Emergency helicopter sent to rescue world famous Siberian hermit 

Siberian TV presenter Andrey Grishakov said Agafya called him by satellite phone earlier this week, complaining about a serious shortage of food for herself and her animals. She also said she was in weak health.

Grishakov has been visiting Agafya for the last five years, filming a documentary about Russia's 'loneliest woman'. 

'She would have never called if it wasn't for something serious. Whenever Agafya calls I know that we have to respond immediately', Grishakov wrote on his Facebook page. 

'She is not the kind of person who would agree to leave her place and move to the 'big land'. She is scared of everything modern.'

Scared or not, it was a satellite phone which Agafya finally agreed to accept last year that enabled her to get in touch with Grishakov. A helicopter was sent out immediately to check on her health; she has been long suffering from back and legs pains. 

The team that visited Agafya will come back next week with a set of basic grains she requested, food for her goats and a new torch with a set of batteries. 

'Agafya Lykova is not your ordinary elderly woman,' he said. 'Today many people asked me why I was helping, and why so many effort was invested in keeping in touch with her. 

'But she is a golden mine of knowledge, experience and culture of Russia as it was five, six centuries ago. Scientists study her dialect, record her vocabulary and make notes of her habits. I have no doubt that we should be helping her,' said Andrey Grishakov.

The hermit was born to a family that opted out of Stalin's Russia to live in the wilderness, and their existence went unnoticed for several decades. 

She is the last survivor of the deeply religious family and she continues to live at  the home her family built from timber, around 60 miles from the nearest village in the taiga.

Her family were Old Believers - an Orthodox grouping - who were out of step with the USSR when they fled religious persecution into the forest in 1936.

She lives like a peasant from the 19th century rejecting most modern comforts. In recent years she has faced danger from a bear which dug the grave of another hermit who lived close to her. 

Her family were discovered living off the land after being spotted from the air by a group of geologists in the 1970s. When they were found, they had no idea World War Two had started - or ended. 

Her plot is located close to Yerinat River, some 100 metres up a remote mountain side in the Abakan Range, in south-western Siberia. She was the fourth child of Karp and Akulina Lykov and for the first 35 years of her life she had no contact at all with anyone outside her family.

In 1978 that a group of geologists found the family after spotting their hideout from the air. The scientists reported that Agafya spoke a strange blurred language 'distorted by a lifetime of isolation'.

Her father had taken the decision to flee normal civilisation in 1936 after a communist patrol arrived at the fields on which he was working and shot dead his brother.

Gathering a few meagre possessions and some seeds, he took his wife, Akulina, their nine-year-old son, Savin, and two-year-old daughter Natalia, and headed off into the forest.

Over the years they retreated deeper into taiga, building a series of wooden cabins amid the pine trees. When their metal pots had disintegrated beyond use, they were forced to live on a staple diet of potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

Over the years they retreated deeper into taiga, building a series of wooden cabins amid the pine trees. When their metal pots had disintegrated beyond use, they were forced to live on a staple diet of potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

The Lykovs subsided mainly on trapped wild animals and cultivated potatoes. They had no firearms, no salt and did not know how to make bread.

However a bad winter in 1961 killed off everything in their garden and they were reduced to eating their own leather shoes. The cold weather, and lack of food, tragically proved too much for Akulina who died.

Once the family was discovered they continued to live in the wilderness and, apart from salt, knives, forks and handles, they opted not to adopt any methods or items from the modern world.

Two years after their discovery, three of the four children also died: Savin and Natalia suffered kidney failure and Dmitry perished from pneumonia.

Agafya's father died in his sleep in February 1988, but despite her age and the risks to her health she continues to live permanently in her remote homestead.