In Irkutsk, the nearest city to Lake Baikal, there are four dive centers and about 200 active divers. Having carefully studied the information about them, I learned that Dive Center Sval is one of the oldest in the city. In the first ten days of June, this dive center organizes a dive camp on the shores of Lake Baikal, which has become an annual tradition. The center’s slogan is: “Territory of serious diving.” Their motto intrigued me, so I decided to visit the dive center.

The sudden fall of the Berlin Wall changed the idea of an expedition to Lake Baikal from just wishful thinking to a project that was actually realisable. It would take time, but now here I am at last, and it is with a feeling of the surreal that I now sink down through the cold, clear water.

Deep diving in Lake Baikal

Reaching 1,642 meters at its deepest point, Lake Baikal, located in southern Siberia in Russia, is the deepest and largest freshwater lake by volume in the world. A typical dive site on Baikal is a shallow shelf, 10-200m long, turning into a vertical wall. There are only six sheer walls reaching more than 100-120m into the deep.

 

The surrounding forest-covered, beautiful mountain ranges are inspiring, and there are caves with painted rock pictures and many untouched historical monuments everywhere. The first settlements of Homo sapiens appeared here about 34 000 years ago. Our divers’ base is in the old village called Small Sya.

This is a favourite place for modern shamans and is a well-known Stone Age settlement. Stone axes, bones of mammoths killed by our ancestors, and the most ancient musical instrument in the world, a flute, has been found here. H