Russia: the Altai

We had about 4 days to cover the 1000 km form the Kazakh to the Mongolian border due to Rachael’s visa expiry date.

From the border suddenly the Kazakh steppe changed into fully tended wheat fields as long as the eye could look across the Siberian plains...

The first night several 100 km South of Barnaul, however, was a baptism by fire to the Siberian most frequent inhabitants. Our night spot was off the road in some grassy woodland landscape in the middle of a nice flowery meadow… Well you should have heard Rach when she tried to go to the toilet outside… sounded like tripod on a 5 day detox…. Howls out of the grass as the hordes of hummingbird sized mosquitoes were attacking bare flesh…

That experience needed an appropriate answer….with a liter can of 7 grade beer… Very convenient sizes…we learned though that alcohol is way more expensive in Rusisa than in the Stan’s… must have increased taxes for health reasons…J

We made our way quick to Barnaul a Siberian city where the old Russia and the new rich, fancy developments co exist and create a special feeling of cultural ambivalence….

We had a nice Solyanka and bifstek lunch as in the old days… and headed towards the Altai mountains…

It seemed that we were heading there with thousands of Russians, very busy traffic. We understood why, along one of the nice rivers everyone was pitching tents and camping…it was a long weekend. We eventually found a nice spot too (without bugs) and had a nice dinnerwith the favorite 9 grade beer… very effective after a long day of driving….

Later we heard some concert/dj music from across the river and after looking at the map we were just about 2-3 km away from a bridge… we decided to have a night out…at least checking out what was going on there.

Wow who would have thought that…where we were expecting to find just some peasants in the Russian Altai it was holiday season big party time all over. We ended up in a foam party with a group of DJ’s playng, some lightly dressed dances on stage and a couple hundred young Russians dancing away and having fun… Rach was seriously disappointed though as Vodka shots were not available…. Again I am sure they cut that out for good reasons here…;-)

Continuing for a few more hundred kilometers the crowds are significantly smaller and the villages become more like expected…very simple wood shacks, however landscape still is beautiful and we found a paradisic campspot across a small river….

Driving on we get into the high Altai with snow capped peaks… Roads have been amazing here in Russia, in not in perfect condition, they are working on it… maybe Putin creates a lot of jobs that way making voters happy…

Maybe 70 km from the Mongolian border the landscape changed abruptly… from the green valleys we entered a dry high altitude plain, however depite the lack of vegetation, fauna was abundant especially of the biting types….

The border x-ing was pretty uneventful, done in a few hours and as soon as you enter Mongolia…you are on a dirt track….