Each week Olga Shapovalova offers to folk music lovers a multicoloured display of customs and traditions, legends and tales, melodies and rythms of Russia.

Today we are setting of to visit a very ancient and mysterious people – the Altai people, hailing from the mountains of Altai in the South of Siberia, bordering on China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Around 800 000 people – descendants of the most ancient civilizations that existed simultaneously with Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Related story:  A modern-day bard of the Altayan heroic epos