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Siberia
Think Siberia and
think cold. Think hoarfrosted faces, howling wolves, frozen
mountains, salt mines, human chain gangs and exile. Maxim Gorky
once called it a 'land of chains and ice' and, until recently,
the description still held good. Tsars and Party apparatchiks
might have had opposing political ideologies but they were of
one mind when it came to Siberia.
It was the ne plus
ultra of natural prisons; any criminal or persona non grata
could be dropped off in its inhospitable snowbound vastness,
never to be seen again. Attempts at escaping back to
civilization usually met with a chilly end. But it wasn't until
the Stalinist purges that Siberia and gulag became synonymous
with human atrocity, moving Solzhenitsyn to write his illegal
and death sentence-attracting novel, Gulag Archipelago.
Siberia's history
left a scar on the Russian psyche, but gradually its reputation
is changing. Its vastness - it takes up nearly three quarters of
Russia or one third of the entire northern hemisphere - and
uninhabitability make it a rewarding challenge. More and more
foreigners are attracted to its virginal spaces and complete
lack of Contiki Tour predictability. Travelers do not do a tour
of Siberia as much as complete a mental and physical odyssey.
While much of Siberia
is taiga - dark and brooding forests of birch, pine, spruce and
larch - the real desert of eastern Russia is the Siberian
tundra. The tundra falls almost completely within the Arctic
Circle. Most of the ground has frozen over; it's the geological
equivalent of the faulty freezer that no one can be bothered
defrosting. In some places the permafrost reaches a depth of
1450m (4760ft). There are very few trees or bushes at all, and
for nine months of the year the little bit of greenery that
survives is buried beneath a carpet of snow.
The only animal hardy
enough to survive out here in the howling wilderness is the
hidebound reindeer and the hard luck lemming (suddenly, the
whole 'jumping off cliffs' thing makes more sense). All in all,
it's not exactly anyone's paradise. But if you're looking for
the exotic and the unspoiled, Siberia is it. A trip on the
famous and fabulous Trans-Siberian railroad will take you across
the tip of the steamy Gobi desert, through the deepest heartland
of Russia and right up to the very tip of the icy wastelands of
the tundra.
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North West Russia ||
Altai Russia ||
Yakutia Russia ||
Caucasus Mountains Russia ||
Karelia Russia
Golden Ring Russia ||
Kamchatka Peninsula Russia ||
Far East Russia ||
Siberia ||
South Ural Russia ||
Central Russia ||
Russian Ports ||
Russian Nature Reserves ||
Cities of Russia
Lakes of Russia
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