In June 2013, a ground-based mobile lidar performed the 10,000km ride from Paris to Ulan-Ude, near Lake Baikal. Aerosols have been characterized using two intensive properties: extinction-to-backscatter ratio and particle depolarization ratio. The results highlight spatial variations in the aerosol mix, with more terrigenous particles over Russia than Europe. Wildfire and desert dust plumes were also observed, offering the first optical characterization of dust from the Caspian–Aral region.