Sayany & Tuva

Sayany is a large mountainous country with the highest mountain ranges of Eastern Siberia. It consists of two large parts - the Eastern Sayan and the Western Sayan. Virgin Southern taiga with lush vegetation, wonderful scenery with mountain rivers, waterfalls and lakes attract and stagger tourists.

Tuva is situated in the center of Asia. It mostly presents an endless steppe almost without footprints of modern civilization, which grants space scenery with sharp crests of remote mountains. Tuva is full of archeological memorials of different centuries. Tourists can also deep into local ethnography: lifestyle of Russian old-believers, shaman ceremonies, throat singing, opportunity to live in a real Tuvan yurt and to imagine yourself an ancient nomad.

Highlights

• Kazanovka is the State Museum - Reserve, where tourists can see real archeological excavations and look at rock drawings, which are more then 3-5 thousand years old.
• Kizil - the capital of the Tuva Republic. The Geographical Centre of Asia is symbolically located there close to the source of the great Siberian River Yenissey, formed by the confluence of Biy-Khem (Big Yenissey) and Ka-Khem (Small Yenissey) rivers.
• Khoomei - the traditional throat singing of the Tuvan people (and some other Asian peoples).
• Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydro Power Station – the greatest hydro power station of Russia and of the whole Eurasia with the dam 242 m high and 1000 m long, constructed on the Yenissey River.
• Shushenskoe is the State Ethnographical Museum – Reserve, where tourists are involved in an amazing atmosphere of funny adventure in a real Siberian village of the 19th – 20th centuries.
• Valley of the Kings - an ancient burial place with about 30 mounds aged from the III-IV century B.C. The culmination is the Great Salbyk Mound, once constructed over the grave of a noble family and excavated by the archeologists in 1954-56 years. It measured about 0.5 km by perimeter and over 11.5 m high.