Hi folks!

Since my tales from the Altai side are many and lengthy, today – an interlude in-between two of them for a breath of fresh air. Not that you can get air (or river water) fresher than that in Altai, but, I digress…

And so, just the other day, I finally managed to visit the RKK Energiya Museum in the town small city of Korolyóv (often spelled Korolev) just outside Moscow. The museum is dedicated to both the company’s own story and the history of the Soviet and Russian rocket-and-space industry as a whole. My impressions? Absolutely amazing! And with all due respect to the Museum of Cosmonautics, this place is better!

This is the very spot where all these technologies were invented and assembled, and – for those that returned from space – brought back to again. That’s what makes this place truly unique: the spacecraft you see here were typically produced in just two or three identical “copies”. One would fly into space, while the others stayed on Earth. So even if these specific pieces never made it to orbit, everything here is original – not mock-ups.

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And here we are again – back in the Altai Mountains for our second day of rafting down the Katun.

While the first day was pretty calm (therefore an excellent warm-up day for the rafting-newbies among us), on this day we hit the Katun’s first real rapids. They’re called Shyokki – the “Cheeks” because… apparently the “river is squeezed here by sheer cliffs”. I never fully understood that, but whatever; the main thing – they’re rapids (several of them), and look good ) ->

These are still the very upper reaches of the Katun, but the river’s already quite fast-flowing (and still milky) ->

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So, why the Katun? Why do I raft down it so often?…

Well, it’s simply the most interesting river you can raft down as a non-professional – as long as you’re guided by experienced pros (and ours weren’t just pros – they were Russian rafting champions: how about that?!). But, what do I mean by “interesting”?…

First, the sheer force of the water here is unusual, the rapids and riffles are fantastic, and the flow-waves you encounter here sometimes reach what seemed to us like 2–3 meters high!

Second, the river is relatively safe. There are no whirlpools where you can get spun around forever and all the rapids are passable. There aren’t any dangerous rocks you could get pinned against forever, and no other surprises either. Well, unless you’re in the very upper reaches, where you might end up under a tree hanging over the water; and one of the lower rapids in high water becomes a pretty scary – and dangerous – obstacle. But we’ll get to that…

Third, it’s one of the longest rivers there is for truly active whitewater rafting: from the upper reaches of the Katun all the way down to its lowest rapids you can paddle unhindered (without having to portage around dams or weirs) for more than 500 kilometers. Five hundred-plus kilometers of fast-flowing water – woah! And the total drop in elevation is over a kilometer. Oh my gradient!

So, for me, the Katun is the most… luxurious river I’ve ever rafted. Some real experts even told us that the best rivers for commercial rafting are the Katun, the Zambezi (I can confirm that: it looked real fierce from above), the Colorado, and Chile’s BioBio.

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Having completed the hiking leg of our summer vacation, we really wanted to take a last good look at the mountain scenery from a bit higher up – like, for example, from a helicopter window. But since we couldn’t check out everything that way, we instead had our drone take flight for a look around from up there. And the results are great! But of course they were; drone-pilot-extraordinaire DZ was at the controls! ->

Buttes at the crests of ridges. By the way, you can roughly see the direction of our route here: along (or near) the ridges. And notice how the terrain is quite gentle here – very few steep ups and downs ->

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A walk through the Yarlu River valley is an absolute must if you ever find yourself at Lake Akkem. The valley is unique in two ways: first, there’s some kind of crazy underground magnetism/energy here (which I mentioned in yesterday’s post), which makes you feel just great. Second, the colors of the mountains here are sublimely beautiful – just fantastic:

The valley is approximately three kilometers (along the trail) from the Akkem River and Lake Akkem – here:

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Having arrived at the start-point of our hiking-rafting adventure it was time we got this show on the road path. The mission for the day: climb up to the ridge we’ll be hiking along the top of. The weather was perfect, which meant the views up top promised to be simply magical…

No need to hurry – the distance this day was pretty short, so we had a leisurely breakfast. Then we crossed the bridge over the Akkem and set off on the hiking part of our route.

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All right folks – here we go: finally, my series of posts on our Altai summer vacation begins!…

Now, as everyone knows only too well, backpacking across mountains and valleys is always a good idea. But to do so far away from civilization over five days (or even a week or two) isn’t just good, it’s exceedingly good – especially if the route is surrounded by OMG-beautiful views and assorted unusualnesses. I once even compiled a short list of such amazing best-in-the-world mountain-and-valley treks – here. Well that list needs a +1 for sure – and it’s well overdue: the tracks/paths across the Altai Mountains…

I’ve hiked around here on two routes: between Tyungur village and Akkem Lake (in 2016), and between Belyashi and the same Akkem Lake along the Argut river  (in the summer of covid-stricken 2020). The latter was wonderful; but since it rained for several days in 2016 and we didn’t get to see any beautiful views on that route whatsoever, we decided to do a second pass this year – and we don’t regret it at all!…

You can get to Akkem Lake via different routes; we chose not the shortest but probably the most contemplative (in good weather). In total we walked around 45km, but with ups and downs of more than two thousand meters. We completed it in go-slow mode over four days. It’s generally not the most difficult of treks, but office plankton does need to put in at least some pre-training beforehand.

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Hi folks!

Krasnoyarsk Krai industrial-site tour series of posts: done.

Coming up – my Altai summer vacation series of posts…

But in-between – here’s a long post that’s kept being put on the back-burner for this (perhaps its length) or that (I’m always so busy?!) reason, the title to which is introductorily self-explanatory.

First – a fuller explanation…

While waiting for our luggage at La Paz Airport (Bolivia) at the end of our January (2025) trip around Latin America, one of my fellow travelers suggested I share my experiences of the most unusual hotels and lodgings I’ve stayed overnight in. And yes – “lodgings” (mesta obitaniya in Russian) is often the right word here, for many of the places I’ve stayed overnight can hardly be called hotels: some rather strange and hard-to-reach spots simply defy traditional categorization.

And I thought – what a great idea! Although I’ve long lost track of quite how many such (unusual, etc.) lodgings I’ve stayed at down the years, memory vividly brings back the ones that are impossible to forget – for all kinds of reasons: unusual decor, stunning surroundings, remoteness, etc. But if the old memory does need a helping hand – handily, I’ve been taking notes on my overnight stays on my blog – since… let me see now… yes – since 2010!…

I’ll immediately set aside for now such overnight stays as those in Japanese onsens and African lodges, and at camping-glamping sites and guest houses in mountains, forests, and tundra. Historically interesting hotels and tropical paradises are also out (also for now) – even though some of those can be quite extraordinary too. Why? Well, such categories are indeed unusual for visitors to such places/lodgings, but they’re abundant enough to be interesting only as a “type of tourist accommodation” rather than in terms of uniqueness or memorability.

Anyway, enough chit-chat – time for some pretty intro-pics. This one’s from Singapore – the view from one of the many hotels I’ve stayed at overlooking Marina Bay ->

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Elephant in the room alert!…

Did you notice how at the Nazarovsky open-pit mine we saw zero… coal? Like, we visited this massive coal-mining operation, but didn’t see a single chunk of the black stuff?! What?!

Here’s the deal. The insanely massive mechanism that moves sandy rock from one spot to another was the main attraction – by far. So much so that that’s where all our tour time went – gawping at it, mouths agape! But not to worry, for next up was another open-pit mine – Beryozovsky – where we finally got up close and personal with actual coal ->

The mining here works a bit differently because the layer of non-coal-containing rock (called “overburden”) is thinner – plus there’s way more coal: the coal seam here is up to 60 meters thick:

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Still back in July, still back in Krasnoyarsk Krai, next up on our tour of our dear heavy-industrial customers’ operations (after the Vostochny Gold Mine, the Boguchany Aluminum Smelting Plant, and the Boguchany Dam) – another two industrial giants – the Nazárovsky and Beryózovsky coal mines, which both belong to Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK). And just like at the other industrial facilities in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the way we were welcomed was as if we were royalty!

// I say royalty – but only… tee-totaling royalty! At every industrial site in Russia that I’ve visited over the past 10–15 years, a no-alcohol rule is strictly enforced – even for visitors. At every entrance (and exit (!)), employees/ workers/ miners all take a breathalyzer test; if the result‘s positive – immediate dismissal. Apparently, way back when this rule first came in (some time in last century), there was initial resistance: “Come on, how can we work without Alexey? He’s a drunkard, sure – but he’s still a master of his trade”. But no: other – sober – Alexeys were found to replace drunk Alexeys. So yes, back to our welcome: it was grand, but there was nothing stronger than fruit juice on the tables!

But enough of the industrial-site sobriety – let me show you the photos. They’re mixed in from both mines. Just to whet your appetite…

Photo 1, Nazarovsky:

Photo 2, Beryozovsky:

Here we go!…

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