Things to Do in Altai Mountains

Akkem Lake hike to Mt Belukha base camp

The trail starts through larch forest where your boots crunch on frost-rimed needles. The air smells like cold iron. After five hours the trees drop away. You're walking a moraine ridge above Akkem's milk-turquoise water. Belukha's twin peaks throw a jagged shadow that slides across the surface like a sundial. Marmots whistle warnings from boulder piles. Those piles still hold last winter's blue ice in their shadows.

Katun River white-water rafting

The Katun starts gentle, sliding over river stones that sound like wind chimes underwater. Then it narrows into a canyon where the water turns the color of old bottle glass. Your guide shouts commands in Altai and Russian. You bounce through 'The Washing Machine' rapid. Expect face-fulls of snow-melt that tastes faintly of cedar. Between rapids you drift past petroglyph boulders. Bronze Age hunters chipped caribou that still look like they're running.

Chemal Canyon suspension bridges

The old Soviet suspension bridge wobbles 30 metres above the turquoise gorge. Each footstep sends harmonic shivers through the steel cables. You feel it in your teeth. Downstream, locals have thrown up rickety wooden bridges that smell of tar and pine sap. Crossing feels like auditioning for a circus act while the river roars underneath. Sunset paints the canyon walls peach and violet. You can hear Orthodox bells from the tiny chapel carved into the cliff on the far side.

Ukok Plateau golden eagle festival

September brings Kazakh herders who ride in on stocky horses. Eagles the size of toddlers perch on their forearms. The birds' bronze feathers flash like old coins when they bank over the high-grass plateau. You'll smell wet wool, horse sweat and the sharp metallic tang of raptor. An eagle stoops to snatch a fox fur lure. The crowd exhales in one collective gasp. Between flights, wrestlers grapple in grassy rings. Throat-singers produce notes that seem to come from the earth itself.

Lake Teletskoye smoked omul tasting

At dawn the lake lies mirror-still, breathing cold fog that smells of cedar and something faintly saline. Fisherfolk pull nets weighted with silver omul. They hang the fish in riverside sheds where alder smoke curls out through shingle roofs. After six hours the flesh turns amber and oily. It tastes like Altai's answer to wild salmon bacon. Eat it hot on black bread with raw onion while black-headed gulls wheel overhead, screaming like rusty hinges.

Uyuk village yurt camps smell of horsehair ropes and fermented mare's milk. Stars hang so close you feel you could scoop them.

Chemal's guesthouse balconies over the Katun. Morning mist rises like steam off a giant cup of tea.

Kosh-Agach homestays where the toilet is a plank over the pig pen. The hostess makes doughnuts in sheep fat.

Artybash lakeside cabins, walls still sticky with pine resin. Otters slap the water at dusk.

Tyungur trail hostels expect nine hikers to a room, guitars, and someone always boiling noodles at 2am.

Ulagan Soviet-era hotel, corridor smells of diesel heater. The banya (wild onion) omelettes in the canteen are worth the gloom.