Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I reached camp at one in the morning and found Ray and Brendan eating their
fifth meal of mutton stew for the day. I was exhausted but also deliriously happy. I
told them of my day's adventure and they seemed relieved that I'd made it back. I
was glad too.
We broke camp the next morning and walked down the valley to find Tim. The
trail became indistinct, and we split up to try and find a way through. Brendan, a
little short-sighted, thought he saw Ray in front of him with his back turned and
sneaked up to give him a surprise. He stopped only a few metres short, though,
looked again, and slunk back, terrified. He'd been about to land a walloping whack
on the shoulder of a big brown bear!
We found Tim collecting firewood and he led us back to an empty cabin near
where he'd been camping. Compared to the scant shelter of our tent, this was a
veritable mansion! There was a two-room hut - slightly musty and rat infested, but
fantastic nonetheless - that became our home, a traditional log and bark
yurt
of the
semi-nomadic Altai people, a smelly pit toilet and best of all, a log
banya
.
Tim had the furnace heated and the water barrel filled. We dumped our packs
and gladly jumped in to steam the dirt from our bodies. It was fifty metres to the
river on a rocky, slippery path strewn with tree roots, and we raced there and back
a couple of times, in between bursts of almost unbearably hot steam, to dive in-
to the freezing alpine torrent. On the way back after our second exhilarating dip,
however, Brendan slipped and stepped heavily on a sharp rock. He gashed the sole
of his left foot badly, and after we'd bandaged it up, he decided that he'd best not
try to walk on it for a while. We moved into the hut and waited another two days
while it healed.
After Brendan recovered, we walked south-east for a few rainy days, up the
banks of the gushing River Shavla until we reached Lake Shavlinskoye. It was a
pristine, jade-coloured alpine lake set like glass in the bottom of what was almost
a deep crater surrounded by snowy peaks and alpine mountains. On the far side,
vertical cliffs rose straight from the water, towering hundreds of metres into the air.
Scattered about we found clusters of age-old shamanic totem poles. Wood-
carvings of long, hideous faces stared menacingly from crooked poles, and the oc-
casional tree trunk was carved with the dancing face of a forest sprite. Some of the
carvings were obviously new, others had been vandalised and others again were
strewn with the drying underwear of a party of Russian walkers. But the majority
of the figures were clearly hundreds of years old, remnants of an otherwise forgot-
