Lake Baikal, Russia

Russia-19, originally uploaded by Abhishek's Received Postcards.

Lake Baikal is in southern Siberia in Russia, located between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, near the city of Irkutsk. It is also known as the "Blue Eye of Siberia". It contains more water than all of the North American Great Lakes combined.
At 1,642 meters (5,390 ft), Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume.Like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed as an ancient rift valley, having the typical long crescent shape with a surface area of (31,722 km2/12,248 sq mi), less than that of Lake Superior or Lake Victoria. Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. At more than 25 million years old, it is the oldest lake in the world.