"TUNGUSKA: A Journey into Siberia's Armageddon" Top 5 Page for this destination Russia Off The Beaten Path Tip by darthmilmo

Have you ever wonder what Armageddon would look like a century after the event? Well, stop imagining and visit the Tunguska Reserve at Evenkia (Evenkiyskiy Avtonomnyy Okrug), a territory in Central Siberia. You won?t see any crater though. What you will see is a beautiful regrowth Taiga forest full of life.

The event took place on the evening of June 30, 1908 in the vicinities of the Tunguska River. Scientists are still scratching their heads wondering what exactly happened that summer night in Siberia. What they do know is that the Tunguska event whipped out over 2,000 sq km of Taiga and affected close to 15,000 sq km of forest. It didn?t stop locally, the impact created a shock wave that rattled the earth twice over. Seismograph stations thousand of miles away recorded tremors in the days after the event. Meanwhile, all throughout the northern hemisphere, particularly in Europe and crossing into Asia almost reaching the city of Krasnayarsk, the night sky was illuminated due to suspended particles in the atmosphere.

We didn?t go there as scientists though, we went there as tourists. We were the first tourists to undergo a trip of this kind. Our journey took us across some 1,070 km. It started at the town of Vanavara, where we grabbed a helicopter ride into the Tunguska Reserve. The helicopter dropped us off a few days walk from the Tunguska event epicenter. In a period of one week, we visited the epicenter region on our way to the Kimshu River. This river connects into the larger Chune River. The aid of motorboats ended about 150 km past the small town of Mutoray. After crossing a series of dangerous rapids and a small waterfall we were on our own. No motor boat could come and rescue us. We didn?t come across any soul for a week after that and it wasn?t until the end of the second week that we rowed into the Tunguska River. Civilization awaited us soon after on the town of Baikit, the end of our journey. An individual page on this trip will be posted shortly.