Where is it? Irkutsk Oblast is located in southwestern Siberia. It is bordered by the republics of Buryat, Tuva and Sakha, Krasnoyarsk Krai and Chita Oblast. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, is located in the Irkutsk region. Irkutsk is in its own time zone, which is five hours ahead of Moscow.

What's the biggest city? Irkutsk, which accounts for 593,000 of the region's 2.6 million people, according to the 2002 census. The region's other large cities are Angarsk (population: 267,000) and Bratsk (254,000).

Who lives here? Overwhelmingly, ethnic Russians.

What do they do here? There is a highly diversified industrial base. Businesses here mine coal, gold and iron ore, and produce petrochemicals, aluminum, building materials and pulp and paper products.

Does it have any English-language news sources? WWW Irkutsk is an English-language portal to the region, but it has a limited news feed.

How do I see what it looks like? Flickr has more than 7,000 photos, including streetscapes of the largest city and the Angara river. And there are more than 10,000 pictures of Lake Baikal.

How do I get here? The Trans-Siberian Railway still stops in Irkutsk, but be prepared for a long, long ride. The newly expanded Irkutsk International Airport is served by Aeroflot from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, while S7 Airlines and Transaero fly out of Domodedovo. When Irkutsk's airport is fogged in, which is often, flights can be diverted to Bratsk.

Which adoption agencies work here? Bethany Christian Services and The Cradle.

Who has been here? Waiting4Skip has actually now already completed the adoption of her son, Skip, from Angarsk. She's now working on adoption number two. There is one small Yahoo! group, named simply Irkutsk. But adoptions from Irkutsk, which were reportedly never easy, became even more difficult after Peggy Sue Hilt in 2005 killed a daughter she and her husband had adopted from Irkutsk. Hilt was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2006 after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. The judge suspended 10 years of the sentence, but assigned Hilt five years of probation upon release.

Truly trivia: According to Wikipedia, Lake Baikal contains more water than all of America's five Great Lakes combined.

Need more information? "Way To Russia" likes to visit all the stops on the Trans-Siberian, so it has a nice section on Irkutsk. Kommersant has a lot of good detail, or you can check the region's Web site, in Russian, here. The weather in Irkutsk can be steamy in summer and frigid in winter. Pack accordingly.

Image Credit: Irkutsk windows, by fimafreidine


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