Текст на английском про Байкал

Lake Baikal is in Russia. It is in Siberia.

Baikal is very big and very deep. It is the deepest lake in the world.

The water in Baikal is clean and clear. You can see stones under the water.

There are seals in Baikal! Their name is 'nerpa'. They are grey and they like swimming.

In winter the lake is white. The ice is very thick. People can walk and skate on it.

Last summer my family went to Lake Baikal. We flew to Irkutsk and then went by bus to the village of Listvyanka.

The lake was bigger than I expected. It looked like a sea! The water was very clear but very cold. My brother swam for only one minute.

We visited a museum about Baikal and saw nerpas, the only seals that live in the lake. They are very cute and have big black eyes.

One evening we tried smoked omul. It is a fish which lives only in Baikal. It was the tastiest fish of my life!

Next time my parents are going to visit Baikal in winter, because they want to see the famous blue ice. I hope they will take me with them!

Lake Baikal, which is located in southern Siberia, is often called the 'Pearl of Siberia'. It is the deepest lake in the world: in some places it is more than 1,600 metres deep. It is also one of the oldest lakes on Earth, as it was formed about 25 million years ago.

Baikal contains about a fifth of all the unfrozen fresh water on the planet's surface. More than three hundred rivers flow into it, but only one river, the Angara, flows out.

The lake is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, and many of them cannot be found anywhere else. The most famous of them is the Baikal seal, or nerpa. Scientists still argue about how seals got to a lake which is so far from the ocean.

In winter Baikal freezes, and the ice becomes so clear that you can see deep into the water. However, walking on it can be dangerous, because cracks may appear suddenly.

I have seen Baikal only in photos, but it is the place I want to visit most. If I go there, I will travel along the lake on the Circum-Baikal Railway and take hundreds of pictures.

There are places whose significance extends far beyond the borders of the country they belong to, and Lake Baikal is undoubtedly one of them. Older than almost any other lake on Earth and deeper than any other, it holds roughly a fifth of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water. It is hardly surprising that it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

What makes Baikal truly remarkable, however, is not its size but its life. Having developed in isolation for millions of years, it has become a natural laboratory of evolution. Among its inhabitants are the nerpa, one of the world's few freshwater seals, and the golomyanka, a translucent fish that gives birth to live young instead of laying eggs.

The lake's extraordinary clarity is partly due to a tiny crustacean called epishura, which filters the water constantly. Such a delicate system, though, is easily disturbed. Pollution from industry, untreated waste from growing tourist settlements and the spread of algae along the shore have all raised serious concerns among scientists.

Tourism presents a particular dilemma. On the one hand, visitors bring income to remote communities and spread awareness of the lake's value. On the other hand, were the number of hotels and cars to keep growing unchecked, the very beauty that attracts people could gradually be destroyed.

In my opinion, the answer is not to keep people away but to change the way we travel. Had I not visited Baikal myself and seen how fragile its shores are, I would probably have treated it as just another holiday destination. Seeing it in person can turn a tourist into a guardian, provided that the visitor is willing to respect the lake rather than simply consume it.