Ingushetia, a region in southern Russia's Caucasus, is known for its rocky mountains and the ice-cold streams and rivers that rush through them. However the area's natural beauty is not the only thing known to charm travellers — its customs and folk crafts do this as well. The memory of their ancestors is something incredibly important to the Ingush people. For this reason they work hard to preserve traditions and on no rare occasion can guests catch sight of rich folk costumes, architectural monuments from the Middle Ages and people proudly performing folk dances that represent their small, culturally abundant native land. The republic however is not known solely for its traditions and ancestral memory — it is also the birthplace of leading technologies used around the world, for example, in the industrial processing of fish skin.