After an again disappointing year, we are still very confident and looking forward to next year, we already have enough bookings to do our trips, so people really want to travel, just like us 😀

Altai Republic is at this moment in the top 3 of Russian regions with the least cases of Covid, let us hope it stays this way, and we will all be able to enjoy the beautiful nature and landscapes here.

For now, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy new year, stay healthy and enjoy life as much as possible!

See you in ALTAI!

 

The idea of designing a winter tour to Altai has been in our minds for a long time, and finally we made some progress. Not only we discussed a lot about it, but we actually went out there and a few days ago we returned from a FAM trip to Altai. We explored guest houses, found better ones and finally discovered the ones that fits our travelstyle the best. We visited a lot of locations, known highlights but also unknown places, enjoyed the most interesting sights and engrossing activities available in severe Siberian wintertime.

As a result, we were once again convinced what we knew from the beginning – Altai is wonderful at any time of the year and we want to show it to our guests, since all the opportunities for it are there. Shining snowbanks, fairy forest paths, green ice-free rivers, frozen rivers, transparent ice sculptures of Lake Teletskoye as well as activities like cross-country skiing, husky sledging, snowshoes’ walks, Russian banya and much more. Now we have to make a selection which of this outstanding opportunities will fit in our plans for a new winter tour!

Follow our updates!

We put our new itinerary “Altai: breathtaking valleys & lakes” on the website.

Again a wonderful journey to the most beautiful places of our amazing Altai mountains. Altai is well known for its fresh water reserves, so we thought you would like it to see all this water in the lakes, make great pictures and enjoy the fantastic culture.

Please have a look and use the direct link to read all about it. If you want to join us in 2020 to enjoy spectacular landscapes and wild remote nature in Altai, Siberia⁠, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We are back in Barnaul after a lot of different trips with very nice people.

Guests from Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom joined our trips this year and all were very satisfied. As we expected everybody was really impressed by Altai, the mountains, the nature, the friendly and helpful local people, their culture and of course the weather.

All trips were different, some private trips, a trip from a German company, and some FAM trips to see if we can set up new routes for next year(s).

We even found some time to visit new locations by our crew only in order to get new ideas and inspiration for future.

For the coming years we made plans together with our partners to start more tours. That is why from now on you don’t find our own trips with a fixed date. Of course you can contact us when you want to discuss and book a private tour, we can put together an itinerary specially made for you and fulfilling all your wishes about Altai.

The travel season of 2018 has been a great time for us, we enjoyed it very much to show our guests Altai, and of course we appreciated the feedback and happy faces of our guests when they returned home. Best question we got was:  “Do you also have an after trip service how to get back to the Western lifestyle”.

An absolutely incredible event took place in our June trip! We met a wild bear, and not a common brown bear but almost a ghost – the Sailugem bear.

For no moment we thought it this trip would be different than other trips we do in the park. We got our guides Erkin and Alexander who took us to the nice places and made sure we were safe at all times. To start with we noticed almost 15 birds of prey flying in the sky, including a rare guest in the park, a juvenile Himalayan vulture who had joined the monk vultures. Besides the monk and the bearded vulture this is the third species of vultures we have seen in the park.
But suddenly Erkin and Alexander waved at us, we should be quiet and follow them, downhill, down a very steep hill actually, only much later when we climbed back up we noticed how steep. We expected to see sitting vultures or argali but Alexander whispered it was a bear. When we arrived at a flat rock, we noticed the leg of a big fluffy animal some 60-70 meters below us. Soon it showed itself completely, and to our surprise, it was a real Sailugem bear, blond and very beautiful. It walked around a bit and we were happy we could make some pictures and video as evidence, just to show the world the Sailugem bear really exists. We were really excited and impressed at that moment, and when the bear disappeared, we realised we saw something very very special.

Till today the status and the amount of this kind of bear are not determined. Some scientists consider bears living in the area of Sailugem range as a subspecies of a brown bear, others completely deny its existence, third ones refer it to Tyan-Shan bear. For some period this bear had been considered to be extinct until it was discovered in the wildcams of the park again.

So, now it is up to the scientists to find out if this is a subspecies of the brown bear, or a species of its own. We are very curious of course and hope our pictures will help to determine it.

Last week we returned from our first trip of this year.

Altai is wonderful and impressive as always. We were happy to witness the awakening of nature in Siberia. The first green grass, the first buds on the trees and of course the first flowers. Though higher in the mountains it was still winter and the rivers were covered with ice.

It is a nice time when domestic animals just gave birth and you can see cute babies of sheep, goats, horses, yaks and cows and their tender communication with caring moms. We like to stay for the night at the home of a local woman who has a big livestock and we enjoy watching the domestic animals. Besides, behind the house usually a couple of cranes are walking, this year we even saw them during their very interesting balts and black storks pay a visit early in the morning.

Arriving at the Sailugem park visit center in Chagan Burgazy feels as coming home, our stay in Sailugem national park was again full of meetings with wild animals and birds – ground squirrels, marmots, fox, argali (mountain sheep) and Alpine ibex. This time the argali were really close to us, there were 2 groups – one group mothers with small children and another with young males. As usual there were a lot of birds like kites, eagles, magpie and different kinds of crows.
Because the roads in Sailugem park often go across or along rivers and rivers were still under ice, we got a lot of experience in driving on the ice and even with ice breaking down).

Early May is the time of fascinating blossoming of Ledebur Rhodedondron which paints the Altai mountains in purple and violet colours. Unfortunately, we had to return in the very beginning of the blossoming and saw only the first sole bushes. But even solo bushes were very beautiful and inspiring.

The main aim of our trip was to study possibilities for the building of a bird watching hide. The place chosen by the rangers of Sailugem park proved to be successful for observing kites, vultures and eagles. Early this summer we are going to build the hide and continue observing birds and make pictures of course. In the summer of 2019 we will start organizing phototours together with Bart Fotografie.

Of course we will inform you about our progress of the built and if you want to know more, follow our news and you will stay up to date about this project.

We are happy to announce that our schedule for the trips to Russian Altai 2018 is ready.

As our trips proved to be successful in 2016 and 2017, we will continue travelling these routes in 2018. We just added some small changes and improvements in order to make the trips better.
So, we will open our tourist season with the cultural trip “Altai Heritage”. It goes mostly in the very beginning of the Altai mountains and presents its historical and cultural treasures.

Soon after it, we go deep to the Altai mountains, to the pristine nature and wildlife. Our trip “Altai remarkable landscapes” will give a unique opportunity – to see all the wilderness in a comfortable way. All the nights we spend in wooden houses with real beds.

And the third trip “Explore Altai” is for real adventure lovers. A lot of hiking, camping, extreme off-road driving, delight and flurry of emotions.

Choose the trip which fits you best and come to Altai – one of the most beautiful places in Siberia!

We just returned from our trips 2017 and happy to say that we were very lucky.

Lucky with the weather. We had some rains but they were just in time and didn’t disturb us. For example, the dark clouds in the background together with the sun made the coloured mountains of Kyzyl-Chin even more beautiful and impressive.

We had one night at high altitude when the temperature dropped to -5 °C but the next morning there was an absolutely clear sky and bright sun. So we enjoyed shining eternal snow and ice during our walk to the glacier. The rest of the days we had wonderful and high temperatures.

Lucky with the animals. We met a lot of animals, many of them from very short distance – marmots, hares, corsac foxes, pikas, ground squirrels, sables, argali (mountain sheep) and a lot of different birds.

We camped close to the rock where on the top the nest of a rare bearded vulture was situated and we could enjoy how the mom fed her chick. Often Steppe eagles, black kites, black vultures and hoopoes were our fellow-travelers.

And our major happiness – we checked the wildcams and were the first to see the video of two visits of snow leopards. One of them with a cub. We will share the photos and videos soon.

Lucky with the new experience. We learned to search animals’ marks – we found snow leopards’ fur and scratches, studied pugmarks and smelled the rock where snow leopard and wolverine marked their territory.

We stayed for a night in a forest-free area and made wonderful fire from dung cakes. Our guide gave us a workshop “how to make fire with cow-shit” 

We stalked to argali, using hunters’ methods – hiding in the rocks and moving with a stoop in order not to scare them and come closer.

Lucky with the people. During our trip, we met only friendly and welcoming people. We visited the family of a local farmer in the very remote area and looked how they live nowadays. Following the traditions of hospitality, they didn’t let us go without a small present. We are happy that our tourists were very curious and really interested in nature, culture and history of Altai.