Located in Eastern Siberia, Lake Baikal attracts masses of tourists for good reason; they fly in from nearly all over the world to admire the unique beauty of the deepest body of water on Earth, which was added in 1996 to the UNESCO World Heritage List for its uniqueness.
To grasp the scale of this natural body of water, it is enough to say that at its deepest point you could easily stack five Eiffel Towers one on top of another, and the top of this structure would not reach the surface of the water.
And the area of Baikal is such that countries like Belgium, with all its chocolate, or the Netherlands could easily fit on it. At the same time, the lake is the largest reservoir of fresh water on our planet, holding a fifth of all the world's unfrozen liquid.
And it is incredibly clear and pure, with even the Alpine lakes yielding to Baikal in this respect. Local residents still drink water from the lake without any additional purification, although they are sounding the alarm, demanding that attention be paid to the fact that the area's tourist appeal could turn into an ecological catastrophe.
The population of Earth and the willful Angara
The lake is so large that if it ever occurred to someone to drown all eight billion people now living in it, its level would rise by only three centimeters. At least, that is what the Director of the Limnological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Grachev, stated in one of his interviews on the project to divert water from Lake Baikal to China, as quoted by the outlet Baikal-media.ru. For this statement, the scientist was even dubbed a «cultist of Cthulhu» online. It is clear that the researcher never had any cruel plans to destroy humanity; he was merely illustrating the volumes of the riches located on the border of the Irkutsk Oblast and Buryatia.
Baikal is fed by the waters of 336 rivers and streams, and only a single river, the Angara, flows out of it. There is even a beautiful legend according to which all the donors of the lake are called sons, and the Angara is the only daughter. As befits a willful heiress, she went against her father's will, falling in love with the handsome Yenisei and secretly feeding her beloved.
When Baikal learned of this, he grew angry and hurled an enormous rock at his daughter. It now bears the name of Shaman-Stone and is considered the source of the Angara.
The spirits of Baikal
In general, the lake is surrounded by an incredible number of myths and legends. The local residents warn tourists about this right away, so that they do not, out of ignorance, bring upon themselves the wrath of the gods who guard Baikal.
For example, you must not take stones away from here. It is precisely in stones, or beneath them, that the spirits of the Baikal land live. And by taking something as a memento of your journey, you can deprive them of their home and thereby anger them, getting, instead of a pleasant souvenir, a source of nothing but trouble.
It is said that those who did not heed the warning may be overtaken by retribution without delay. For example, a sudden storm will descend, a loss, an injury or other misfortunes will occur.
At the same time, the spirits of Baikal are quite peaceable and sociable beings, so it is easy to come to terms with them. You can address them directly with a request or use an intermediary for this — a shaman. He will, not without pleasure and benefit to himself, solve the problem that has arisen. You can also order a service at a datsan, and then your whole journey will be accompanied by nothing but good fortune.
