Altai

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The Altai Mountains

We arrived into Barnaul station at 6am with pretty special hangovers (due to crossing a further time zone and not the chilli and honey vodka with 8% beer 😉 and were met on the platform by girl called Nadia who was to be our guide and stay with us for the next four days. We made our way to the bus station as we had to catch a local bus to take us to the village of Chemal which is right up in the Altai mountains and would be where we would be spending the next few days. It must be the worse journey either of us have ever made. The roads were terrible, bumpy and winding and the bus was so hot and stuffy it was hard to breathe. The six hours seemed to go on forever no thanks to the frequent random stops for the driver to pick people up off the side of the road or the 3hours of Russian soap opera playing loud over the tannoy (nothing to do with it being 42hrs travelling for us... or a hangover 😉. Finally we arrived in the sleepy village of Chemal and we were driven the last few miles to a guest house.

We were shown to our own little log cabin which was really sweet and had its own bedroom, sitting area and toilet. We just had time for a shower before we were given lunch by our host Tanya. Tanya and Viktor run a guest house which is basically their house which they have extended out the back. It seems to be pretty lucrative for them as they easily have the nicest house in the village. Nadia then took us for our first walk around Chemal. The village is a collection of shanty “shacks” a lot of which are known as Dacha's which are a kind of weekend/ holiday home most russian people have to escape the City grow their own vegatables and produce for the winter. The village is surrounded by pine forests and mountain and looks typically Siberian. We walked throught the village and went to see the local church which is perched on its own little island and reached by a suspended bridge over the river. Only 6 people are allowed on the bridge at any one time and as you cross it sways from side to side.

We were then taken to the local river dam which sounds gross but is actually set in a lovely spot with a lake above set against the mountains and the water then cascades down the dam and onwards towards the river. The area seemed a popular spot with russian tourists - and cows which wander freely around the hillsides before apparently returning home everynight to their owner. Further down the river two smaller rivers join, one is known as the river of death and spews down the valley with a weird orange colour and smell to match, and the other is known as the river of life which is crystal clear and cool and everyone gathers there to drink from their hands.

We made our way back to the guest house as our hosts had been preparing their Sauna known as a “Banya” for us before we had supper. Me and Dave went first and boy was it hot!! its completely different to any sauna we hve been in in the UK and much more pleasant. Dave in true russian style beat himself with a hot birch bundle. Russian banya is slightly different to a normal sauna as wash and rinse inside rather than take a shower afterwards, so we followed suit. It was very hot, so hot that felt hats are worn to protect your head from the heat. We noticed that the thermometer on the wall goes up to 140 degrees C! but we ony managed a measly 70! After a home cooked super we sat outside with some beers and Dave started talking to some young Russian guests who spoke hardly any english. Soon the Russian phrase book and the beers came out and things went a lot more smoothly with the russian boys getting good laughs from our phrasebook which contains romantic phrases to woo Russian ladies!

The next day we set out with Nadia to do some exploring of the local are and we had a driver for the day who drove a pretty questionable bus. We went hiking up onto a trail and stopped to see a waterfall which was pretty small at the time due to lack of rain. We followed the trail and came across a small cave which we climbed up to and watched some semi wild horses grazing in the valley. We then climbed upto to top of the mountain on the trail where we had a spectacular view of the surrounding area and a well earned rest as we were knackered with the temperature at over 30 degrees.

Lunchtime saw us sat down to a lovely picnic lunch at the side of a small river and we drank the water straight from it. The drive back was pretty hairy with some definate off road driving where the dust surrounded us and our bums never touched the seats.

That evening we were off to ride some Altai mountain horses. We met the guide and were each given a horse. The horses are lovely and very well looked after and stockier than i had expected. We rode for an hour on a track that took us right into the Altai countryside through forests and over meadows and even through the river where the horses paused to drop their heads to drink. It was stunning such a good way to see another perspective of the countryside. Another Banya awaited us and was just what we needed to get the dirt out!

The next morning we got ready to depart from the guest house as we were off to the deprture point to start our two day white water rafting experience on the Khatun river. We met with our instructor and the raft which was huge and transferred to the rafting launch point where we were met by some other russian people who were also to be on the raft. We had a safety briefing and off we went! There was ten of us rowing as well as the instructor and our guide Nadia.

We went over some pretty scary rapids and learnt how to perform a “butterfly” for any tourists who called out for one. This is when we all paddle to spin the raft as fast as possible in a circle, all raise our paddles and then slap them down into the water three times....probably looks rather silly but people on the shore seem to enjoy it. We rafted all day, stopping for a picnic lunch on the shore along the way, and covered approximately 40Km on day one. We stopped in the evening at a tourist camp where we stayed in another wooden cabin only this one was more like a garden shed and we froze close to death in the night!

Day two of rafting and we set off from the tourist camp with a different instructor and some new russian passengers and there were eight us rowing in total. We crossed four big rapids and on rapid number one which was the scariest, a photographer was waiting and got some good shots and a video of us crossing the rapid which we bought later on so we can show off to everyone. We pulled into the shore and had a picnic lunch around the camp fire which warmed us all up. We stopped again and this time it was for Nadia to take us up a rather high clliff to see some big caves. Turns out that due to the rain in the night the power was out for the lights in the cave and therefore no one was allowed up there. Nadia wandered off and returned with two torches an announched she was going to take us up there anyway so off we went. The caves were huge and so dark it was quite scary and at one point we had to crawl through on our hands and knees.

After the caves we set off to finish off our rafting with two more rapids to go. We made it over rapid three which was pretty easy and prepared for the final rapid which worried me as Nadia was worried. The rapid turned out to be pretty big with a massive s bend through it and we really had to work hard to get through it with adia shouting “row row row” constantly to stop us stopping and turning over. Anyway, we made it to shore and i was pretty relieved to be on dry land. We spent our final night in the Altai at the same tourist lodge and froze to death again in our “shed”.

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