Alex and Christina's honey moon
Russia - Siberia - The Altay
24th August 2004 to 12th
September 2004
Day 15: We were
tempted to hike along the river Chulcha to the Achilman waterfall (4-5 km),
but decided that the rain made it too dangerous. We would have needed a rope
to complete the hike across the wet rocks and boulders.
The stone mushrooms on 08/09/04
Instead, we visited the stone
“mushrooms” – Karasu, which took us about 3 hrs. Although we did not see any, we
were told there was a chance to see the Altaian snowcock, the Siberian ibex, the
brown bear, the musk deer and the pika. We kept our eyes peeled, but they stayed
out of sight. By the time we got to the mushrooms, the rain had stopped. We
couldn’t believe what we were looking at there. They were the craziest thing
ever. Huge rocks, some of which must have weighed tonnes, were perched on top of
columns of sand, gravel and mud. The action of rain and weather has eroded the
moraine left by the glacier that carved out the river gorge. The boulders
protect the moraine directly under them and so these amazing pillars are left.
On the way back we visited the
aile that belonged to the man who had rowed us across the river. His wife
offered us a traditional ‘tea’ (more of a soup really) made from barley and gave
us a drink made from soured milk. It was a drink which visitors were always
given on their first visit to an Altaian home. They also used it to make small
cheeses that they hung from the ceiling. The cooking fire in the middle of the
room sent most of it smoke through a small hole in the centre of the roof, the
stray wisps flavoured the cheeses hanging on their strings like collections of
conkers.
Our
camp was on the opposite bank from the stone mushrooms and the aile. We crossed
in the morning by going to a tall post stuck in the ground and shouting and
whistling at the aile on the other bank. A man came out and waved at us, then
came to the river and rowed across to pick us up in an aluminium ex-army boat.
After our visit to his aile on
our way home, there was some ‘negotiation’ between Nikolai and his wife. The man
came along to row us back across the river, his wife collected a couple of
friends and joined us in the boat wearing a big smile and set off in the
direction of the nearest town with shops as soon as we got to the other bank.
While
everyone else had been up a mountain, Rebecca and Alison remained at the camp
with Elena and Jenia. They played in the sand on the river bank. They spent a
long time building a system of tunnels and corridors they decided was a house
for a mouse, they finally stood back, hopeful that a mouse would take up
residence in their ‘Mouse House’. The afternoon was a rest period and after
lunch we lazed near the fire. Suddenly a herd of goats that had been wandering
towards us started rummaging through the nearby bushes where our ‘kitchen’ had
been set up. Nickolai and Elana jumped up and ran to chase them away from our
supplies. Some fair amount of shooing later, Nickolai returned and declared that
“We have defended kitchen from impudent goats”.
Jenia, a bit of
a pyromaniac, amused himself all day by combing the river bank looking for
firewood. Where you or I would have been happy with some branches, small limbs
and jetsam from the river, Jenia spent his time looking for whole trees and
limbs as big as himself. He tied a rope around them, hitched it to the back of
the van and dragged them back to camp. We were pleased for him that he was
satisfying his need to burn something big, he had burnt the log we had been
sitting on around the fire the night before. He had lumbago, which caused him to
sit at an angle and look sideways along the road when he drove.
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