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Lake Baikal

One of the world’s oldest geographical features (formed 25 to 30 million years ago), magnificent Lake Baikal (Озеро Байкал) is the highlight of Eastern Siberia. Summer travellers enjoy gobsmacking vistas across waters of the deepest blue to soaring mountain ranges on the opposite shore; rarer winter visitors marvel at its powder-white surface, frozen steel-hard and scored with ice roads. Whether they swim in it, drink its water, skirt its southern tip by train, cycle or dog sled over it in winter, or just admire it from 2000km of shoreline, most agree that Siberia doesn’t get better than this.

Attractions

Must-see attractions for your itinerary

Chersky Rock
Listvyanka
Listvyanka’s best viewpoint, overlooking the source of the Angara, is named after Jan Czerski, a 19th-century Polish gentleman explorer. It is best…
Volkonsky House-Museum
Irkutsk
The duck-egg-blue and white home of Decembrist Count Sergei Volkonsky, whose wife Maria Volkonskaya cuts the main figure in Christine Sutherland’s…
Znamensky Monastery
Irkutsk
Stranded on the wrong side of a thundering roundabout, the 1762 Znamensky Monastery is 1.9km northeast of Skver Kirova. Echoing with mellifluous plainsong…
130 Kvartal
Irkutsk
What does a city boasting some of Siberia’s most impressive original timber architecture do to improve the visitor experience? Yes, that’s right,…
Trubetskoy House-Museum
Irkutsk
Irkutsk’s second Decembrist house-museum emerged from a recent renovation with English-language information, touchscreens and tinkling background music…
Shaman Rocks
Olkhon Island
The unmistakable Shaman Rocks are neither huge nor spectacular, but they have become the archetypal Baikal vista found on postcards and travel-guide…