshes do not appear in their place. Quarrels arise when coastal shallows or bays are separated by moving coastal sediments, which form spits and embankments. Baikal residents call these spits and embankments kargoya. The largest sor is the Verkhne-Angarsky, or North-Baikal, with an area of ​​23 km2. Part of its water area is swampy and overgrown with hard vegetation. The largest area of ​​open water is Posolsky Sor, then Aranga-tuy, Cherkalov, etc.

How did the Ambassadorial Sor come about?

According to geophysicists, during an earthquake that occurred here in the relatively recent past (within one or two millennia), a land area with an area of ​​35–40 km2 was submerged under water. Proval Bay was formed in a similar way. In 1862, during an earthquake with a force of about 10–10.5 points, a block of the earth’s crust sank. This debris has not yet completed its formation, but is already separated from Lake Baikal by a sand bar and is connected to it by three shallow straits. The Cherkalov rubbish probably also arose in the same way.

What is an estuary?

A flooded single-branch mouth of a river with direct access to the open sea, a lake in the form of a funnel-shaped expansion. The mouths of such Baikal rivers as Selenga, Turka, V. Angara, Tompa, B. Chivyrkui, Sosnovka, etc. may have been like this, but at present they are filled with river sediments. Only the outlines of the deltas remind of the previous form.

What are lagoons and are there any in Baikal?

Open or closed, separated by coastal ramparts or bay-bars, coastal sections of a reservoir on accumulative (dumped) banks. There are quite a lot of them on Baikal (more than ten), especially in the northern basin. They are usually located on accumulative capes (Pokoiniki, Zavorotny, Kedrovy, etc.), as well as in the deltas of the Selenga, V. Angara and other areas.

What is the Small Sea and why is it called that?

This is part of the Baikal water area, enclosed between the western shore of the lake (in its middle part) and Olkhon Island, the line of capes Zama and Khoboy (northern part of Olkhon) and the southern shore of Mukhor Bay. All Lake Baikal is called Big Sea, and this relatively small part is called Small. Its length (within the boundaries considered by F.K. Drizhenko) is about 69 km, the greatest width is about 15.5 km. Unreasonably, in our opinion, its natural continuation, the southwestern tip, Mukhor Bay, is being rejected from the Small Sea. It is also part of the Small Sea basin. Together with Mukhor Bay, Maloye More has a length of about 78 km, the area of ​​the water surface is 1019 km2.

How many tributaries does Baikal have?

Ever since the research of I.D. Chersky in the last century, it is believed that 336 permanent watercourses flow into Baikal. Subsequently, there were several attempts to revise the tributaries of the lake, but they were limited to counting them using large-scale maps and partly from aerial photographs. No one has yet repeated field studies. Sensational reports appearing in the press that 544 tributaries or even 1123 flow into Baikal are nothing more than a count of the valleys depicted in the “Atlas of Baikal”, published in 1908 under the editorship of F.K. Drizhenko, but in it, among others, there are noted ravines through which water flows for a short period of time, mainly during periods of intense rain in wet years. At the same time, F.K. Drizhenko also gives the number of tributaries of Lake Baikal according to data from I.D. Chersky. Taking into account the current weather and climate situation associated with the warming and drying of the northern hemisphere and the Baikal basin, as well as the disappearance of about 150 rivers and streams in this territory due to rampant deforestation, there is reason to believe that fewer tributaries currently flow into Baikal than there were in the last century. The largest tributary of Lake Baikal is the Selenga River. Its length from the source is 1024 km, the area of ​​the drainage basin is about 465 thousand km2. It brings about half the volume of river water entering the lake from all tributaries.

How many islands are there on Baikal?

There are 30 indigenous islands on Baikal (O.K. Gusev, 1990; G.V. Matyashenko, 1993). The largest is Olkhon, its area is 730 square meters. km. The remaining islands are much smaller - from 7 to 0.9 square meters. km or less. Among them there are rocks and stones. All indigenous islands are mountainous. In addition, in delta areas large rivers More than a dozen alluvial sand and pebble islands were formed. The life of these islands is short-lived. The largest of them is Fr. Yarki in the north of Baikal, confined to the Angara-Kicherskaya delta. What is an archipelago? A group of islands in the open sea or lake. On Baikal, the archipelago is called the group of Ushkany Islands - 4 islands. According to modern measurements, their height is 215 m above Lake Baikal, or 671 above sea level. This mark refers to the highest point of Bolshoi Ushkany Island. The Small Ushkany Islands have a height of 15–20 m above lake level.

Where did the name Ushkany Islands come from?

It is believed that once upon a time there were hares on the Ushkan Islands, which in Siberia are called ushkans - hence the name of the islands. However, it is more likely that the name came from the richest rookeries of the seal, which commercial hunters also call uskans. At what point is the highest point of the island located? Olkhon? The highest point of Olkhon is Mount Zhima. Its height is 818 m above lake level, or 1274 m above sea level. Opposite this mountain and the cape, 8–10 km from the coast, somewhat south of the cape, the greatest depth of Baikal is noted - 1637 m. The difference in elevation from the foot of the mountain at the bottom of Lake Baikal to its top is very impressive - 2455 m. And if you compare the height with level of the bedrock, composed of a crystalline foundation, then Mount Zhima from the foot to the top has a height of more than 9000 m, that is, it exceeds highest peak world – Mount Everest (8848 m above sea level).

What is Burhan?

Cape on Olkhon Island (also called Shamansky). Among the aborigines, Burkhan is the name given to the main deity of Lake Baikal. And Cape Burkhan, with a through cave and a pagan temple, is considered his abode. Cape Burhan is considered one of the nine shrines of Asia. During periods of bad weather, when hiding seals coming out to rest on the shore of the island, hunters take refuge there. This cave can accommodate 15–20 people and allows you to make a fire in it. In the past it was much larger. Probably, during one of the earthquakes, the upper part of the roof above the entrance collapsed. The fragments - huge marble blocks - still lie near the cave.

What is a sublemore?

This poetic name for the coast of the Barguzinsky Nature Reserve was used by V.Ch. Dorogostaisky. Subsequently, this term spread to the entire territory of the coast adjacent to Lake Baikal, especially to its picturesque areas. What is the Baikal region? In the past, the Baikal region was understood as the territories adjacent to Baikal from the west, in contrast to Transbaikalia - the territories from the lake to the east. But it would be more correct to include the entire area adjacent to Lake Baikal as the Baikal region, and call the western territories, by analogy with Transbaikalia, the Cis-Baikal region.

Tourists who have ever visited Baikal talk not only about the marvelous views, distances, water horizons of the lake, but first of all about the energy and grandeur that emanate from Baikal, many note his unearthly deep beauty and strength. Writers called Baikal sacred, healing, omnipotent...

Talking about the beauties of the Russian land, it is impossible not to talk about a wonderful place - Lake Baikal. It is perhaps one of the main attractions and marvelous landscapes, the treasures of our country’s natural treasures.

In addition to the fact that Lake Baikal is a masterpiece of the Russian land, Eastern Siberia, it also occupies an honorable place among the water beauties of the planet: it is the deepest lake in the world, and one of the largest reservoirs of fresh water (by the way, there is only a few percent of fresh water on Earth of the total volume of water).

About the beauty of the lake in documentary film"Baikal without borders":

About Lake Baikal

« Baikal is a lake of tectonic origin in the southern part of Eastern Siberia.

The lake and coastal areas are distinguished by a unique diversity of flora and fauna; most of the animal species are endemic (that is, found only here).

Local residents and many in Russia traditionally call Baikal a sea (as A. Chekhov said).

However, the deepest fresh water lake in the world is not only a beautiful place in Russia, but also an enviable tasty morsel for other countries.

Baikal is located in the center of Asia on the border of the Irkutsk region and the Republic of Buryatia in the Russian Federation. The lake stretches from northeast to southwest for 620 km in the form of a giant crescent. The width of Lake Baikal ranges from 24 to 79 km. The bottom of Lake Baikal is 1167 meters below the level of the World Ocean, and the surface of its waters is 455.5 meters higher.

The water surface area of ​​Lake Baikal is 31,722 km² (excluding islands),which is approximately equal to the area of ​​countries such as Belgium or the Netherlands. In terms of water surface area, Baikal ranks seventh among the largest lakes in the world.

The length of the coastline is 2100 km.

The lake is located in a kind of basin, surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges and hills” (Wikipedia)

The “deepest” established value of the lake is 1642 m (recorded by an expedition in 1983), the average depth is 744.4 m, which far exceeds the depth parameters of the deepest lakes. Only the Caspian Sea (1025 m) and Tanganyika (1470 m) are deeper than the average depths of Lake Baikal.

“The water reserves in Baikal are gigantic - 23,615.39 km³ (about 19% of the world's lake fresh water reserves - all fresh lakes in the world contain 123 thousand km³ of water).

In terms of volume of water reserves, Baikal ranks second in the world among lakes, second only to the Caspian Sea, but the water in the Caspian Sea is salty. There is more water in Baikal than in all five Great Lakes combined (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario), and 25 times more than in Lake Ladoga.”

"Interesting Facts. If all the water contained in Baikal is divided among all Russian citizens (141,927,297 people), then each person will have about 166.4 thousand cubic meters of water, which is approximately 2,773 railway tanks of 60 tons each.”

Baikal water has unique properties: it is always clean, transparent, especially in spring, stones can be visible at a depth of several tens of meters; “it contains very few dissolved and suspended minerals, negligible organic impurities, a lot of oxygen” - mineral salts over 96 mg/l.

Some “experts” believe that the water from Baikal can be drunk without treatment, while others are sure that it must either be boiled or passed through filters.

Near the shore, where there is a lot of algae, there is garbage, especially in the heat, even if Baikal itself remains cold, but in small backwaters it is warmer (where many decomposition products can accumulate near the shore), or after a storm - it is still better not to try raw water .

Collected far from the shores, at depth, in a clean backwater, and raw or (if desired and preferred) passed through filters, Baikal water is a healthy product.

The temperature in the lake, as a rule, is always cold, even in summer it does not exceed +9 degrees Celsius (at a depth of +4), in some backwaters it can reach +15 and even +23 degrees Celsius.

The age of the lake, according to scientists, is about 25-35 million years. First mention: "110 BC" e. “The lake was first mentioned in Chinese chronicles under the name Beihai.”

The largest island of Baikal is Olkhon:

« 71 km long and 12 km wide, located almost in the center of the lake on its western coast, area - 729 km², according to other sources - 700 km²." There are a total of 27 islands on the lake.”

About 336 (sometimes, during floods, during river valleys, these numbers reach - according to various estimates, up to 1123) rivers and streams flow into Baikal.

“The largest tributaries of Baikal are the Selenga, Upper Angara, Barguzin, Turka, Snezhnaya, Sarma. One river flows out of the lake - the Angara.

The flora and fauna of Baikal and the Baikal Nature Reserve are clearly described in the film “Baikal Fantasies”:

Flora of Baikal rich in algae, among which there are unique representatives, endemics. Fauna is also very diverse and unusual, for example, the Baikal epishura (a type of planktonic crustacean from the subclass of copepods) is a microscopic crustacean (size about 1.5 mm), actively maintains the cleanliness of the lake, passing organic matter through its body.

In addition to epishura, about 2,600 species and subspecies of endemic aquatic animals live in the water depths of Lake Baikal: fish, worms, crustaceans, sponges, etc.

Among the fish found here are: Baikal omul, grayling, Baikal sturgeon, pike, whitefish, burbot, taimen - 58 species in total. The birds and animals living in the vicinity of the lake are also unique.

Even when the lake freezes, algae actively live under water, ensuring the existence of fauna; also, thanks to ice cracks, oxygen enters the lake.

In winter, the thickness of the ice on the surface of the lake is from 1 m to 5 m. Icy Baikal on a sunny winter day with cracks in the ice shimmering in the light is a beautiful sight.

In the Baikal Nature Reserve (located on the eastern shore in the southern part of Lake Baikal and covers an area of ​​165.7 thousand hectares. mountain range Khamar-Daban) there are brown bears, wild boars, roe deer, sables, black kites, wood grouse...

Most of the reserve is occupied by taiga, protected plants: calamus, common viburnum, yellow egg capsule, edible honeysuckle, etc.

It happens that Baikal “shakes”; seismic activity is quite high there: earthquakes of 1-2 points are the norm, but more serious ones occurred last time in 2008 (9 points) and in 2010 (6.1 points).

From whom and from what is it worth saving Baikal?

Any miracle of nature necessarily suffers encroachments... from whom do you think, first of all? Naturally - from the people themselves, the industries they built, decay products, garbage.

“Lake Baikal is a unique ecological system, legal basis whose protection is regulated by the Federal Law “On the Protection of Lake Baikal” adopted in 1999.

In 1996, Baikal was included in the List of objects World Heritage UNESCO".

Several foundations and environmental organizations are also involved in the protection of Lake Baikal.

One of the main problems is poachers. They kill and catch the Baikal seal. her cubs, the spawning omul.

In addition, forests in the vicinity of Lake Baikal are regularly cut down.

The Transneft company is constructing an oil pipeline near Lake Baikal.

Vacationers near the lake, remember that nature must be protected, because although it is silent, it is priceless for our prosperous existence, it is better not to conduct experiments with the meaning of testing what will happen to us if the best wonders of nature do not become, at least clean up the trash after yourself - this is such a small thing.

Cutting, sawing and damaging trees , any, regardless of size.

Leave trash behind. If you were able to drag a full bottle here, will you really be bothered to carry it when it becomes empty?

Lighting a fire where there has never been one. Nature takes years to heal the wound caused by fire. If the parking lot is not equipped with a fire pit, and you desperately need a fire, light it on the shore, on pebbles, after making sure that there are no trees nearby whose roots can be damaged by fire.

Decorate with cretin writing, i.e. with their own names, names of places of residence and other outrages, coastal rocks . Make no mistake, nature is self-sufficient, man can only worsen it.

Fishing using poaching methods. I'll explain how to catch her with a fishing rod. Or do you care what your grandchildren eat?

Pick flowers. Are they more beautiful dead?

Play loud music. And don’t turn it on quietly, rather listen to the rustling of leaves and the splash of waves. Or is that not what you came here for?”

Holidays on Lake Baikal

Every year, Baikal and the Baikal Nature Reserve are visited by over 400 thousand tourists, including from other countries.

Basically, all roads to the lake go through the nearest large cities: Ulan-Ude, Irkutsk, Severobaikalsk. From any of these points you can easily get to Baikal by bus.

For example, from Irkutsk (70 km to Baikal) you can get there: by railway transport (electric trains), from the bus station or central market by bus, minibus, in the summer (from mid-June to August) from the Raketa pier on a yacht , motor ship.

More detailed routes, options for overcoming the path from experienced travelers can be found on the resources: www.magicbaikal.ru, baikalholiday.ru, www.baikalvisa.ru, baikal-tourist.ru, you can order tours to Baikal, cruises, excursions on exatourbaikal.com - and there are plenty of other sites and agencies offering trips to Baikal.

You can hit the road on your own, the main thing is to book a place at a recreation center, hostel, or hotel:

About cruises in reality:

“Often tourists planning a cruise on Lake Baikal do not realize the true size of the lake. From the southern to the northern extremities alone, its length is 636 kilometers.

With an average speed of Baikal motor ships of 15-18 kilometers per hour, the passage along the lake from Kultuk to Severo-Baikalsk (from south to north) will take 36 sailing hours without stops. And this is in good weather conditions, in the absence of waves. Well, it’s possible to travel around the entire coastline—over two thousand kilometers—in only three to four weeks!”

For example, a 9-day tour by flight from Moscow (for two people, excluding the cost of the flight) will cost, depending on the tour program and vacation spot on Lake Baikal, 26-50 thousand rubles.

A popular and favorite vacation spot among tourists is the village of Listvyanka, there is a recreation center there, there are excursions and cruises.

« The most visited places on the western coast of Lake Baikal:

the entire coast of the Small Sea;

western (Little Sea) coast of Olkhon Island;

Peschanaya Bay and its surroundings;

Circum-Baikal Railway;

northwestern coast from the city of Severobaikalsk to the village of Baikalskoye;

any place that can be reached by car.

If you like to relax in the midst of the masses, delighting your ears with the round-the-clock heart-rending howl of pop music, the roar of jet skis and the roar of a trike overhead - choose any of the places listed.

If you want peace and quiet, then you need to look for places that are inaccessible. They still exist even on Olkhon, but you will have to get there either on foot or by water.

I note that silence also occurs in the most visited places, but outside the summer season. Unfortunately, the unsightly consequences of a good time pastime do not disappear along with the hubbub” (Magic of Baikal.ru).

The most best time for trips to Baikal, if you want to swim or fish - July-August: in June it is still cool, and after August cold winds already blow. But in winter, when Baikal is covered with a thick layer of ice, it is also beautiful there, you just need to dress appropriately, and think more thoroughly about travel options, where to stop, etc.

“It’s better to see once than to hear a hundred times!”, say inspired travelers returning from Lake Baikal. Among Russians’ favorite holiday destinations, Baikal is in 6th place after resorts Krasnodar region, Crimea, Caucasus and Mineralnye Vody. Baikal is no less beautiful, it’s just not as hot there as on the sunny coasts.

On Olkhon, for example (according to the reviews of tourists who were there in the summer of 2014), gorgeous views, beaches, very bright sun, the water is cold - it’s difficult to swim, there is a lot of garbage everywhere and this is a whole problem, people don’t clean up after themselves, alcohol bottles, dishes, dirt left by people contrast with the background of beautiful nature.

Still, if you have never been to Baikal before, be sure to visit this beautiful place - you will not regret it, and then this is a good alternative to the now expensive foreign holiday. Just remember to pick up trash after yourself.

Almost in the center of the huge continent of Eurasia there is a narrow blue crescent - Lake Baikal. In the Baikal mountain region, surrounded on all sides by high ridges, it stretches over 636 kilometers in length and up to 80 kilometers in width. The area of ​​Baikal is equal to Belgium with its almost 10 million population, many cities and industrial centers, highways and railways.

IN Baikal 336 permanent rivers and streams flow into the lake, while half of the volume of water entering the lake comes from the Selenga. The only river that flows out of Baikal is the Angara.

The area of ​​the lake's water surface is 31,470 square kilometers. The maximum depth reaches 1637 m, the average - 730 m.

In order to understand the enormity of Baikal’s water body, imagine that the Angara, which annually removes 60.9 km3 of water from the lake, would need 387 years of continuous work to drain its bowl. Provided, of course, that during this time not a liter of water gets into it and not a drop evaporates from its surface.

Undoubtedly, Baikal - deepest lake in the world. Not everyone knows that the second contender in the world for this title, the African Lake Tanganyika, lags behind the leader by as much as 200 meters. There are 30 islands on Baikal, the largest is Olkhon Island.

The question of the age of Lake Baikal should be considered open. Usually the literature gives a figure of 20-25 million years. However, the use of various age determination methods gives values ​​from 20-30 million to several tens of thousands of years. But, if we assume that the traditional point of view is correct, then Baikal can be considered the oldest lake on Earth.

BAIKAL WATER

Baikal water unique and amazing, like Baikal itself. She's extraordinary
transparent, clean and oxygenated. In not so long ago, it was considered healing, and illnesses were treated with its help.

In spring, the transparency of Baikal water is as much as 40 meters! This is explained by the fact that Baikal water, thanks to the activity of living organisms living in it, is very
slightly mineralized and close to distilled.

The volume of water in Baikal reaches about 23 thousand cubic kilometers, which is 20% of the world's and 90% of Russian fresh water reserves. There is more water in Baikal than in all five Great American Lakes combined - they only reached a total of 22,725 km3. Every year, the Baikal ecosystem reproduces about 60 cubic kilometers of clear, oxygenated water.

INHABITANTS OF BAIKAL

The exclusivity of many physical and geographical features of the lake was the reason
the extraordinary diversity of its flora and fauna. And in this regard, it has no equal among the fresh water bodies of the world.

The lake is home to 52 species of fish of several families.:

• sturgeon (Baikal sturgeon),
• salmon (Davatchan, taimen, lenok, Baikal omul - endemic fish, whitefish),
• grayling (Siberian grayling),
• pike,
• carp,
• loaches,
• catfish,
• cod,
• perch,
• sculpin gobies,
• Golomyanka

The food pyramid of the lake ecosystem is crowned by a typical marine mammal - the seal,
or Baikal seal. The Baikal seal is the only representative of mammals in the lake. For almost the whole year
it lives in water, and in the fall it forms mass haulouts on the rocky shores of the lake.

The life of many animals characteristic of Lake Baikal is inextricably linked not only with the lake itself, but also with its coast. Gulls, mergansers, goldeneyes, scoters, scorches, white-tailed eagles, ospreys and many other bird species nest on the shores of the lake and on its islands.

Another remarkable part of the life of the great lake is the mass emergence of brown bears on the shores, which is entirely due to the peculiarities of the nature of Lake Baikal.

In the mountain taiga of the Baikal region there is a musk deer - the smallest deer on the globe.

The diversity of the organic world of Baikal is amazing, but its originality is no less phenomenal. Many of the animals and plants living in the lake are not found anywhere else in the world. Baikal has 848 species of endemic animals (about 60%) and 133 species of endemic plants (15%).

BAIKAL FOR TOURISTS

Today, everything connected with Baikal arouses genuine interest not only in our country, but also abroad. Over the past decade, Baikal has become a magnet for many tourists. Relatively well preserved nature
lakes and seas, rapidly developing infrastructure - hotels, roads, proximity to transport interchanges - give reason to believe that in the future the tourist flow to the shores of Lake Baikal will only increase.

Come to Lake Baikal! Admire its beauty and purity of water, feel the almost mystical
the energy that the sacred sea gives to everyone who comes to its shore.

Based on materials from the article “Unique Baikal”, prepared by Valentina Ivanovna Galkina, Honored Worker of Culture of Russia, head of the exhibition of the Baikal Museum of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

 

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