Tuva occupies the headwaters of the Yenisey(4) River, marking out a pipe-like shape with the bowl in the east, a short stem, and a fat mouth-piece in the west. The Greater(5) Yenisey begins in the top of the bowl, its feeds falling in a dendritic pattern from both the Sayans(6) which set the republic's north border, and from ranges which cross the center of the bowl west to east. South of the center ridge the Lesser(7) Yenisey(8) passes through the mountains separating Tuva from Chovsgol County, Mongolia, and receives tributaries from the ranges crossing the south of the bowl. The Greater and Lesser Yenisey join to form the Upper(9) Yenisey which flows west through the stem. The mouthpiece adds the Khemchik(10) to the flow near the republican border. That system pulls from the Sayans in the north, the Altay(11) in the west and other ranges in the south. About the confluence is the Sayano-Shusheskoye Reservoir(12), which continues northward out of Tuva as the Yenisey proper.
Almost two in three speak Tuva(13), almost all of the rest Russian. The Tuvans are Lamist Buddhist, the Russians, Russian Orthodox Christians.
There are no large cities. The capital, Kyzyl, has just over 100,000 residents. It is located at the confluence of the Greater and Lesser Yenisey.
Thousands of years ago the Altaic language group arose in the Altay area according to prevailing theory. This area may have participated in that early history. Turkic languages represent an early split, and Northern Turkic languages a further split as other groups moved west and east, while the Northern ones remained at or close to their starting point. The Yakuts migrated far from the other Northern Turks in the 13th century. Tuva is one of the Northern Turkic languages thaat stayed put; the others are nearby.
Turks originally sacrificed to a sky-god, Tangri, and had other annual sacrifices in an "ancestral" cavern honoring metallurgy. The Mongols, who ruled them beginning in the 13th century, converted them to Lamist Buddhism.
Russia separated the region from Mongolia in the early 20th century, but full conquest and immigration did not start until the middle of that century.
west, north and northeast
southeast
southwest
(1) Or Tyva
(2) Siberia is Sibir in Russian.
(3) Rossija or Rossiya in strict transliteration from Russian.
(4) Or Jenisey. It is the sixth longest in the world, third in Asia. It is called Khem or Chem locally.
(5) Bol'shoy or, with a diacritical on the s, Bol'soj in transliterated Russian; Biy or Bij locally.
(6) Or Sajans.
(7) Malyy or Malyj in Russian; Ka locally.
(8) Its upper course is the Kyzyl Khem (Chem), called the Shishhid (in Mongol) and the Balytyg Khem (Chem).
(9) Verkhnyy or Verchnyj in Russian.
(10) Or Chemcik.
(11) Or Altaj.
(12) Vodokhranilishche in Russian.
(13) Or Tuvinian or Tuvin.
(14) The communist government discourages theism and so some people are no longer religious, others quietly so.