You feel completely happy when you live or stay at Lake Baikal. It is blessing to feel its charm, His influence not only on your health, but how it brings into your inner world something holy and reverent. It is a great joy to perceive the Baikal, and to realize that it enriches your ability to understand other people; awakens harmony with Nature in your soul; teaches you to take care of Nature, sympathize, and live in charity.

This book, which you are holding in your hands, dear reader, is about all this and about a lot of other things. It will be of use for those who are interested in the landscape and nature of the “holy sea”, people living on its shores. It will be useful for those who realize that it is we who are to provide the blessed unity of Man and Nature; it is our fate, and perspectives of human life.

In 2008 this book was listed in the Irkutsk Oblast Book of Records, and nominated “The Most Enigmatic Book about Lake Baikal”.

Translated by A. Bryanskaya, E. Bayartueva, T. Platitsyna, L. Shultunova, and a group of students of the Buryat State University. 

Content

With love to Lake Baikal 

Acknowledgements 

I. The world of Lake Baikal 

• Fame and Burden of the World Heritage

• Natural and spiritual resources of Lake Baikal

• Landscapes, areas and boundaries of Baikal

• Shaman Rock: legends and predictions

• Listvyanka and Bolshye Koti 

• Bolshoye Goloustnoye village

• Recent and ancient tragedies of Baikal: archaeological discoveries

• The Olkhon Gates Strait

• Sarma (wind)

• Rytyi Cape

• Landscape around Lake Baikal

• Tragic events near Baikal

• Severo-Baikalsk and surrounding areas

• Barguzinsk seed 

• Chivyrkuy Bay

• Barguzin: facts and fables

• Land to be tourist stronghold of Baikal

• Legend about Khaim river

• Underwater crater and oil reserves of lake Baikal

• Devastating earthquake and Bay Proval on Baikal

• Villages of Kudarinskaya steppe

• Istomino village 

• Posolsk village

• Routes to the land of Mongolia 

• Marble of Slyudyanka

• Legends of Cape Shaman 

• Islands of Lake Baikal

• Values of Baikal Water 

• Pollution of Lake Baikal

• Water transformations on Lake Baikal

• The underwater world of Lake Baikal

• Flora and fauna of Lake Baikal

• Baikal Flora

• Fauna on Lake Baikal

• Birds of Lake Baikal

• Lake Baikal fishing

• Roads in the Baikal region

• Baikal-Amur Waterway

• Baikal railway

• Towns in the Baikal region

• Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

• Ulan-Ude (Verkhneudinsk)

• Psychology and technology of ecological settlements 

II. The world around Baikal 

• Concerns and fortunes of aborigines

• The favorites of the Baikal taiga 

• Buryats as settlers of Baikal land

• Baikal matters of the Russian old timers 

• Drunkenness in Siberia

• The exile to Siberia

• Multi-ethnic interaction on the Baikal land

• Religion and Lake Baikal

• Siberian shamanism

• Christianity and Lake Baikal 

• Peculiarities of the Baikal polytheism 

• Buddhism in the Lake Baikal

• Interaction between man and nature

• Human attitude towards environment

• Canals of perception and understanding nature 

• Baikal colors

III. Peace be with Baikal 

• Ecological economy (economical ecology) of Lake Baikal

• Scholars about Baikal

• Paths of Putin on Baikal slopes 

• International and space projects 

• Baikal ecology:struggle and routine

• Environmental protection of Baikal and laws

• Directions and problems of environmental protection activity 

• Meaning of Ecological socialization 

• The harm to nature is harm to themselves

• Poetry and prose of lake Baikal

• Paintings and images of Baikal

• Heritage of Russian-Mongolian collaboration 

• How Robinzon Crusoe came round the Baikal 

• Americans about Baikal

• Ecology and service in Japan

• French science-fiction writer about lake Baikal

• Polish insurgents on Lake Baikal

• Asian influence on the peoples of Baikal

• Peculiarities in perception and understanding of Baikal from the points of view of people of different nationalities

• Recreational resources and tourism at Lake Baikal

• Tourism and Psychology of Hospitality 

• Tourism Potential of lake Baikal

• Siberian hospitality

• Thoughts about the image and brand of Lake Baikal

Afterword