{"id":89602,"date":"2026-02-24T13:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T07:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=89602"},"modified":"2026-02-24T13:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T07:37:08","slug":"lake-baikal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/lake-baikal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Baikal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Lake Baikal Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a tragic incident, seven bodies have been recently recovered from Lake Baikal in Siberia after a tour bus carrying eight Chinese tourists broke through the ice and plunged into the water. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Lake Baikal<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is located in the southern part of <\/span><b>eastern Siberia, south-central Russia,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> near the border with Mongolia.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>oldest<\/b> <b>existing freshwater lake <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on Earth (20 million\u2013<\/span><b>25 million years old<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It covers about 31,722 sq.km., making it the <\/span><b>world\u2019s largest freshwater lake.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has a length of 636 km and an average width of 48 km.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also the <\/span><b>world\u2019s deepest lake,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with a maximum depth of 1,642 meters below the water surface.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Below the lake\u2019s bottom<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> lie <\/span><b>sediments of about 7 kilometers, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">making it the <\/span><b>Earth\u2019s deepest continental rift<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, with a rift floor of 8-11 kilometers.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also the<\/span><b> world\u2019s largest freshwater lake by volume.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It contains roughly <\/span><b>20 percent of the world\u2019s surface fresh water.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are 45 islands and islets in Lake Baikal, of which <\/span><b>Olkhon <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the <\/span><b>largest island.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Up to <\/span><b>330 rivers <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">drain into Lake Baikal, of which <\/span><b>Barguzini, Selenga, Upper Angara, Sarma, and Turka<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are the major ones.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the lake has <\/span><b>only one outlet, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the<\/span><b> Angara River.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Baikal\u2019s <\/span><b>climate is much milder than that of the surrounding<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> territory. The lake surface <\/span><b>freezes in January and thaws in May or June.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also home to the <\/span><b>Buryat people,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who <\/span><b>follow the Tibetan Buddhist religion<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>reside on the eastern side <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of the lake, rearing goats, camels, cattle, and sheep.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The lake was declared a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/unesco-world-heritage-sites-in-india\/\" target=\"_blank\"><b>UNESCO World Heritage Site<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1996.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Known as the<\/span><b> &#8216;Galapagos of Russia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;, its age and isolation have produced one of the world&#8217;s richest and most unusual freshwater faunas.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.news18.com\/world\/seven-bodies-of-chinese-tourists-recovered-from-lake-baikal-in-russias-serbia-ws-l-9922513.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">N18<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lake Baikal, located in southern eastern Siberia in south-central Russia near Mongolia, is the world\u2019s deepest and oldest freshwater lake, known for its unique biodiversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":89606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5678,21,350],"class_list":{"0":"post-89602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-lake-baikal","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-afffairs","11":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89602"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89653,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89602\/revisions\/89653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}