Think of Siberia and you probably picture endless frozen steppe. But the Altai is a beautiful lush mountainous region, and the perfect base for an adventure holidayIt was, to be fair, never much of a contest. In one corner four British tourists, staying in a mountain yurt, and armed only with a family-sized tube of insect-repelling gunk. In the other corner, a billion Siberian mosquitoes. And yet being ravaged by an army of hungry insects was, I felt, a small price to pay for our perfect summer camp, located in a larch forest beneath the snow-covered Altai mountains of southern Russia.Somewhere among the trees our kids ? Tilly, 12, and Ruskin, 10 ? were busy building a den. Above us, a black-winged kite was hovering in an emerald sky; from the ramshackle wooden observation post on a nearby hill you could see across our mountain valley towards Mongolia.Even better, smoke was now pouring out of the camp's wood-burning bathhouse. The outdoor Russian banya was ready! I went in, stripped, and tipped a bucket of cold mountain water over my head. The persistent itching on my elbows gave way to a feeling of mild bliss. Even the prospect of another night in my badly sagging yurt-bed didn't seem too awful.It was a conversation three years ago in a bar that had first prompted my interest in Altai, a remote region of southern Siberia.Meeting a British photographer who had traversed the entire Russian Federation, I had asked him which bit he liked best. His unhesitating reply: "Altai." Russia's Altai republic is at the vertiginous intersection of Mongolia, Kazakhstan and China, on the fringes of central Asia, more than 3,000km from MoscowThe region is already a popular destination for affluent holidaying Siberians. But it is little known among Brits, despite the fact it makes a perfectly feasible mid-way stop-off on the trans-Siberian railway. More appealing than Vladivostok, Altai is also a perfect base for an adventure holiday, with horse-riding, trekking, and glacier-climbing. And by Russian standards, Altai is beautifully unspoiled.Its lush alpine valleys give way ? the closer you get to the Mongolian border ? to eerie semi-desert and desolate frontier towns where goats sit next to statues of Lenin ? a surreal picture.Everywhere there are unmistakable signs of early human habitation.Nomadic Scythian tribes lived here for dozens of centuries, well before the Bolsheviks turned up, leaving behind distinctive stone burial mounds in a landscape of ice and rock. They also recorded themselves as kameny baba or stone grandfathers ? tall, haunting tombstones incised with strange Turkic faces.Stopping on the M52, Altai's main highway, we went to inspect a kameny baba abandoned in a wide valley. Giant scarlet-winged crickets leapt in the air, sounding like deranged football rattles; the pasture all around us was a buzzing insect carpet; several tumuli were nearby. The tombstone had stylised slanting eyes and a large nose. (Our one was lacking the Terry Thomas moustache we'd seen previously in kameny baba on display in museums in the Siberian cities of Omsk and Tomsk.)Further along the Chuysky highway, our guide Sergey invited us to scramble up a steep scree-covered hill. Pulling back weeds, the kids found a deer petroglyph engraved in the rock. Further up there were more prehistoric carvings: some done using a blunt chisel, others worked more elaborately in florid graffito. There were deer, ibex, and wild boar, all instantly recognisable and brought to life out of the ancient stone.(One recent visitor had added a yin yang sign.) Sergey assured us the petroglyphs were genuine, with thousands of other examples on display in a nearby museum site. We also discovered an early iron smelter used over a thousand years ago; Ruskin stashed several eighth-century ingots and a large animal tooth in his rucksack.Distances in Siberia are always large, and involve long drives under a sometimes drizzly, sometimes epic, sky. From Novosibirsk, Siberia's capital and Russia's third largest city, it takes 10 hours to drive to Altai's northern tip and the republic's administrative centre Gorno-Altaisk.From here, we needed another day to reach our camp, some 14km from the town of Aktash across a meandering valley track. There isn't much public transport in Altai and a four-wheel drive is essential if you want to get near (or even ascend) Altai's stunning mountains.After a nippy night in our yurt, we set off for Aktru, a snow-covered 4,000m peak. The drive was spectacular: across a rickety wooden bridge into conifer forests filled with dazzling alpine flowers. Altai is home to 1,270 plant species as well as the endangered snow leopard and 35 types of eagle. Phoebe, my partner, spotted gentians, clustered bellflowers, bedstraw and meadowsweet. There were also yellow rock roses, lots of vetch, and a violently perfumed green shrub we identified ? almost certainly wrongly ? as tansy.Leaving our jeep near a river, we went for a sweaty hike in the foothills. On one side was Aktru, rising from a snowy ridge of glaciers, on the other a languid cycle of summer lagoons and mini-lakes. There was also an abandoned kolkhoz, or Soviet collective farm. It was clear that nobody had really worked the land here since the collapse of communism. Until relatively recently, Altai had been in a desperately poor situation; now, however, tourism is helping to revive the local economy. A group of horses were cooling themselves in a pool. Few other hikers were about. On the way back Ruskin and I stopped for a dip in a fast-flowing turquoise stream. Altai's summer is brief but hot; winters are long, and freezing. The mountains are increasingly attractive to snowboarders and it is possible to ski in Altai right up until May, when the snow finally melts. The best months are July, August and September.Back at our cosy yurt, the camp's owner Slava Toktoshev explained how he has been trying to attract more tourists to the area and to revive Altai's shamanic traditions. He had plans to build a permanent wooden yurt on his 34-hectare site. I asked whether the water from our local camp-stream was safe to drink. "Oh yes," he assured me. "My grandmother used to take it and said it had healing powers." Evidently they didn't work on me: after two days of drinking the mountain water, I felt strange pains in my stomach, subsequently cured using anti-microbial tablets.Altai's indigenous tribes make up about 30% of the republic's population, with the rest Russians, as well as Muslim Kazakhs and Tuvans from the next-door republic. Slava is the unofficial leader of the tiny Telingiti tribe, made up of about 10,000 people from a group of local villages. The Russian government had failed to support the tribe financially, despite the fact they were officially endangered, he complained. The next day we went to take a look at a shamanic stone circle that Slava had recently renovated. The circle is on the outskirts of Kosh-Agash, a windswept town with a distinctively end of the world feel. What I took to be the circle's sacrificial altar was nothing of the kind, Slava explained later, though the Telingiti did meet here three times a year for a boozy knees up, he added.Next to the roadside was an imposing heap of stones. According to local legend, Genghis Khan Khan's soldiers would deposit a stone by the side of the road every time they went off on a campaign. Each man who came back would pick up his small boulder ? a neat way of calculating how many of Genghis's warriors had perished in battle. In Kosh Agash we found cows grazing in the road next to a Kazakh mosque, as well as a surprisingly good bakery and a cafe selling tasty lamb kebabs. On the edge of town residents had built a small enclosure to protect Kosh Agash's last tree ? a pine. Mongolia shimmered in the near-distance; from here on there is merely treeless steppe and a dodgy road leading directly to Ulan Bator, Mongolia's capital, some 450km away.Most Russians don't get as far as Kosh Agash, preferring instead to camp out in Altai's greener northern belt. The area next to the Katun River offers numerous adventure possibilities, including rafting, hiking and even whizzing across a river gorge in a tarzan-harness.Siberia is also a major centre for new age believers and others seeking shamanic enlightenment. (It was the Russian painter and mystical adventurer Nicholas Roerich who first made a pilgrimage to Siberia's highest mountain, the 4,500m Mount Belukha. Ever since other travellers have been following in his wake.)Shifting to a more salubrious log cabin, I took the kids on an afternoon rafting trip from the town of Chemal. In theory, the experience was similar to rafting anywhere else in the world ? an inflatable boat, rapids, and an instant sense of corps d'esprit with your drenched co-paddlers. In practice, however, it quickly become obvious that this would be a Russian experience after all. Before getting on the boat Pyotr and Kyrill (who came from the Urals city of Perm) cracked open a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. While Pyotr and Kyrill were still able to paddle, their mate was so drunk he could merely jab at the water feebly. By the second rapid, I too was drinking vodka, remembering to do it Russian style, which means swigging it all back in one gulp. This provoked general hilarity. Most of my fellow-rafters had served in the Russian army, it turned out: even when befuddled they were able to respond to the barked command "Xhod" (Move!) from our guide Roman. Amazingly, we didn't sink.The kids also tried out an extreme adventure park, NAME? WHERE? clambering 10 metres off the ground along rope ladders and chain walkways. This was great ? until Ruskin got stuck. Eventually returning to ground level via a tarzan slide he turned his fury on Dad. "'m going to kill you," he told me fondly.Later, we joined hundreds of Russian tourists making a pilgrimage to a small chapel on an island in the Katun river, accessed via a wobbly footbridge. The chapel enjoys its own microclimate: among the candles and icons it felt remarkably warm. From here we walked along a muddy track to the local hydro-electric station. Numerous stall-holders were selling new age souvenirs. There were CDs of Siberian chill out music, zithers, and fragrant tea made from Altai shrubs. Also on sale were Siberian necklaces decorated with fake petroglyphs. At the height of the season, the scrum reaches Glastonbury-like proportions, locals suggested.Back at our cabin, the kids donned their costumes and swam over to an uninhabited island, later nicknamed (in impeccable middle-class style) Thyme island. Our wooden cabin looked directly onto the Katun river. There was a small, sandy beach amid a forest of towering mature pine trees. Ruskin made himself a bow and arrow using his pen-knife and some rubber bands I scored from a hardware shop down the road. The only drawback was the food: there wasn't a restaurant at our base, Cedar Island, and the nearest cafe, 2km away, served up micro-waved pelmeni, and even on a good day these meaty dumplings are almost inedible. Instead we settled for a picnic of cheese and yoghurt, and a couple of Russian beers. In reality, though, we had nothing to complain about. We had visited one of the world's last great wildernesses. We had come face to face with pre-history. We had got over our desire to stay in a yurt. And, despite a few scabs, we had beaten the mosquitoes.RussiaAdventure travelLuke Hardingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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