Businessweek
A Journey Into Siberia, a Wilderness of Tigers and Lost Pianos
A quest to find a musical instrument leads to a life of trust—and wanderlust.
Batalov and his son inspecting tiger paw prints in the snow.
Photographer: Michael TurekFive years ago, I heard a David-and-Goliath story about a conservationist protecting one of the world’s rarest big cats and flew to Russia’s Far East to meet him.
Alexander Batalov—a broad, short man in his mid-60s, dressed in felt boots gifted to him by an army colonel—found me in the city of Khabarovsk. For the first time, I was headed into the taiga. The so-called tipsy forest, it’s named after the landscape’s swaths of leaning trees, many of them propped up by their densely packed neighbors.