Tag Archives: oka

The Sayan Oka River‘s raftable stretch is roughly 280 kilometers long! Yes – that’s one heck of a lot of jaw-dropping views and meditative-&-briefly-adrenalized R&R; there’s fishing too. Most of it is perfectly harmless fast-flowing water, interrupted only once (well, twice, but in the same place) by rapids; the rest is up to you…

You can get around the standing waves and “holes” in the riffles by staying away from the main current and hugging the bank on the right or left (if you don’t feel like taking a dip). But we preferred the “water park”, of course! ->

Read on…

My tales about our 10-day hike along the Karavshin mountain trail have all been shipped, but, as they say, “not so fast”… For next up was part-two of our action-packed summer vacation, which saw us teleported northeast from Kyrgyzstan’s Pamir-Alay to the Sayan Mountains. Plan: rafting down the Oka River. Result (spoiler): it was brief but unforgettable!…

Technical details will come later; for now, as per tradition, teaser pics to give a sense of the scale involved, to roughly map out the directions, and to give you an idea of what the scenery looks like [in good weather] // and that’s important.

Surprise! The banks along the river are all made of volcanic rock! Brief history: an old mountain valley was flooded by lava flows from a newly emerged volcano: the lava flowed down the mountain valleys and then solidified, and later water and nature carved out new riverbeds – carving out canyons like these. The views left and right are just mind-blowing!

The Oka River at first carried us along at 10–14km/h – that’s how fast the current runs in its upper reaches.

Oh, the views!

Waterfalls cascading down the same volcanic cliffs:

Of course, we headed on over – and under!

This is where our CTO, A.I., went and… left his sunglasses behind:

This all went on in the mostly Buddhist Republic of Buryatia. Hence the mantra Om mani padme hum appears on mountains ->

The campsites along the Oka are pretty decent, but I I’ll save the details for a little later…

Drone pics of the Sayan landscapes:

A rushing tributary – where it meets the Oka there’s a good campsite:

The river’s main channel:

Views from the water:

Lunch break :)

And “back to work” again :)

But we didn’t come here just for the contemplative views; we came for something else that’s wholly wholesome for hardworking office plankton in need of some proper recuperative time-off: adrenaline! – the kind that courses through the veins from activities like this! ->

More on both contemplation and adrenalization in the Sayans coming right up!…

The best photos from our Sayan rafting trip are here.

Ladies and gents, boys and girls – greetings!

It’s been a while. But of course it has: there was a vacation-heavy summer to get through! And now, finally, the time has come to begin my traditional tales from the summer-holiday side…

This year I’ll be splitting these write-ups into two segments: the first – all about our mountain trekking adventures; the second – all about our mountain-river rafting escapades. But first – also as per tradition – overview intro-post: an overview of what we did, and what’s coming up in both photos and texts…

First we hiked the Karavshin route in Kyrgyzstan, then air-teleported ourselves over to the Sayan Mountains (Russia) and rafted down the Oka River there (not to be confused with the more well-known Oka River not that far from Moscow – literally five thousand kilometers to the west:).

So how was it? In a word: awesome!

Karavshin = 10 days on foot, 115 kilometers covered, total ascent and descent = 7.5km:  the most physically punishing trek I’ve ever done. Even Kamchatka-2015 (315km trekking up and down volcanoes) was easier. All the same – it was worth every step!

The views on show there are downright magical:

The (southern Siberian) Oka River is a real beauty too…

Read on…