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CAU > Seminars and Study Tours > Wilderness, History, Culture: The Russian Far East, Siberia, the Mongolian Steppes

Wilderness, History, Culture: The Russian Far East, Siberia, the Mongolian Steppes

August 25-September 7, 2009

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Overview

Few place names conjure such powerful images of isolated wilderness as do the Russian Far East or Central Asia's Siberian Taiga and the Mongolian Steppes. We will visit them all in a grand tour of remote reservoirs of both biodiversity and cultural surprises.

Faculty

Cornell's esteemed eco-biologist J. B. Heiser, former director of Cornell's Shoals Marine Laboratory and recipient of Cornell's prestigious Clark Teaching Award, will lead us on this remarkable journey. Along the way, we will encounter numerous and sometimes unique flora and fauna, both on land and on the water.

Itinerary

We'll land first in Vladivostok, a port city that has played an extraordinary strategic role in the region's history through the centuries. We'll tour the city and consider the unique habitat for wildlife created by the Sea of Japan's three converging currents. Then we'll journey through the coastal forests north of Vladivostok, which are part of the taiga (boreal forest)--the largest single intact ecosystem in the world, stretching from Alaska to Scandinavia and Siberia. Among our stops in this distinctive landscape will be a visit to the Amur Tiger Rehabilitation Center, a small privately run establishment designed to study the great beasts. We'll cruise Lake Baikal, the deepest and most ancient lake on Earth, searching for the world's only freshwater seals, and land on its Olkhon Island, considered for millennia a sacred place and used for many years by shamans, and later Buddhists, for ceremonies. Olkhon makes clear that equally important as nature's diversity in Russia's Far East are its historical, cultural, and anthropological riches. Next we'll fly to Irkutsk, in the heart of the Siberian taiga. The center of human endeavor in this wild region, the Irkutsk Oblast (province) is home to distinctive communities of surprising origins and customs.


Photo: Viktor Yudin

We will visit the regional history museum and the House Museum of the Decembrists. In our visit to Ulan Ude we will see the local covered market, the first stone Orthodox church, and the Ivolginsky Datsan Buddhist Monastery, where a sapling grows that is purported to be from the Bodhi tree under which Buddha sat when he reached enlightenment. Late one afternoon we will visit an Old Believers' village to dine with local villagers and to hear their stirring songs. In their relatively isolated Siberian villages, many groups have been able to preserve their sixteenth-and seventeenth-century traditions, clothing, architecture, language, and style of singing. Toward the end of our tour, we will cross a major and relatively abrupt ecological boundary and enter the grassland steppes of Mongolia. Here we will sleep in a ger (yurt), discover why the environment is so different from the taiga, and observe conservation efforts to reintroduce the native wild horse, probable ancestor to all other domestic and feral horses.

Program Cost and Travel Arrangements

The program fee is $9,750 (per person, double occupancy), with a supplement for single occupancy of $765. The program fee includes all accommodations, many meals, all entrance fees, taxes, gratuities, emergency medical-evacuation insurance, management fees, and the full academic program.

Program Notes

These are a number of the highlights of this truly exotic study tour, parts of which will be moderately strenuous. You should feel comfortable walking for reasonable distances over sometimes uneven terrain.

Map

How to use the map:

  • Click one of the map markers to see details of the location.
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  • Click the arrow buttons, or click and drag the map to move different markers to the center.