Although it is the only airline to Krasnoyarsk, when we arrived the pilot thanked us for choosing Kras Air, and as hundreds of passengers shoved for the door, its theme song played over the speakers like a battle hymn. With 5,000 kilometers of Russia to the east and to the west, I was deep in the center of the country.
It was morning on the runway and there were low green hills in every direction. Nearby were still the familiar pocked mess of patched pavement and bathroom-tiled administrative buildings, but they were not enough to kill the sense of an open horizon and the feeling that in Siberia, life answers first to nature and only second to Moscow.
I was met by a man in a suit who introduced me to Ira, my Russian interpreter, and Luna, our Khakassian guide, and showed me to a giant white Mercedes coach, our transportation for the rest of the journey. At our hotel, the Yakhunt, we met Andrei and Natasha Katayev, the founders of the Paradise Travel Agency who had invited a group of 20 on their maiden voyage through "new" Siberia.
Founded by Cossacks in 1628 and developed by exiles in the 19th and 20th centuries, Krasnoyarsk is easy to like. Downtown, log-cabins, intricately trimmed wooden mansions, and Siberian Baroque cathedrals are still peppered among the concrete cereal-box monoliths of a more recent era. The downtown area glows with the neon lights of restaurants, clubs and stores selling Western products.
As we moved from site to site, Luna constructed a picture of Krasnoyarsk's turbulent history and how its pioneering spirit and tradition of scientific achievement have always defined it.
The treacherously steep and curvy road southwest out of Krasnoyarsk called Mother-in-law's Tongue was closed to foreigners until perestroika but it now carries visitors to Divnogorsk to witness the Krasnoyarsk Dam and the reservoir it creates. Driving 90 meters over the Yenisei across the mighty dam with its awesome capacity of 50 million kilowatts per hour was a dramatic experience.
In the low Sayans, groves of Siberian stone pine, birch, flowering apple, cedar, larch and fir alternate with vast expanses of grassy fields as fertile as any U.S. prairie. Driving past the Yenisei villages of Slizneva and Ovsyanka, Ust-Mana, Biryusa and others founded by Cossacks as far back as the 1760s, Luna talked with pride about the independent Siberian spirit. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Siberian peasants owned their own land, unlike in European Russia.
Now, though, curvy-horned cows walk freely down the road and the few houses exist only in back-to-back clusters. The rare plowed fields on the outskirts of the villages are small and still farmed collectively. After about four hours, the road turned downhill, and suddenly the taiga ended, and a flat expanse of long shiny grass opened in front of us. We had crossed the natural border into the territory of Khakassia.
We stopped for a picnic beside the Black River, where there were soft grassy mountains on the horizon and scores of stones, 1 or 2 meters high, set in rectangular patterns. Even in the eighth century B.C. it was dramatically evident that this was a sacred place, and the Scythians built hundreds of burial sites here.
Among the purple Siberian irises, wild strawberries and little yellow and blue flowers, our chef and wait staff in tall white hats were waiting for us with a grill full of chicken and a table full of vegetables, salads, exotic condiments, drinks and three giant Oriental carpets spread on the soft ground. Two hours in this enchanting setting was the most sensually rich experience I have yet found in all of Russia.
As we followed the Yenisei south, it was hard to stay awake. We drove past depressed sparsely populated coal-mining villages. These dilapidated towns are dismal looking with their collapsing wooden fences, clapboard and concrete shacks and gray asbestos corrugated roofs.

Shushenskoe
Eight and a half hours from the city of Krasnoyarsk, we reached the village where Lenin was exiled for publishing revolutionary material. Although Shushenskoe was part of Khakassia until 1996, it now marks the border back into Krasnoyarsk territory. Before spotting a single house, we drove by "Thinking Mountain," where Lenin came to develop his ideas.
Our hotel, Tourist, was the fancier of the two in town, and in front of its defunct, crumbling fountain and concrete facade there were cows grazing on the grass between the cracks in the pavement.
My room offered some amusing amenities, including a tub more than a meter tall and a toilet that sat centimeters from the floor. Luckily, we stayed only one night and our own cooks prepared the tables (complete with wild flowers) and meals in the hotel restaurant.
Our excursion to the History and Culture Museum was eye-opening. A Lenin museum was established in Shushenskoe in 1937, but in 1975, to preserve and restore the old village where Lenin spent three years, the last residents were relocated to apartments and now costumed actors and historians welcome as many as 200,000 visitors per year.
In Shushenskoe, people grew flax, raised sheep for wool and had a thriving textiles industry. They revered the living spirit of nature, and developed a whole system of nature-inspired symbols to ornament their clothes and domestic objects to bring them good fortune. Swastikas, other geometric patterns and representational pictures were stitched, printed or painted in every color of the rainbow.
Red was considered the most sacred and powerful color because it represented the energy of the sun, and women produced 33 shades of red dye, all home brewed from plants. Red also was believed to combat the "evil eye." Lenin's use of the color red as a political symbol later appealed to many people's deepest spiritual feelings.
Lenin arrived in Shushenskoe in May 1897. Soon thereafter he was joined by his fianc?e, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and they married in 1898. Exiles were prohibited from earning money, but were provided with an allowance of 8 rubles per month, and an additional 8 rubles for their spouse.
With their combined allowances, Lenin, his wife and her mother moved to a larger house with a study, and because the landlady only charged him 4 rubles in rent, they could afford to hire a maid.
Besides enjoying excursions on the river, hunting and walking in the forest, Lenin used his three-year sentence to read a vast amount of economic, philosophical and historical literature, and compiled his fateful "The Development of Capitalism in Russia." Russia hasn?t been the same since.

Nizhny Suetuk
Forty-five minutes from Shushenskoe the women of the farming village Nizhny Suetuk met us on the edge of town singing and dancing in their colorful traditional dresses. The town leader, a strong, welcoming woman in her 50s with freshly dyed purple hair, held out the tasty symbol of friendship for each of us to tear into ? a fresh round loaf of bread with a cup of salt baked in the top. Nearby, a little, energetic mustachioed man in a captain's hat and a navy blue uniform stomped and danced the jig around his rubber-tired horse-drawn wagon.
We hopped in the wagon, and the strong chestnut plow horse trotted down the road toward a house where some more goodies were being baked in a brick oven. While most of the group climbed out to look around, the old wagon driver invited Luna and me over to his place and on the way stopped to give his young girlfriend a kiss.
When we got to his three-room home, his wrinkly wife called us in and was so pleased at my taking off my shoes that she invited us to the kitchen for a snack.
There was a big bowl full of ladushki (thick pancakes) on the table, and, having no refrigerator, they pulled a jar of homemade sour cream and bowl of berry jam out of their cupboard, and we started dunking the pancakes into them.
Since I?d never had a raw milk product before, I was still busy getting up the nerve to swallow when our host produced a greasy plastic bottle of his own murky home-distilled samogon, poured full cups for me and himself and started drinking. Not wanting to offend him, I swallowed the moonshine along with my mouthful of ladushki. Arm-in-arm, we headed back out onto the street, and when the purple-haired woman learned what we'd been up to she scolded him and said he had already been drinking before we arrived and didn't wear his nice boots like she had told him.
Later we went to visit out hostess' older sister who lived in the prettiest cottage in town with freshly painted blue and green trim. The interior was absolutely covered with brightly colored, intricately flowered wool carpets of her own design ? at least 15 on the walls and floors. She showed us a picture of her husband, who died 16 years ago, and started to cry as she told us what a good man he was and how hard it has been to buy coal and to keep the house by herself. I gave her a little hug, which cheered her up, and she offered me a cup of pale yellow extra-tart homemade kvas and a pair of black, yellow and pink mittens for my girlfriend, which she had knitted herself.
When we reached the baker's house and our purple-haired hostess told her that I had drunk samogon with the driver, the baker said, "Mine is much better," and pulled out a bottle, which was definitely much clearer than the driver's. So after toasting to their kindness and generosity, we all ate fresh bread and braided rolls and fruit tarts in her powder-blue kitchen.

Blue Tuva
Over white uninhabited peaks, we crossed the Yergaki range of the Sayans on the road into Tuva.
Just hours before our arrival at the newly constructed yurt camp where we were to spend two days, a small tornado had given our awaiting Tuvan staff quite a fright. No one was injured, but it blew open some of the circular wool-covered yurts and took out the electricity. But the power was up and running again by evening, and despite a glitch or two, there were warm showers in the morning.
During the day, we visited a nomad's camp nearby, where his wife served salted milky tea called s?tt?g shai; barley flakes called volgan with sugar and ?reme, sour cream; araka, clear fermented mare's milk; and fermented curds that tasted like parmesan cheese, called aarzhi.
After sundown, three shamans met us at the fire ring back at camp to perform a ritual blessing for health and happiness. These women stirred our spirits with their drum, wood block and maraca, and after we cleansed our faces with milk, one made a sacrifice of grain and milk to the fire, kneeling and singing to the earth.
On our last evening at the yurt camp, we enjoyed a concert of khoomei, or throat-singing. Its earthy and enchanting effect is produced by a single singer's ability to simultaneously produce a low sustained drone like a bagpipe's and a series of high-pitched woodwind-like harmonics.
Driving west through central Tuva we eventually reached Kyzyl-Mozhalik, the home of a deserted gargantuan open-pit asbestos mine where ancient tribes, knowing of the mountain's fire-resisting properties, once rubbed their bodies with its dust.
Just outside of town the corner is a stone monument to Genghis Khan. He gave the Tuvans a simple choice: surrender and be enslaved or die. Some time after his death in 1227, locals began paying tribute to his statue and as a result his forehead is streaked with the petrified white residues of milk, fat and sour cream.

Camp Snow Leopard
Heading north toward Khakassia we crossed some of the Sayans' tallest peaks, as high as 2,200 meters above sea level. As we crossed the border and continued to descend, moss and lichen of oranges, yellows and greens overtook every surface and covered it with a soft living skin. Cedar, fir and dwarf birch grew more dense as we slipped deep into the taiga and to camp Snow Leopard, where we spent two glorious days.
Between cabins of white cedar linked by boardwalks and decks was the lodge and the dining cabin. Our hosts and guides welcomed us in colorful Siberian costume and sang to the balalaika and danced in traditional character. The guitarist was to join us on every gathering and excursion and serenade us with the old songs my Russian traveling companions all knew by heart.
Meals that included borshch, venison and fresh fish served from Siberian lacquer ware were familiar Russian comfort foods. My cabin was warmed by a fireplace and a soft brown bearskin rug.
The next day, Sasha, our new guide and friend, taught us how to tear open cedar cones to find the sweet nuts inside as we hiked 7 kilometers to the spring-fed Lake Marankul. Diving from round boulders into this icy lake for the first time was mind-blowing; the second time it permanently warmed my blood. On the bank above the lake, we air-dried around the fire, while an Old Believer cooked a cauldron of okha, a fish soup.
Exhausted back at the camp, we were all looking forward to a hot shower, but what I got was my first banya. Michael, the other American on the trip, and Thomas, a multilingual German, were steaming with me and enjoying the experience became a sort of competition. We haggled over who would lay closer to the steam and for how long. When Sasha started whipping us with the softened fragrant birch and fir branches, we'd tell him to do it harder, not wanting to be out-flagellated by the other. Then to cool down we jumped in a freezing stream and lay in the soft moss until our bodies stopped steaming and our heads stopped spinning.
Three times we repeated this sweating, beating, running to the icy water and recovering on the moss, until I felt an overwhelming sense of euphoria and smelled like a bottle of cologne. The only soap involved in the whole procedure was in washing off the evergreen sap.

The Valley of Joy
Below the shelter of the dense taiga are the green steppes of another world ? Khakassia. In its glory years of the sixth to 12th centuries, Khakassia's civilization spanned all Central Asia. Conquered by Mongols and Huns, many of its horsemen joined the hordes and went west.
Since being absorbed by Russia in the 19th century, its people have suffered further, and the capital of Abakan is now the only area where they prevail, about 20,000 people speaking many dialects.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Khakassia's people have been trying to revive their independent spirit, calling themselves Tatars and rejecting the Russian-invented name Khakassians. Khakassia's abundance of fantastic burial mounds, cult stones and stone carvings dating back at least 4,000 years are serving as the foundation of their new national pride.
Our guide was archeologist Leonid Yeryomin, director of the National Museum Reserve of Khakassia. His museum is an 18,000-hectare ethnographical and archeological reserve that includes 2,000 monuments, including stone pictures and carvings, cult places and springs lined with ancient ceramics. Some 90 percent is unexcavated and not described in any textbook.

Within this explorer's paradise is Camp Askiz, or Joy, where we spent two days exploring the surrounding Joy Valley and Blue Mountains.

Within walking distance of the new wood yurts there are 72 burial places from the third and fourth centuries B.C. undisturbed by grave robbers.

Nearby was an aal of local herders, so we stopped over to visit. The patriarch was a friendly old man in black boots, who was happy to talk to me despite our inability to understand each other's languages. In front of the log house, his sons were saddle-breaking a compact Mongolian horse the old-fashioned way. They tied it to a post, hobbled it and slapped a saddle on its back.

His wife invited us inside the separate wooden kitchen for tall cups of salty, fizzy ayran ? fermented cow's milk not strained of its little curdy chunks.

Down the road is the remarkable Anchulchon burial site from the 11th and 12th centuries B.C., excavated with all its artifacts intact. The woman's burial compartment is surrounded by children's chambers and an 8-meter circle of vertically set flag stones with openings to the north, east, south and west. Adjacent is a man's circle 9 meters across with stones set horizontally and no sun slots.

Artifacts being restored in St. Petersburg are to be returned next June when a team of archeologists is to complete the excavations and create a museum that could make Anchulchon famous.

The Valley of the Kings beyond Abakan is one of the most significant wonders of Russian archeology, yet besides our white bus the land was deserted; there was hardly even a road. Its massive mounds of earth framed with 60-ton and 70-ton rectangular boulders are Tagar burial sites dating at least as far back as the third century B.C.

Valery Balakhchin, head of the Khakassian state archeological department, guided us to the largest mound, measuring 70 by 70 square meters with entry stones 4 meters high.

After excavating, archeologists found a house inside constructed of larch with a birch-bark floor and artifacts such as fur clothing and ceramic ware, which are being restored in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Local people say there is an intense energy here and a connection with the cosmos.

Though forgotten by Russians and unknown by the rest of the world, the industrialized descendants of Cossack pioneers and political exiles, the Russian villagers of the dense taiga forests and the Turkic nomadic horsemen of the vast grassy steppes are as diverse as the Siberian landscape. But they share a feeling of independent identity, an intimate and spiritual relationship with the land and a frank optimism about their role in New Russia's future.