Into the Taiga

At the end of August we traveled north (to the bit of Mongolia that sticks up into Russia if you look at a map). The attraction was the taiga forest, part of the great siberian forests and one of largest undeveloped wildernesses on the planet, and a small, 300 or so, community of nomadic reindeer herders.

The journey was straightforward if long, and involved train, bus, a jeep and finally a 7 hour horse trek, - it was worth the effort. The landscape was stunning, forests, lakes, peat bogs, sedge bogs, open grassland and great river valleys. The reindeer people, the tsaaten, are one of most endangered indigenous communities . I had reservations about travelling as a tourist to visit such a community. However we arranged our travel trough a tsaaten community centre which has been established to help them gain some money from tourism so we used local guides, stayed with local community and 25% of our fees went to a community fund.

Horse-riding was fun, through forest, up rocky hillsides, across streams and most challenging bogs. The horses tended to sink in the bogs and i went over the top when my horses front legs sank, but I had a soft if damp landing.

In the taiga birds were scarce; whooper swan and white-winged scoter on the lakes, pintail snipe in bogs, hazel hen and goshawk in forests. Passerines included dusky warbler, red-throated flycatcher, little bunting, olive backed pipit.