May 15 Kamlak to Inegen

5 days later and here we are catching up with the blog. We have a couple of good excuses: too many beautiful places to visit and we spent a day with no access to internet/phone.

We started our day with a short walk along the Sema river just next to our bungalow in Kamlak. We met a local angler with his super friendly dog and we were surprised how much informed he was about Argentina and English football teams. Interestingly enough, later that day we met a lady in a canteen in the middle of nowhere (Shebalino village) who also knew about Argentina and Argentinian meat (apparently, they had a delivery of meat from Argentina not long time ago and quite liked it).

Then we drove from Kamlak to Inegen through the Seminsky and Chike-Taman passes. The road was accompanied with Anna' exclamations: "I can't believe I'm in Russia!". Despite the weather, the views were stunning. As you can see from the pictures, the weather had turned cold and we got some snow blizzards on the way, so we missed some apparently picturesque views. We are glad we will drive this road back in June in hope for better visibility.

On the road, we had some close encounters with birds and cows that don't check before crossing the road. During our lunch break we got to see another suslik (ground squirrel), at this point they were still a novelty; now we've already seen dozens of them and can't be bothered anymore.

We also drove into a local village called Onguday. And this is where it seemed even more not Russia: all people looked Mongolian. We will see how it compares to Mongolia a couple of weeks later.

When we were almost in Inegen, we got a bit worried when we found out that the bridge over the Katun river the satnav was directing us to didn't exist anymore. Fortunately, Anna looked up another satnav application and found that a new bridge had been build a few kilometers up the river. After crossing the river, our emotions were not over yet as the final part of the road to our accommodation was narrow, steep and with a cliff on the side. When we finally made it, we were very happy to find ourselves in a very nice bungalow by the Katun river with amazing views. It was quite chilly outside, but very comfortable inside.