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The tours lies within the Altai mountain region, but it also includes the southern part of West Siberian Plain, one of the world's largest region of continuous flatland. Both regions belong to Siberia that makes up about 56% of the territory of Russia.
According to political fragmentation of Russian Federation the tour lies within the Novosibirsk Region, Altai Krai and Republic Altai.
The Russian Altai mountains named as The Golden Mountains of Altai, is one of the 6 approved World Heritage Sites in Russia as according to Protected Areas Programme of UNESCO. More information about this site from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A special point of the tour is the Lake Teletskoye is the largest lake in the mountains of southern Siberia. It is almost 80 km long, up to 5 km wide. It reaches the depth of 325 m and accumulates 40 cubic kilometers of fresh water. It is the 6th deepest lake in the world after Baikal, Issuk-Kul and some others. More information about this site from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Starting and finishing point of the tour is Novosibirsk, the biggest city in Siberia and the 3rd biggest city in Russia.
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RUSSIA OVERVIEW
The Russian Federation is the largest country of the world. It stretches over a vast expanse from Europe and Asia, with an area of 17.075.200 km2 (6.595.600 mi2). Formerly the dominant republic of the USSR, Russia is now an independent country and an influential member of the CIS. The Russian Federation (RF) is a federal republic with a president. The current president is Vladimir Putin (since 2000), who lives in the Kremlin based in the capital, Moscow. Today, the RF is composed of 49 provinces, 21 autonomous republics, 6 territories, 11 autonomous oblast and 2 federal cities (Moscow and St Petersburg)
ECONOMY: After the collapse of the formal USSR, the economy started recovering in 1999. It then entered a phase of rapid economic expansion, the GDP growing by an average of 6.7% annually between 1999 and 2005. In recent years, the economy has also been driven by growing internal consumer demand that has increased by over 12% annually in 2000-2005, showing the strengthening of its own internal market. The country's GDP shot up to reach €1.2 trillion ($1.5 trillion) in 2004, making it the ninth largest economy in the world and the fifth largest in Europe. Some international firms are investing heavily in Russia. Russia had nearly $26 billion in cumulative foreign direct investment inflows during the 2001-2004 period.
POPULATION: Due to its enormous size, Russia has a low average population density. Population is densest in the European part of Russia: 145 million inhabitants, roughly 103 million in the European part, and 42 million in the Asian part. The Russian Federation is also home to as many as 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples.
The Russian language is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, and it is the only official state language, but the individual republics have often made their native language co-official next to Russian. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant Christian religion in the Federation; other religions include Islam, various Protestant faiths, Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Buddhism.
GEOGRAPHY: Most of the land are composed of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus, the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The more central Ural Mountains, a north-south range that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia, are also notable. Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. Some smaller bodies of water are part of the open oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean.
Many rivers flow across Russia. The main rivers of Russia in Europe are the Volga, Don, Kama, Oka and the Northern Dvina. In Asia, important rivers are the Ob, Irtysh, Yenisei, Angara, Lena, Amur, Yana, Indigirka and Kolyma. Major lakes include Baikal Lake , Chany Lake and Onega Lake, Teletskoye Lake.
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ABOUT SIBERIA
Siberia is an enormous area in north Asia spreading from the Urals in the west to mountainous ridges of the Okhotsk Sea coast in the east, from the Arctic Ocean in the north to borders with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China in the south.
The area of Siberia is about 9,7 million square km that is very similar to the total area of U.S. (9,6 million square km). But if population of U.S. is 300 million, population of Siberia is 25.5 million only. Density of population in Siberia is 12 times less than in U.S. and 88 times less than in Germany. The most of population in Siberia is concentrated in relatively narrow strip of forest steppe zone. The northern territories and southern (mountain) areas are much less inhabited. Siberia also contains the autonomic republics of Sakha (Yakutia), Buryatia, Altai and Tuva (Tyva).
Siberia falls into four major geographic regions, all of great extent:
- In the west, abutting on the Ural Mountains, is the huge West Siberian Plain, drained by the Ob and Yenisey rivers, varying little altitude, and containing wide tracts of swampland;
- East of the Yenisey River is Central Siberia, a vast area that consists mainly of plains and the Central Siberian Plateau;
- Farther east, there is Eastern Siberia beginning from the longitude of Baikal Lake up to the complex of mountain ranges, separating rivers going to the Arctic Ocean and to the Pacific Ocean;
- The belt of south Siberian mountains, which is a complex of low mountain system of Sayan and Salair and high mountain system of Altai.
MAJOR VEGETATION ZONES. In plains: tundra in the north; narrow strip of forest tundra; taiga, over most of Siberia; forest-steppe and steppe in the south In mountains: all altitudinal belts from mountain tundra and alpine meadows to semi-desert.
It is still uncertain whether humans first came to Siberia from Europe or from central and eastern Asia. Evidence of Paleolithic settlement is abundant in southern Siberia, which, after participating in the Bronze Age, came under Chinese (from 1000 BC) and then under Turkic-Mongol (3rd century BC) influence. Southern Siberia was part of the Mongols' khanate of the Golden Horde from the 10th to the mid-15th century. The mineral resources of Siberia are enormous; particularly notable are its deposits of coal, petroleum, natural gas, diamonds, iron, and gold. Both mining and manufacturing underwent rapid development in Siberia in the second half of the 20th century, and steel, aluminum, and machinery are now among the chief products. Agriculture is confined to the more southerly portions of Siberia and produces spring wheat, barley, oats. winter rye and sunflower.
CLIMATE IN SIBERIA : Siberia is characterized by long, cold winters that last for seven to eight months in most parts of the region and even longer in the far northeast. But Siberian summers are very nice and generally moderate or even hot although they are relatively short. That’s why we undertake our summer ecotours and excursions from the middle of June to the end of August only.
In Novosibirsk, in the West Siberian Plain, the average temperature in January is -20° C (-4° F), and the average temperature in July is 18° C (64° F). Irkutsk, in Central Siberia (Baikal lake), has an average January temperature of -21° C (-6° F) and an average July temperature of 16° C (61° F).
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West Siberian Plain
Russian ZAPADNO-SIBIRSKAYA RAVNINA, one of the world's largest regions of continuous flatland, central Russia. It occupies an area of nearly 1,200,000 square miles (3,000,000 square km) between the Ural Mountains in the west and the Yenisey River Valley in the east. On the north the West Siberian Plain is bounded by the Kara Sea and in the south by the Torghay Plateau, the Saryarqa (Kazak Uplands), and the Altai Mountains. The plain is drained by the Ob, Irtysh (Ertis), and Yenisey rivers and their tributaries. It is a region of the Earth's crust that has undergone prolonged subsidence and is composed of horizontal deposits from as much as 65,000,000 years ago. Glacial deposits extend as far south as the Ob-Irtysh confluence, forming occasional low hills and ridges, but otherwise the plain is exceedingly flat and featureless and has very poor drainage. Much of it lies within the zone of coniferous forest. Parts of the lowland are underlain by an extensive oil field that also has large gas deposits.
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