With its enchanted ice caves, dazzling winter sun and dramatic landscapes, winter is without a doubt the most spectacular time to photograph frozen Lake Baikal.

This Lake Baikal Photography Tour will grant intrepid photographers the honour of focusing their lenses on some of Siberia’s most famously beautiful frozen landscapes. Summer sees the bulk of tourist activity in the area, but it’s in winter that the most devoted photographers make the pilgrimage, hoping to capture once-in-a-lifetime images of the natural world at its most powerful and surreal.

Trip Highlights:

Climb to the top of Khoboy Cape for a breathtaking panoramic view showing the true scale of Siberia’s “inland sea”. The cape contains a labyrinth of grottoes where sunlight dances off ceilings jagged with icy stalactites

Khorin-Igri Bay: an ideal spot to photograph the natural phenomenon of frozen bubbles under Lake Baikal, rising to the surface in perfect discs suspended in the clear, dark water

Budun Cape is a rugged natural monument surrounded by shard-like ice mounds. An unreal sight with a huge variety of shapes, lines and geometry allowing for some creative perspectives

In the bay of Zuun-Khagun, the ice is often so transparent that the bottom of Lake Baikal is clearly seen. This is one of the best places to capture one of the most iconic images of Baikal – the inky black lake surface split with vein-like cracks in the ice that can stretch for dozens of kilometres
Uzury is a tiny village of about 10 people in eastern Olkhon. Close to Uzury are numerous ice grottoes and natural ice hummocks – giant blocks formed by the movement of ice floes that shimmer like precious stones on the surface of the lake.

Under deep freeze conditions, Lake Baikal is an astonishing sight, with its transparent layer of ice blanketing staggeringly clear water plunging over 1000 metres into the abyss. Exploring the lake’s numerous islands will reveal hidden grottoes and frozen caves where intricate ice formations make for otherworldly photo subjects.

The main subject of this 8-day Baikal tour will be the breathtakingly beautiful Olkhon Island, the largest of Lake Baikal’s 27 islands. Olkhon is divided into three distinct climatic zones – steppe, forest and desert. Dotted all around Olkhon are strikingly photogenic landscapes and natural monuments, made all the more spectacular in winter by the presence of glittering ice caves and bizarre, beautiful ice hummocks – huge shards of ice that form out of cracks in the surface of the lake and shimmer with a transparent, turquoise hue.

To get to Olkhon from Irkutsk, we’ll travel approximately 300km by road and over ice. During winter, the narrow channel between the mainland and Olkhon is completely frozen, allowing us to safely commandeer our bus over the metre-thick ice to reach our home base in western Olkhon, Khuzhir. Khuzhir village is home to 1,200 out of Olkhon’s 1,500 mostly indigenous Buryat residents.

This dedicated photographer’s safari caters for camera buffs of all skill levels, with an expert photographer on hand to give you advice on shooting techniques. Amateur photographers will enjoy workshops on mastering equipment, building the right composition and using filters. Seasoned photographers will learn more about shooting panoramas, focus stacking and night photography. Travelling with a professional team including a guide, translator and drivers, you’ll visit the most visually breathtaking destinations in the region on this Lake Baikal photo tour. You won’t go home without a gallery’s worth of stunning pictures, guaranteed!