Not only did I see the lake from the top looking down, I saw it from the bottom looking up. I went scuba diving.
I knew I wouldn't see much, and I figured the cold would be excruciating, but I wanted to be able to say I went diving in the world's deepest lake.
Baikal is famous for how clear its water is. People get vertigo because they can see the bottom when the water is quite deep. But there was a storm yesterday, which stirred up the water, and we didn't go far from shore. This is an artist's rendering (mine) of what I saw:
We wore thick wet suits and the water near the shore wasn't terribly cold. My guide said it was 15 degrees, or about 59 degrees Fahrenheit. That's cold, but not unbearable. We eventually got down to about 20 meters below the surface. To do so we passed through a thermocline, a layer of much colder water.
Using my keen scientific intellect I estimated the water temperature there to be about 875 degrees below zero, but my guide said it was actually 5 Celsius, or about 41 Fahrenheit. That's still pretty cold.
The night I left Moscow it was quite chilly. That was the only time on the trip thus far that I have had to wear a jacket. It's still quite warm in Siberia. I took this self-portrait before suiting up to go in the water, and I was perfectly comfortable in shorts and no shirt.
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