Last TOF

For centuries they wandered with deer, hunted, sold furs first Chinese merchants, then Russian merchants. The babies swaddled into animal skins, tightened the yurts with them, shamaned in the holy reserved places.

Today, only the name for rare tourists, and a couple of old people who still remember a long -forgotten language, remained from the Tofs. During the time of collectivization, they were forcibly moved to the huts, forbidden to speak in Tofalar, they built hospitals and schools, but for the benefits of civilization they paid national identity.

However, today they call themselves toofs, feed on hunting and do not want to leave their native Alygger-the village in the Eastern Sayani, not familiar with mobile communications and the Internet, equivalent from Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, where in winter you can get by car along the frozen River of the North, and in the summer-only on the helicopter, as Sergey Khazov-Kassia and Khazov-Kassia did. Andrey Kostyanov.