The Serenity of Lake Baikal, Siberia
As the vast evergreen forests of Russia 's Siberian taiga extend southward toward Mongolia , the ground rises and the terrain becomes more varied. The border between Siberian Russia and Mongolia is a natural divide here, with rugged hills and mountains forming series of wrinkles between the sprawling Russian forests to the north and rolling grasslands to the south. About midway along this border, in a gigantic stone bowl nearly four hundred miles (636 km) long and almost fifty miles (80 km) wide, lies almost one quarter of the all the fresh water on earth--Lake Baikal. Baikal is easily the largest lake in Eurasia , and it is just as easily the deepest lake in the world (1,620 metres). On the merits of magnitude alone the lake is renowned as one of the earth's most impressive natural wonders, and rightfully so--Baikal is so large that all of the rivers on earth combined would take an entire year to fill it. What fewer people realize, however, ...