Buryats - uVisitRussia

Buryats

In the amazing vast wilderness around Lake Baikal reside a nomadic people: the Buryats. They live according to their own fabulous customs, and their everyday life is defined by shamanism and a strong sense of family. The Buryats lead their lives in harmony with powerful forces of nature: wide open steppes, majestic hills, dense forests and a vast body of water they call the “Holy Sea”: Lake Baikal. Shamanic rituals and a cult of ancestor worship are what define the lives of these nomads. The history of Buryat people counts not one millennium. It is complex, and interesting, and ambiguous. Buryat people, which proved to be himself that scattered on the regions, to the countries and to continents, knew how to preserve its originality.

The Buryats, numbering approximately 500,000, are the largest indigenous (aboriginal) group in Siberia, mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia. They are the major northern subgroup of the Mongols.
Buryats share many customs with other Mongols, including nomadic herding, and erecting gers for shelter. Today, the majority of Buryats live in and around Ulan-Ude, the capital of the republic, although many live more traditionally in the countryside. They speak a dialect of Mongol language called Buryat. According to UNESCO's 2010 edition of the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, the Buryat language is classified as severely endangered.