I have been traveling for almost three weeks now and have been in Russia since around July 5th. While Nate and I were on Baikal Lake, the largest lake in the world (with 20% of the freshwater on the planet), we met a German in a bar that spoke of a three day music festival called Sayan Ring starting in a few days. This is the largest music festival in Siberia and is held annually in Shushenskoe, about three hours from Kyzyl, Tuva. Once he mentioned that there would be throat singing, Nate and I looked at each other and immediately knew we had to be there.

We took off the next day back to Irkutsk, then a 15 hour train to Krasnoyarsk, then a 9 hour bus to Shushenskoe.   The festival had around 30,000 people and we never saw a single native english speaker.  Finally on the third day we were greeted with our first Tuvan group. It was absolutely stunning to hear throat singing in person.

The next day we took a bus, then a private car to Kyzyl, Tuva.  Traveling to Kyzyl was the focal point of this trip, something I will elaborate on in future posts after I get home.  For now, read up on this amazing area here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyzyl

Today is our second day in Kyzyl.  We met with Dina, the assistant to the President of the Republic of Tuva for an interview that we organized prior to the trip.  Nate and I lived on his sailboat named “Tannu-Tuva”, and the news site Tuva Online was interested in doing a story on us.  Afterwards, we were interviewed by the Tuvan news channel THT about our experience.

It just so happens that Kyzyl is a very small place, and Dina helped get me in touch with Kongar-Ol Ondar, Tuva’s most famous throat singer.  I will be photographing him at his school tomorrow morning.

At the very least, if everything else goes wrong for the rest of the trip, we have made it to Kyzyl.  I still cannot believe it.