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| Baikal - a sacred lake-sea | |
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If your eye is caught by the breath-taking blue and your heart stops beating from astonishment and delight as it sometimes happened in childhood; if all petty worries, all the vanities of the world fall off like autumn leaves, and your soul now has wings and is filled with light and silence; if, suddenly, the ready word holds back, and you feel that Nature has its own language, the language that you now understand; if a simple earthly wonder has entered your life and filled it with harmony - this is Lake Baikal, the blue eye of Siberia. |
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Lake Baikal is the oldest lake in the
world, the most isolated. Baikal is the deepest
lake in the world. Its maximum depth is 1,637 m (5,315 ft). Baikal is 636 km long and 79.4 km wide at its widest point. The lake's shore-line is about 2,000 km long. Baikal's water surface area is 31,500 sq. km. This comes out to about the area of such a country as Belgium, the Netherlands or Denmark. The gigantic reservoir of fresh water containing about 23,000 cu.km of life-giving moisture is highly saturated with oxygen. The lake is the largest reserve of fresh surface-water on the globe. It would take all the rivers of the world - the Volga and Don, Dnepr and Yenisei, Ural and Ob, Ganges and Orinoko, Amazon and Thames, Seine and Oder - nearly one year to fill Baikal's basin, and all the rivers, streams and brooklets now flowing into the Siberian lake-sea, about four hundred years. Crystal clear air and majestic beauty makes Baikal a place to treasure, but what makes it unique is the quality of the water itself - said to be the purest in the world. It is unusually clear. A white disk of 30 centimetres in diameter can be seen in Baikal at a depth of 43 metres. Lake Baikal usually freezes in early January and the ice breaks in May. Ice reaches a thickness of 50 cm - 2 metres. During the Russo-Japanese war, when the ice thickness was more than one and a half metres, the railway track was laid straight over the ice, which made it possible to carry 2,300 carriges and 65 locomotives... by horse traction during 17 days. The road functioned almost three months. |
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Wild life in Siberia is highly abundant. The largest Siberian mammals
next to the moose is Brown Bear. Bears generally weight 200-300 kilos.
A bear entering hibernation weights 60% more than it did a few months
earlier. In late autumn they retire to their winter den. It’s often
just a space under or over a hanging rock, or a fallen tree. Bears are
not true hibernators and may be aroused easily without too much
difficulty. However, their heart beat, breathing rate, and
temperature are depressed. This slowdown of body functions will help
to conserve the stores of fat. Local bears leave their den
by mid April or early May. A female bear may give birth to cubs
in late January. The cubs are tiny - about the size of chipmunks.
The cubs stay with their mother through the summer and then share
the den in the following winter. Mother and father have full charge
of the young. The bear is territorial by nature and each bear has
its own area that it uses and protects. In the water, it is a strong
swimmer.
The Wolf is a member of the dog family. These animals are
divided into packs which are believed to be a family group.
Each mated pair produces a litter of about 5-6 pups in May.
Wolves are highly social by nature. Each pack is well-organized
and has its most dominant and submissive family member. Research
has shown that a wolf is not a reckless killer of wild life and
therefore it’s prey is mostly old and sick animals. Wolves are
stimulated to chase any animals that will run from them.
Baikal seal Nerpa. The seal population is estimated in 150 thousand. These animals are distributed all over the lake, especially in Northern and Middle Baikal. The full grown animals are 1,6 - 1,7 metres long and weigh 130 kg. Seals reach adulthood at the age of 4-6 years and are able to give birth to young over 30 years of age. Pregnancy is 11 month and gives birth to its baby in April. It has 1 (2) child. The female-seal lives for 56 years, males - 52.
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