The surroundings of Baikal are famous for their numerous festivals and holidays and no wonder that such a legendary lake couldn’t but have rich culture and traditions. Thereby among the festivals can be mentioned the following annual festivals “Crystal seal”, festival of composed songs, festival of poetry, musical festival “Jazz in Baikal”, sport contest “Zimniada” and it is just a smaller part of cultural heritage of the region.

Festival “Baikal Shaman” is one of the main holidays in Siberia. Being born on the shores of the lake, it gained popularity in the region. Music groups, bikers and tourists, thousands of people from Russia and abroad come to the festival every year.

In the program of festival besides the performances of music groups of Siberia it is stipulated to carry out a range of some other amusements and sport events – football, volleyball, arm-wrestling, weightlifting, tug-of-war and even contest for bikers.

One more famous event on the shores of Baikal is Iordinskie games. They are interregional ethnographic festival, which is carried out every four years. The mountain where the festival takes place is 2 km away from Baikal on the right bank of the Angara River. Not far from the village Elantsy (8 km).Iordinskie games is an ancient religious and cultural Buryat holiday, which consists of worship to the master of the mountain Erd.

According to information given by local residents the holiday took place there every year. Guests came from all parts of Baikal Region and an immense ritual circle dance consisting of about 700 people took place around the sacred mountain, which lasted 6 days and nights. In order to hold the holiday, there was an important condition – there should be so many people that would be enough for making a circle around the mountain. If there were not enough people, the holiday didn’t take place. They say that sometimes there were so many people in the holiday that a number of people were enough to make three or even four circles around the mountain and people could wear out several pairs of footwear.

An event which is also rather popular with people in Baikal is an annual poetry festival. Not only famous poets and writers from Russia, but also from other countries come here to gladden genuine connoisseurs of art. During the existence of the festival the region visited poets from Nicaragua, France, the USA, Poland and some other countries and of course authors who came from the region. Among them is Evtushenko.