A beautiful UNESCO cover from Russia, depicting a minisheet celebrating the
Lake Baikal. The
Lake Baikal is situated in southern Siberia, between the federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryatia to the southeast. Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake by volume, containing 22 to 23% of the world's fresh surface water. Lake Baikal has a maximum depth of 1,642 m and is the world's deepest lake. It is among the world's clearest lakes and is the world's oldest lake, at 25–30 million years. Lake Baikal is also the world's seventh-largest lake by surface area.
Baikal is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, many of them endemic to the region. It is also home to Buryat tribes, who raise goats, camels, cattle, sheep, and horses on the eastern side of the lake, where the mean temperature varies from a winter minimum of −19 °C to a summer maximum of 14 °C.
The region to the east of Lake Baikal is referred to as Transbaikalia or as the Transbaikal, and the loosely defined region around the lake itself is sometimes known as Baikalia. UNESCO declared Lake Baikal a World Heritage Site in 1996.
