Russia Experience Director, Neil McGowan, doesn’t just promote Siberia & Mongolia professionally – whenever he gets the chance he heads off for his own vacation there. This year he even persuaded Svetlana and Ivan to join him, in preference to heading for beach resorts in Europe or the Black Sea… and despite their initial skepticism (and fears of mosquitoes larger than potatoes) they came back raring for more… And with a feast of photos!
The Altai Mountains are Eurasia’s biggest draught-excluder. If it wasn’t for the Altai Mountains, all that cold Arctic air would go whooshing all over the Central Asian steppes, turning the Gobi Desert into a nice green golf-course and making it chilly in Puducherry. Although they never get to any astounding heights, their impressive breadth cuts a huge swathe across Asia – holding the cold air from the Pole static to their North, and thus creating the gigantic chilly area we call Siberia. They’ve also presented a very real historic obstacle to easy travel between the North and South hemispheres of Eurasia, since they offer almost nothing in the nature of a valley or pass through which any kind of road or river could move.
A skilled horseman, on a sure-footed horse, could pick his way from Mongolia through the Altai – on tracks passed down from father to son, and the Imperial Messengers of Chinggiskhan’s day (we mostly spell him “Genghis Khan”) guarded their secret bridleways with the silent care required for such a profitable profession. Even today there is still “no way through” for conventional transport or train-lines – in case you wondered why there’s no obvious rail route from Europe to India, Pakistan or Burma?
But trade is a powerful incentive to invention and exploration, and by the C19th Chinese tea-traders – infuriated by the competition from British plantations in India – began to freight their wares to Imperial Russia by camel-train through the Altai. Unlike fragile porcelain, tea could be packed down tight in saddle-bags – and if they came adrift and fell in a river along the way, they could be dried-out – and the poor tea-drinker would never be any the wiser. The peculiar sight of camel-trains along the Chuisky Tract through Siberia went on until the Trans-Siberian Railway was extended to Beijing in 1898, putting the camel-drivers out of business. Before then the Great Tea Route led across the Mongolian steppes, across the Altai Mountains, and ended in the remote Siberian trading-town of Biiysk, on the River Biy – where the cargo would be reloaded onto barges headed for Russia’s main cities. The abandoned trading-houses of German and Dutch wholesalers in Biiysk are all that remain of this once-lucrative trade nowadays.
Another mountain river – the Katun – joins the Biy to form the Ob River, one of Siberia’s four gigantic rivers. But these days instead of tea-barges, you’ll see a different kind of craft on the Katun – it’s Siberia’s most advanced centre for rafting holidays. In the mountains overlooking the Katun, though, the careful plod of horses through the woods can still be heard – but these days they’re mainly ridden by visitors on holiday. Forget Jilly Cooper – in Altai you own a horse if you can’t afford a Lada. The mountain terrain which long protected the Siberian steppe-dwellers from invaders has helped to save the Altai from the ravages of mass-market tourism… well, so far, at least. It’s now coming slowly, but in a reasonably controlled way – in 2011 they’re opening the first ski-lift (in fact it’s already running) in an attempt to bring year-round tourism income to the area.
However, visitors to Altai still have to be ready for a bit of a plod – the nearest airport, Barnaul, is still five hours by road from even the start of “the good stuff”. For those who can find the time, there are country-style small hotels in the birch-forests along the banks of the Katun – and in summer you’ll have their sandy river-beaches to yourself, along with Siberia’s forgotten secret… blazing hot summers.
[Photos by Neil McGowan ]
You might also enjoy:
- Holidaying in Altai (part two) The second part of an account of holidaying in Altai in Siberia, Russia, savouring the landscape, history and cultural offerings for the modern tourist -...
