Siberia

Southern Siberia was a crossroads of steppe peoples long before Russia arrived. Scythian-era nomads buried their chiefs in great mounds in Tuva and the Altai, and the frozen Pazyryk tombs have preserved tattooed bodies, felt and horse harnesses from about 2,500 years ago. Turkic khaganates, the Yenisei Kyrgyz and the Mongols followed, and the Buryats, Khakas, Tuvans and Altaians descend from these worlds.

Cossacks and fur traders pushed east in the 17th century, founding Tomsk in 1604, Krasnoyarsk in 1628 and Irkutsk in 1661 as forts collecting fur tribute. Siberia became Russia's treasury and its prison: exiles and convicts were sent in their thousands, including the Decembrist officers of 1825, whose wives followed them to Irkutsk, and Dostoevsky, who served four years in the Omsk prison. Tomsk opened Siberia's first university in 1888, but when the Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed it in the 1890s, a new city grew at the Ob crossing — Novosibirsk, now the largest in Siberia.

In the civil war Omsk was the capital of Admiral Kolchak's White government, and Kolchak was shot in Irkutsk in 1920. Tuva, a Chinese-ruled land until 1911, was a nominally independent people's republic until the Soviet Union absorbed it in 1944. Stalin's Gulag camps spread across the region, and after the war came giant hydro dams on the Angara and Yenisei, the Kuzbass coalfield, the Norilsk nickel works and Novosibirsk's scientific town, Akademgorodok. Since 1991 Siberians have often complained that Moscow takes their resources and gives little back.

Siberians see themselves as tougher, more open and more self-reliant than western Russians, and older families are often descended from exiles, Cossacks, Old Believers, Poles, Germans and Ukrainians. Hospitality is serious and the banya a weekly ritual, and in winter ice fishing, cross-country skiing and hardy "walrus" swimming in holes cut in the ice are common pastimes.

The republics keep distinct cultures. Tuvans speak a Turkic language, follow Tibetan Buddhism alongside shamanism, and are famous for khöömei, throat singing in which one singer produces two notes at once; Naadym, the summer festival, brings wrestling, horse racing and archery. Altaians, also Turkic, practise shamanism and the modern faith of Burkhanism, and their epic storytellers chant in a deep throat voice. Khakas share Turkic roots and the standing-stone culture of the Minusinsk basin. Around Baikal, shamanic belief treats the lake and Olkhon as sacred, and drivers stop to leave offerings at roadside poles tied with ribbons.

Wooden architecture is a Siberian craft in its own right: Tomsk and Irkutsk keep streets of log houses with carved window frames, called "wooden lace". Novosibirsk has a large opera and ballet theatre, and Akademgorodok a strong scientific and student culture. Speech in Siberia is often described as close to standard Russian, and many older villages keep Old Believer traditions.

About 16 million people live here. Novosibirsk has around 1.6 million, Krasnoyarsk and Omsk more than a million each, and Barnaul, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk around half a million or more. Beyond the railway belt the population thins rapidly, and many villages are shrinking as the young leave for the cities or for Moscow.

The economy is raw materials and heavy industry: coal in the Kemerovo Kuzbass, nickel, copper and palladium at Norilsk in the Arctic north of Krasnoyarsk Krai, aluminium smelters powered by hydroelectric dams at Bratsk, Krasnoyarsk and Sayanogorsk, oil and gas in the north of Tomsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai, and timber. Altai Krai is a farming region of wheat, honey and sea buckthorn. Novosibirsk and Tomsk have strong universities and a tech sector.

Winter life turns around heating, snow-clearing and staying warm; summer means dachas, berry and mushroom picking and trips to Baikal or the Altai. Air pollution from coal heating and smelters is a constant issue in Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk, and wildfires blanket cities in smoke in dry years.

Siberian cooking is built on the taiga and the rivers. Pelmeni are as much Siberian as Ural, made in quantity and frozen outdoors, and pirogi filled with fish, cabbage or wild berries are everyday baking. Fish is eaten raw in the northern way: stroganina, shavings of frozen whitefish, and sagudai, a dish of raw fish. Pickled mushrooms, wild garlic (cheremsha), lingonberries and cedar nuts, cracked by the handful, come from the forest.

Baikal's signature is omul, a whitefish found only in the lake and its rivers, sold hot-smoked or cold-smoked at the Listvyanka market and on station platforms. The Altai is known for honey, sea buckthorn juice and jam, and maral deer products used in traditional remedies; Altaians eat talkan, a flour of roasted barley mixed into tea or butter.

Tuvan food is that of herders: mutton boiled in large pieces, khan, a blood sausage, dairy products such as dried curds, and salted tea with milk and butter. Drinks across Siberia include kvass, mors from forest berries, birch sap in spring, strong tea, and vodka flavoured with cedar nuts or berries.

Lake Baikal is the region's defining sight: the deepest lake on Earth, over 1,600 metres, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From Irkutsk, with its carved wooden houses, Decembrist house-museums and Znamensky Monastery, the road runs to Listvyanka on the west shore; the Circum-Baikal Railway follows the southern cliffs through tunnels from Slyudyanka, and Olkhon Island, with the Shaman Rock at Khuzhir, is one of the most visited spots on the lake. In late winter the ice turns transparent and cracks into hummocks.

Along the railway west, Krasnoyarsk has the Yenisei embankment and the rock pillars of Stolby National Park; Novosibirsk has its opera house and Akademgorodok; Tomsk has the finest streets of wooden lace and its old university; Omsk recalls Dostoevsky's prison years. Far north, the Putorana Plateau of Krasnoyarsk Krai is a UNESCO-listed wilderness of basalt canyons and waterfalls.

To the south, the Altai Mountains are the great outdoor region: the Chuysky Trakt along the Katun, Lake Teletskoye, the glaciers of Mount Belukha and the Ukok Plateau near the Chinese and Mongolian borders. Khakassia has the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam and the standing stones and royal kurgan of Salbyk. Beyond the Sayan range, Tuva has Kyzyl's Centre of Asia monument where the Yenisei's two headwaters meet, its Buddhist temples, the national museum's Scythian gold, and a landscape of steppe, lakes and mountains.