Idril´s trip to Siberia (graphic intense!)

Hello everyone,

As some of you know I´ve been to Siberia this August. It was a wonderful trip, exhausting sometimes though (especially the looooooong flights and busdrives). But anyway I´m glad to have seen this great country (Russia is big) even if I was practically in the middle of nowhere. I made a lot of photos, landscape and flowers mainly, and on request I´d like to show you some in this thread.

In spring I applied for an archaelogical expedition to Siberia hosted by the Russian geographical Society. I was selected and on July 31st my plane took of from Vienna to Moskau where all the people met. We stayed a few days there and did some sight-seeing. On August 3rd a 5 hours flight brought us to Abakan. from there we had a 5 hours busdrive to our camp in the most southern part of the Krasnojarsk krai which belongs to the region of Siberia. i was very close to the Mongolian and Chinese borders. Lake Baikal was not far either, but we didn´t go there.
Sadly the excavations were not what I expected. But the landscape was great. Our camp and excavations were in the Russian taiga region. The temperatures were very unusual for me. It was mostly very warm at day (20-30°C) but after the sun went down it got quite cold. Sometimes in the morning we had up to 2-5°C minus, but 25°C at day.

It´s very mountainous there, the only trees growing are birches (a lot) and needle trees, mostly Siberian pines.

Pine tree with interesting roots in a national park we visited. sadly I didn´t catch the name of the park.

The rivers are very broad, but shallow, the water is crystal clear but cold as ice.

Same for the lakes.
Mountain lakes in the national park

there were a lot of little creeks in the park. Around the creeks and lakes were often marshes.

Some flowers:

Geraniacea

Wild Pansy

Other flowers I don´t know the name of

Yep, that grew there too EVERYWHERE.... don´t worry I didn´t try it, I´m not into that stuff.

Sunset over the taiga
At that day (it was the last day before we went back to Moskau again) it was raining most of the time, but short befor sunset the sun came out again and not only one but two rainbows emerged behind our camp right over the mountainridge in two perfect bows. I think that were the two most beautiful rainbows I´ve ever seen. The ridge and rainbows were too close though and I always only got one half.

We also made a trip to Tuva, an autonomous republik of Russia near the Krasnojarsk krai. The landscape is totally different there. After a short transition zone the land turns from the green mountain region to a stoney and very wiiiiiide steppe. There are hardly trees growing there, if then at the river banks. Most of the land is covered with grass. It´s also very windy.

Wild thyme in the Tuvanian steppe

If you look closely you can see a lot of tiny flowers growing

Because the land is so wide the streets a quite straight and a few hours driving doesn´t mean anything. Mind that I come from a very small country, we don´t have such streets in Austria. For someone living in the American midwest it´s probably normal too.

In Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva, is also the geographical center of Asia..... and I was there.
Me at the center of Asia

That´s it for now. There are a few more pics in my photobucket account: http://s587.photobucket.com/albums/ss312/R…Siberia%202012/

If you have any questions, shoot and I´ll try to answer them as best as I can.

Thank you.
I loved the landscape, especially the steppe. I almost cried when we had to leave again.

Veilchen/ Stiefmütterchen. Ich dachte auch zuerst das es ein Veilchen ist, aber dafür wars mir irgendwie zu gross. (KA ab wann es ein Veilchen und wann ein Stiefmütterchen ist)

Violets/Panyies: I also thougth of a vilet first, but it seemed to big for me for a violet. (I have no idea when they are called violets and when panies. )

Hehe, yes I remembered.

That´s the St. Basil´s cathedral at the Red Square in Moscow.