| Asia’s
largest country
Asian? Yes, Asian – the whole
of Siberia lies in Asia. In Russian it’s called
“Sibiyr”, but this is a name borrowed from
the Asiatic Tartars, and in Tartar it means “the
sleeping land”. Over fifty different Asiatic peoples
– with their own languages, and sometimes their
own alphabets – live in this sleeping land, for
they are the original Siberians.. it’s the Russians
who came as settlers, then conquerors. But until the
C17th, Siberia was ruled by Asiatic Khans – who
ruled Moscow on behalf of their Mongolian overlords.
The descendants of these Siberian peoples still live
here today – cultures which are barely acknowledged
within their own country, and practically unheard of
outside it.
 A
spectacular natural wilderness
Huge areas of Siberia remain under natural
forests, and there’s abundant local wildlife –
bears, lynxes, bison, yaks, snow leopard, and in the
most remote areas a small number of Siberian tigers
still roam wild. For hiking, trekking, rafting, horse-riding,
dog-sledding, or cross-country skiing, Siberia is a
natural paradise. Particularly rewarding areas are the
Urals Mountains in the Siberian West; the huge national
parks of the Altai Mts in the south, and the whole area
surrounding the earth’s largest stretch of fresh
water – Lake Baikal.
Exiles, hermits and holy-men
It’s almost impossible to mention Siberia
without the idea of exile and imprisonment. Yet Siberian
exile started long before the Communists – the
Tsarist penal colonies were already flourishing in Siberia
from the C18th. Early exiles included the aristocratic
officers who led the failed Palace Coup of December
1825, and even the author Dostoyevsky served a hard-labour
sentence under the Tsars. Yet for many, Siberia was
not a sentence – but a refuge. Descendants of
the banned ultra-conservative religious movement, usually
known as “Old Believers” (because they refused
to accept modernisations of the Rite in the C17th, and
clung to the “Old Belief”) still live to
the East of Baikal, where the extreme remoteness protected
them from persecution.
 Shamanism
is native to Siberia, and flourished for thousands of
years – even now, a few old shaman are still continuing
the tradition, particularly in Buryatia and Tuva. Mystics,
too, have gathered here, like the painter and ethnologist
Roerich – who was convinced that the Buddhist
holy kingdom of Shambala lay in the Siberian Altai Mountains.
Perhaps this is also Belovodia? The mythical kingdom
of the Rulers Of Earth of which folk-religion in Altai
speaks – the hidden gateway is deep in the mountains,
allowing only seven seekers admission to the holy place
each year?
The frozen wilderness where
sun-cream’s a must
It seems a little-known secret that in spite
of its winter lows (which frequently drop below -40C),
Siberia has bakingly hot summers. Forest fires are a
regular problem in Altai, and at Lake Baikal the temperature
in summer (July-August) rarely drops below +30C. You
are, after all, only a day’s train-journey from
the Gobi Desert here... |
