I woke up early to a bright sunny day and was too excited to stay in bed, the rest was still asleep so I snuck out to see what the surroundings were like. The evening before when we arrived was pitch dark ;)
The tiny village was located on the edge of a gorge through which the river runs and to the other side is a big huge glacier burn. While I sit writing in my diary the locals appear with sheep,goats and some cows to be driven to the grazing grounds.Slowly everyone wakes up and we are spoiled with a fantastic breakfast and then it is time to move on to our next and final destination.
On the way we stop to look at some pteroglyphs which stem from the stone age all the way to the Scytian times ...there are even a few contemporary ones left by tourists ;D
The Altai region is huuuuuge and driving through it makes you feel pretty insignificant, fantastic vistas slide by while our driver rattles on about all kinds of things concerning this region. It is very clear he dearly loves this place.
The drive is on a regular road untill right after we have registred for our visitors pass into the steppe region we will be visiting, from then on the road is a trail through the steppes. We bounce along and meet our host in a village from where she will ride ahead of us in an antique Lada to show the way to the yurt. Normally there is hardly any rain in the region and we would cross the river by driving through it but this year there have been record breaking downpours so we need to cross via the bridge which is old and barely wide enough for a car to pass.
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| Location on the map |
