Mandatory Credit: Photo by Jasmine Leung/SOPA Images/Shutterstock (14421803c)
Two visitors board a hovercraft on the frozen Lake Baikal near Ogoy Island. This inhabited island is famous for its natural pink sand along the shores, which the sand obtained such colour from almandine garnets. Meter-thick blue ice of frozen Lake Baikal has become a winter tourist attraction over the years, where visitors usually travel to the third-largest lake island in the world, Olkhon Island, to observe the deepest lake in the world. Given to the prolonged Russian war on Ukraine and the subsequent international sanctions since 2022, number of visitors to the island has been dwindled which a majority of tourists are from China.
Frozen Lake Baikal in Olkhon Island, Russia - 4 Apr 2024