Word: altai
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...approved. (Satsyuk's opponents had argued that his job at the SBU was incompatible with being an M.P.) Meanwhile, the first signs emerged that Ukraine's orange revolution may be seeping across the border into Russia. Last week in the Siberian city of Barnaul, the capital of the Altai region some 3,500 km east of Moscow, more than 100 journalists published an open letter of protest against what they said was pressure from the Kremlin to smear Vladimir Ryzhkov, an M.P. from Altai and an outspoken opponent of President Vladimir Putin. According to Valery Savinkov, editor-in-chief...
...seeking adventure in breathtakingly pristine country. A dearth of such conveniences as electricity and phones makes Mongolia a challenge, but that's part of the attraction. A growing number of outfitters supply amenities that range from adequate to near opulent for adventures like hiking and fly-fishing in the Altai Mountains, traversing the moonscape of the Gobi Desert by Range Rover and exploring the Flaming Cliffs, one of the world's premier dinosaur-fossil sites, in the company of a paleontologist...
...former herders like Bayarsakhan, the transition to city living has been wrenching. He grew up in Gobi-Altai province to the south, where his family had raised livestock for generations. Four summers ago, however, a severe drought was followed by an early frost, then a brutal winter with high winds. Mongolians have a name for this: the dzud. The historical norm has been roughly one dzud every half-decade, making for a tough season before more-manageable weather returns. But it's now happening for a fourth consecutive year. The dzud means less grass grows and animals can't fatten...
...Stranded in a roadless region of Gobi-Altai that had been rendered inaccessible by snowdrifts, Bayarsakhan's family herd of 500 dwindled to 10. After a while, the family even stopped disposing of the corpses, instead piling them around their ger?a felt-covered Mongolian dwelling?for extra insulation. They burned furniture to keep warm. "If you don't have animals," says Bayarsakhan, "you have nothing." To survive, he left everything he'd ever known for a place where people dressed oddly, behaved differently and used paper money instead of bartering. His wife and infant son came with...
...16th birthday, Bayarsakhan was given this guitar by his own father, a renowned singer in Gobi-Altai. Now, almost 15 years later and hundreds of kilometers away from that stark idyll, Bayarsakhan starts to play one of his father's songs. The tune is rough, but the melody sweet. Words flow from memory?about Gobi-Altai and the land, about saddling up your best horse to ride across the valley. When it's over, Bayarsakhan stares at the ground. "I get sad when I play that," he says. "I wish I could take you to my home...