October 5, 2026
A lyrical digression on the mountainous and volcanic surroundings in the Sayans.
If you take a close look at the photos from our rafting trip down the Sayan Oka River – say, at the waterfall or the spot where we parked up – you may notice a few oddities on the surface of the landscapes that surrounded us there. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just me with this fixation!…
Aaanyway – what am I getting at?…
Just this: We were in a river valley amid a mountain massif. But the river itself is hemmed in between steep banks on both sides that are tall, steep, and unmistakably volcanic in origin:
Eh? How did that happen? Look: on the horizon – mountain peaks; the banks of the river – undeniably volcanic lava rock:
And a little farther off there are pronounced lava slopes with waterfalls, too:
And if you take a look from up above – there they are: lava fields!
But where did all the lava flow out from? Neither Yandex nor Google Maps gives us even an inkling.
Here’s what’s interesting and really rather curious… When we were rafting the upper reaches of the Little Yenisei (Ka-Khem) back in 2017, we saw exactly the same kind of lava formations there! Here’s a photo showing that same characteristic cliff of softer lava rock:
So, it must be that, every now and then, volcanoes in the Sayans blow their tops and flood huge stretches of the mountain valleys with lava, while the valleys themselves look on at such temerity and think “here we go again”.
And the distance from the Ka-Khem volcanisms to the Oka ones = around 250km, which makes them very much related natural volcanic phenomena.
And if anyone doesn’t believe that these are lava outcrops, let them explain to me the nature of these here rocks:
…Or how these landscapes came about:
Ah, but to heck with such mysterious mountain-volcano shadowplay – we were just rafting down the Oka River, after all…
