Eight hundred kilometres by five hundred of basalt above the Arctic Circle, east of the Yenisei, and the surface you are standing on is the top of the Siberian Traps, the eruption that coincided with the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. Erosion has cut it into flat-topped blocks separated by canyons holding more than 25,000 lakes, 180 to 420 metres deep, together the second largest store of fresh water in Russia after Baikal, with Talnikovy among the highest waterfalls in Asia coming off the walls. Winter runs to minus 40 and July averages 8 degrees. The reserve, 1.89 million hectares set aside in 1988, protects the largest herd of wild reindeer in the world on its migration and a population of snow sheep cut off from every other. UNESCO listed it in 2010. There are no roads: you go by helicopter or boat from Norilsk, with a permit.
Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia
See it on the map
