Russian Agafia Lykova lives in solitude in a remote part of southern Siberia where her family moved before her birth in 1945 to escape religious persecution under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Her father died nearly three decades ago, leaving her alone on their homestead by the Abakan river, two weeks away by foot from the nearest human settlement by foot.
Agafia's Life In Siberia
Agafia Lykova walks near her home in the remote south Siberian taiga.
The Abakan river winds among the Syan Mountains near Agafia Lykova's home in a remote stretch of southern Siberia.
Firewood is stacked at Agafia Lykova's homestead on the Abakan River in Russia.
Dressed in tattered sackcloth, Agafia Lykova holds carrots, one of the root vegetables that she grows by her home in southern Siberia.
A yard at the remolte homestead in Russia where Agafia Lykova has lived alone since the death of her father nearly three decades ago.
Agafia was born in the Sayan Mountains in 1945 in what is now part of the vast Khakassky Nature Reserve in Siberia's southern Kemerov Region.
Visitors, including filmmakers planning a documentary, arrive by helicopter on a rocky bank of the Abakan River near the home of Agafia Lykova.
The Sayan Mountains in southern Siberia.
The Sayan Mountains lie under the flight path of rockets launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the area is littered with space debris; a large piece of a Russian Proton rocket -- an air inlet and fan -- is wedged into the roots of a fallen tree on the banks of the river a few minutes walk from her homestead.
Agafia Lykova balances on a treetrunk as she crosses the river near her home.