Siberian Mosquitos

From The New Yorker,

"Nothing short of a good breeze keeps Siberian mosquitoes down. They laugh at organic-based repellents. Strong repellent with DEET is disagreeable to them, but they work around it. Thick smoke can be effective, but you have to stand right in it. In past times, native peoples and Russians wove fine netting of the long hairs in a horse’s tail and wore the nets throughout the summer. Members of a tribe called the Tungus carried smoke pots with them wherever they went, while another native people, the Voguls, retreated into smoke-filled huts for the summer months and became dormant, doing most of their hunting and travelling in the wintertime. The sheer volume of mosquitoes might cause an observer not to mention the gnats, flies, and tiny biting insects (known as “no-see-’ums” in America); there are plenty of all those as well."

Since I have read this I bought insect repelling socks, hat, trousers and spray.  I've also got a battery powered repellant for the hotel rooms. They aren't having me.

Siberia

A good chunk of the rally is across Siberia, a region that I know very little about but which turns out to be extremely interesting.

Before about 1750 the area was inhabited by multiple tribal people, very much in the same way as the United States.  Most of these tribes followed shamanism, the belief that there is a spirit world of nature and animals that men can connect to, again very similar to the American tribes. The Siberian forests were filled with wildlife such a reindeer, bears and wolves and the Russian government sent successive waves of Cossacks to exterminate the tribes and their hunting grounds. the result is that the wildlife has been greatly reduced and only about 130,000 indigenous people survive.

It's a sad story and I wish I knew more about it. The tale of America's native population is much better known but the story of Siberia is just as interesting.