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Olkhon island - lake Baikal

Olkhon island - lake Baikal - cape Khoboi - Irkutsk oblast- Siberia - Russia

 

Olkhon (Russian: is the fourth-largest lake-bound island in the world. It is by far the largest island in Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia, with an area of 730 square kilometres. Structurally, it acts as the southwestern margin of Academician Ridge.

 

The indigenous Buryats, adherents of shamanism, believe the island to be a spiritual place; one of the groups of deities adhered to in Buryati yellow shamanism is called the oikony noyod, the "thirteen lords of Olkhon. On the western coast, close to Khuzhir, is Baikal's most famous landmark, the Shamanka, or Shaman's Rock. Natives believe that Burkhan, a modern religious cult figure of the Altai peoples, lives in the cave in this rock. The rock is one of nine Asian Most Sacred Places. Olkhon is considered a centre of Kurumchinskay culture of 6th-10th centuries.

The original indigenous people were the Kurykans, forefathers of two ethnic groups: the Buryats and Yakuts

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkhon_Island

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Uploaded on January 17, 2015
Taken on September 7, 2014