After leaving the camp spot by the river, we headed back towards Gorno to take the road on to Teletskoe. The scenery was really pretty in the sunshine and there are plenty of good places to stop by the rivers and streams.
There are lots of traditional wooden villages on the way through, so plenty of places to overnight if you need them.
The cows owned by people in the villages are ‘free range’ they go off in the morning to graze on what seems to be common land, and then return in the evening …. mooing to be allowed back into their stable. You obviously need to be aware of them as they have right of way!
The hay is stacked for winter feed, but not sure how they keep the weather out as there are often no barns. Maybe once they are covered with frozen snow, they dig it out from underneath to feed the cows in the winter?
Every time you glance out of the car here you see nice scenes, either houses, gardens, old trucks or natural scenery. It would be a nice place to cycle as little traffic and loads of places to stop.
As we got to the lake the weather changed and it started to drizzle with rain. It was still a great view.
As we were admiring the view a couple of cyclists came along. It turned out that they had backpacked through South East Asia and then cycled through China on roughly the same route that we will be driving with the Treadway family. They were Russians returning home to a place near/in Georgia. They made us feel lazy and spoilt travelling by camper!
When talking to them we concluded that as foreigners it was easier to stay in villages. As Russians, they would be looked on with more suspicion if they turned up looking to camp outside someone’s house.
Our campsite for the night was a big bit of open grassy area at Artybash, on the downstream side of the bridge. This is when the lake spills out into the Biya River. It seems OK to free camp all along the rivers in this area.
I was interested to see how people fished the river and a friendly fisherman explained that they use two floats with a trace in between with about 10 flies on. This is cast in across the river and allowed to swing around with the current. The fish caught are all small. Possibly it is very heavily fished through the summer and everything is kept for eating, however small.
That evening a dog arrived and stayed right by the car until morning. It was as though he had come to guard us! When we drove off in the morning he followed us for ages before he gave up. We wanted to stop and take him with us …. of course we couldn’t!
Last we saw of him in the mirrors, was him trotting behind us …… aaaahhhhh!
troopytracks 