Do y’all ever think about how absolutely bananas Lake Baikal is? It’s the world’s largest lake by volume. It’s the world’s deepest lake. It’s the world’s oldest lake. It contains nearly a quarter of the planet’s surface freshwater. It’s a rift lake, caused by the earth’s crust literally coming apart at the seams. It would be deeper than the Mariana Trench except the bottom is covered in a sediment layer that is miles deep. There are trains that have sunk to the bottom because Russia tried to build a railroad over the ice. The entire lake surface freezes for half the year. The lake is a focal point of multiple indigenous cultures. The lake has its own species of seal, which is the only exclusively freshwater pinniped in the world. There are unique ice formations formed by convection from the depths of the lake. There are 330 inflowing rivers.
Lake Baikal’s frozen surface creates distinct sounds, such as booming and popping noises, resulting from the contraction and expansion of the ice sheet due to changes in temperature.
I ordered a USSR-era bilingual book about Lake Baikal from @sovietpostcards, and it arrived recently! It's full of absolutely gorgeous illustrations, descriptions, and poetry, so I'm excited to brush up on my Russian after close to a decade of disuse.
I had the privilege of spending a summer in Baikal many years ago, so this book brings back many wonderful memories. Thank you so much for the beautiful book, and I hope you are able to visit yourself one day. Both Siberia and Lake Baikal are irreplaceable treasures <3.