Immensity
and extremity are what Siberia does best. Skies and steppe sweep away
to the distant horizon, endless trains take seven days to cross seven
time zones, and winter lingers so long it seems to be returning before
it recedes. Lake Baikal is at home here. It is the planet's oldest and
deepest lake, and while it's not quite the biggest, it's still the size
of Belgium. More importantly, Baikal's steep bowl holds a fifth of the
world's fresh water. If all our taps were switched off tomorrow,
Baikal's 23,000 cubic kilometres could keep all six billion of us sated
for about 40 years.
Vladimir Putin's decision this week to
force Transneft, Russia's state-owned pipeline monopoly, to divert its
new oil pipeline away from the lake will come as a relief to fishermen,
scientists, native Buryats and anyone connected with the region. Lake
Baikal is a recreational zone as well as a unique natural habitat. For
summer visitors - and cosmonauts, who can see the sliver of water
stretch across the barren plains - the lake is known as Siberia's Blue
Eye. When I visited last week, its other nickname, the Pearl of
Siberia, was more appropriate: the whole 400-mile length of the lake
was frozen solid to a depth of over a metre. Visitors from Irkutsk use
the lake as a playground from December to May, frolicking around on
skidoos, dog-sleds and skis. But none of this takes away from the
wonder of it all - framed by silver birch and evergreen pine, Baikal
looks like a vast icy desert, shimmering and surreal, a pristine patch
of Antarctica in industrialised Russia.
Baikal's
greatest secrets lie in the deep. The nerpa, the world's only
freshwater seal, lives here. At the bottom of the lake, where the
pressure can puncture 3in-thick steel, are tiny, transparent fish
called golomyanka, made up of 35% fat. Working hardest is the epishura,
an invertebrate that ensures the lake remains the most translucent in
the world. Locals joke that the lake is "great for murderers" because
these tiny creatures rapidly process any organic material found in it.
But they have limited powers and, in the past, effluence from cellulose
and paper mills threatened the lake's ecosystem.
It was
Krushchev, that environmental tyrant, who sanctioned the building of
the mills to "put Baikal to work". When Putin appeared on TV drawing on
maps to show the pipeline would run at least 25 miles north of the
lake, he seems to have wanted to prove that he wasn't just an old-style
Soviet hard man. Or perhaps he had been swayed by the legend that
Baikal's waters are life-enhancing. Dip a toe in, locals say, and you
add a year to your life. A hand and you get five. Risk a swim and
you'll last a further 25.
