Travels in Siberia

Scientists estimate that the Siberian permafrost holds the remains of 150 million mammoths—or about 8 million more than the 142 million Russians aboveground in Russia today.

Sometimes travel is merely an opportunity taken when you can.

She said being inside a language was like being in a person's house - after a while you came to see why the teapot was where it was.

It reflects like an optical instrument and responds to changes in the weather so sensitively that it seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land. And along with all that, Baikal is distinctly Asiatic: if a camel caravan could somehow transport Baikal across Siberia to Europe, and curious buyers unwrapped it in a marketplace, none would mistake it for a lake from around there.

In Russia, meanwhile, dedicated young people kept trying to kill the tsar.