The Bajkal Sea covers 31,500 square km. and is
636 km. long, at its widest point it is 79,4 km. Its water basin
occupies about 557,000 square km. and contains about 23,000 cubic km.
of water. This adds up to about one fifth of the world's reserves of
fresh water and more than 80 per cent of the fresh water reservoir in
the former Soviet Union. The Bajkal Sea is the deepest lake in the
world. The presently known maximum depth is 1,637 m. However, this is
far from the whole story, as Bajkal's inscrutable depths hide huge
underwater voids which are connected to channels that run deeply into
the underworld.
Bajkal is situated in Eastern Siberia, in the Buryat Autonomous Republic and Irkutsk Region of Russia, and is the natural boundary between Russian Siberia and present-day Mongolia. It plays a momentous role in Mongol history. The Secret History of The Mongols relates, through its ancestral myth, how the Mongol people came into being: The blue-gray wolf and his wife, the reddish-brown deer, came from Siberia and travelled together across the "inland sea" - that is the Bajkal Sea.
When these two had reached the Onon river on the Eastern side of Bajkal, their first son, Batachikan, was born. Batachikan was then the first human ancestor of Chingis Khan. Mythologically speaking, travelling across water is symbolic of transcendence, of reaching new stages. The Bajkal Sea was thus the catalyst of the emergence of the Mongol nation, and also the bridge between the two main constituents of the spiritual ancestry of the Mongols: The Northern, Siberian forest and taiga element, and the grassland and plain element. Consistent with this significant role of the Bajkal Sea in Mongol history: In the vicinity of the Bajkal Sea were born two key figures of the history of the Mongols: Chingis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire and the greatest politician who ever lived, and Subedei, his forever faithful and most gifted general. It merits mention that "chingis" in all probability comes from Turkish tengiz, which means "large body of water, sea." The meaning of Chingis Khan will then be "Khan from the Sea." We can easily guess from which sea Chingis Khan took his name, and this implies that the real meaning of his title is "Khan from the Bajkal Sea," once more emphasizing the crucial role of Bajkal in the Mongolian spiritual universe. As for the sea herself, water is a feminine element, and the name of the goddess and ruler of Bajkal is Bajkal-eke. (Eke means "mother" in Mongolian.)
The area around the Baikal Sea is mind-bogglingly diverse. Around it we find the Northern, dark Taiga, which is the endless Siberian conifer belt, as well as grassland steppes mainly concentrated in its southeast areas. The mountains contain abundant mineral resources, so every kingdom of Nature is represented here - the animal, the avian, the botanic, the aquatic and the mineral, and here they have found a natural meeting-ground not found anywhere else on Earth. Not surprisingly, the whole Bajkal region is an extraordinarily fertile one. Accordingly, many types of animals roam in the mountains, valleys and forests. Likewise the Bajkal itself, as well as the numerous rivers, streams and lakes around, is plentifully filled with fish. To add to all this natural diversity, even hot springs are found around this sacred Siberian inland sea. Lake Bajkal is the true repository of the spiritual principles of Chingis Khan and the Mongol Empire, and it was its amalgamation of the different forces and powers of Nature that gave the Mongols their matchless versatility and flexibility to successfully meet any new circumstances.
Bajkal is unlike all other lakes in the world by virtue of its extreme depth, great volume, the high quality of its water and its very old age. In average lakes exist for no more than some tens of thousands of years, whereas the Bajkal Sea has been present in Central Asia for at least between 20 and 30 million years, and she is of course incomparably the oldest lake on Earth. The Bajkal Sea is also distinguished by virtue of her unparalleled wildlife. In the immense depth of Bajkal dwell forms of life not found anywhere else on Earth, many of which certainly undiscovered.
The first sight of the numinous Lake Bajkal instills in you a profound and indelible impression of an enigmatic powerfulness, unforgiving purity, dignity, nobility and grandeur. You mysteriously perceive the presence of the divine, and immediately sense why indigenous people from Siberia and Mongolia have always spoken reverently of her as "the Sea." They rightfully consider her a conscious being, and they believe she might take umbrage if they showed the affront of calling her a lake instead of a sea. She is the deepest, purest and, in light of her uniquely multifaceted surroundings and wildlife, and the otherworldly atmosphere she radiates, a one-of-a-kind lake-sea in this world.
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Last Updated July 30, 1997 by Per Inge Oestmoen