FT 230

The Siberian taiga is a vast stretch of mainly barren coniferous forest as unspoiled and unexplored as the Amazon jungle, and more than 100,000 sq km in western Yakutia are completely uninhabited. Devoid of any sort of trails, the terrain is mostly thick forest, full of uprooted trees, sprawling swamps and swarms of mosquitoes. In short, it's an ancient wildwood - an ideal setting for myths and legends about strange creatures and anomalous zones where bizarre things happen. Even the local wild man - Chuchuna - is far from exceptional here, and the most fascinating mystery of all is a strange legend about a terrible 'Valley of Death' filled with unnatural, dome-shaped structures.

Local traditions record that lone hunters from the nomadic Evenks and other Yakutians who wander into these weird valleys - there could be more than one - have described odd hemispherical 'iron houses' (kheldyu) that proturude from the perpetually frozen ground.