Introduction

Welcome to my blog about my travels in southern Siberia! I will be spending the next ten months living in Ulan-Ude, Russia and traveling around the region. I was fortunate enough to receive a Fulbright grant to fund my endeavours over the coming year, and as such I am legally required to state that the views presented in this blog are neither the views of the Fulbright program nor the U.S. Department of State.

As a brief introduction, I'm going to describe the area that I will be going to as well as what I will be researching. Ulan-Ude is a city of about 400,000 and is the capital of The Republic of Buryatia, a subject that lies between the Southern shore of Lake Baikal and the Mongolian border. Buryatia is the home of a native Siberian community called the Buryat, which are closely related to the Mongols. While Russia remains the predominant language spoken in the area, many Buryat also speak their native tongue, Buryat, which is a dialect of Mongolian. The Buryat are generally both Buddhist and Shamanist, often seeing both lamas and shamans for various reasons.

Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. It holds 25% of the world's fresh water and is over 1500 meters deep. Lake Baikal is home to a unique ecosystem due to its' remarkably pure water; Baikal contains several organisms that actively scour the lake for impurities. As such, Baikal is home to hundreds of endemic species. Perhaps the most well-known of these is the nerpa, the world's only freshwater seal.

The climate of the area is less severe than other parts of Siberia, due to its southern location as well as the presence of Baikal (although the lake effect does not extend all the way down to Ulan-Ude). The months of May - September are generally pleasant, but winter draws out particularly long in this extraodinarily land-locked region.

I received a Fulbright to research how the growth of tourism in the region around Baikal since the fall of the Soviet Union has effected the Buryat. More narrowly, I will examine whether the Buryat have been able to take advantage of increases in tourism (which has largely been domestic, not international) by inserting their history and narrative into tourist stops at various geographical locations, or if tourism development has largely occurred outside the influence of the Buryat. In order to do this, I will be taking classes at Buryatia State University in Buryat history and language. I will also travel throughout Buryatia, visiting tourist attractions and interviewing tour guides and operators. I am most interested in discovering the motives of tour guides in the region: what new information do they want tourists to return how with?

I will be updating this blog as frequently as I can with updates on my research as well as anecdotes on everyday life. Feel free to leave questions in the comments, and I will respond to them as quickly as I can.