From russia with love!
Simon Reeve goes on the hunt for a rare Siberian tiger, the biggest wild cat on Earth…
The frozen wilderness of Siberia is an area of vast extremes. Not only is it the coldest inhabited region in the world, where temperatures reach a chilly -60C, and home to the largest forest on Earth, but it’s also the habitat of the world’s biggest wild cat – the Siberian, or Amur, tiger!
For the first in his new three-part series exploring
Russia, Simon
Reeve is on the hunt for the rare big cats and even their enormous paw prints, the size of dinner plates, leave him quaking in his snow boots!
‘With its tail, it’s half the length of a London bus!’ says Simon, as he gets to
within 300m of a female tiger. ‘Numbers have increased in recent years but there are still thought to be only 500 left in the wild.’
Part of the threat to tiger numbers is deforestation. The logging industry means that an area the size of Wales is being lost every year and much of it is illegal.
Simon meets a family of nomadic reindeer herders who eke out an
existence in temperatures of -30C, and visits Vladivostok, just 40 miles from the border with China, where he’s shown Russia’s biggest casino designed to attract tourists.
Wilderness
Simon also explores the remote volcanic region of the Kamchatka peninsula.
‘The scale of Russia is mindblowing,’ says Simon, who also visits Moscow and St Petersburg later in his series. ‘It’s a country that’s more diverse and surprising than I ever imagined.’