Baikal Nature

This section has articles on some of the most interesting places at Lake Baikal.

The Island of Olkhon

Amongst the thirty of so islands of Baikal, the island of Olkhon, surrounded by many ancient myths and legends, can especially be singled out - for its size, variety of landscape and magnificence of natural monuments...

Cape Burkhan

Anyone who has heard anything about Lake Baikal knows that there is an unusual rock on the Island of Olkhon that, from time immemorial, the indigenous people have esteemed, and that, notwithstanding the formidable word «Russia» nor the frankly terrifying «Siberia», people come from all over the world to see...

Sagan-Zaba Cliff

Anyone who has travelled by kayak along the western coast of Baikal, remembers the moment when the Sagan-Zaba cliff came into sight from behind the promontory Khoboy-Khushun...

Peschanaya Bay

Even the sun shines in a special way in this, at one time, most well known place at Baikal. Under its hot rays the air becomes discernable and visibly fills the space around with itself, softly enveloping the wooded slopes and rippling slightly over the cliffs...

Chivyrkuisky Bay

By geological standards, quite recently, only a few thousand years ago, the Svyatoi Nos Peninsular was an island and was not connected to the mainland. People who lived at Baikal in those times called it Morda Osetra (sturgeon's snout), but perhaps somewhat differently...

Cape Shamansky and Khobot Cliff

History was such that at and around Baikal there are quite a number of «shaman» designations - Shamansky Rock at the source of the Angara, Shaman Cliff on Olkhon and two whole Shaman Capes: one in the north-east of Baikal, the other at its southernmost end...

Barguzine Bay

Baikal's largest bay, the Barguzine Bay, begins in the middle of the lake's eastern shores at Cape Krestovy. Forty kilometres later, the striking forested shoreline with numerous capes is replaced by sands that are soon interrupted by the river Barguzine...

Olkhonskiye Vorota Strait

The south-western part of Olkhon, Baikal's largest island, is separated from the mainland by a narrow strait called the Olkhonskiye Vorota (Olkhon Gates). Formerly, local inhabitants called it Amyn, and at times Olkhonsky Zund...

Maloye Morye Strait

Between the north-western shore of the island of Olkhon and the mainland lies a strait with a name that can easily puzzle the uninitiated: Maloye Morye (Small Sea). It was not for nothing that the strait was so called. It is, after all, a sea, even if a small one...

Cape Khoboy

In the north of the island, Olkhon's steppe, bordered by tracts of forest near Baikal's shores, takes the traveller to its last headland and opens up ones eyes to an astonishing work of nature on this marvellous island: bent like some fantastic animal basking in the sun, beneath one, lies Cape Khoboy, its ridge unfurled in such a way that it is clear that there is no way forward...