This is a view from the top of “гора любви” (mountain of love). I drove up here with some friend in October. Those mountains in the distance exuded a sense of mystery; they felt so close yet so far away. They made me want to fly.
This is “парк вдохновение” (Park Inspiration). I like this picture because it conveys the silly chaos that is Russia.
Above is a model of a kurgan! These are funerary mounds, where ancient turkic people were buried. Turkic peoples weren’t just buried in the ground; they used to raise a mound of earth and stones over the deceased person’s grave. I have to say that I really had no idea what a kurgan was when I first arrived to Abakan, but when I say this model something clicked in me. I guess it was the distribution of layers of earth and stones that appealed to me aesthetically.
This is a picture of Great Salbyk, the mecca of soviet archeology and one of the most mysterious places I’ve been in my life. Salbyk was one of the biggest mounds belonging to the Tagar civilization. The mound was dug out by a team of soviet archeologists in 1954. When I went to Большой Салбиский Great Salbyk, I was so confused, didn’t know what to look at. All I saw was a patch of land surrounded by big rocks. Then when, I finally got over my internal muddle, I heard the tour guide say that we were standing in the middle of the kurgan, where the tomb of an ancient king was discovered. When the scientists were studying the body of the king, they found some a type of grass inside if his cranium
“Guess what it was,” the tour guide said. “No, it wasn’t marijuana.”
My life in Khakassia 
So what was it?