Our Journey was Amazing

Наше путешествие было восхитительно
report on the reindeer project trip to buy three new breeding deer.

Our journey was amazing. It was very difficult to organize and happened later than planned.

In the first days of August we left for Tofalaria, which place can only be reached by helicopter. First we had walked through to the area, where gold is mined, and from there we were able to take a, very expensive, flight which was delivering benzine. We boarded the machine early one morning but left only in the morning of the next day! After we left the helicopter we had a remote trek to our friends’ village. The weather was warm and we planned to walk for two days. However, it came about that although we were lucky at the first fords, at the later river crossings we were not able to cross for a long time. The currents were strong and all that turned up was risky and dangerous.

Having got across the rivers we drove for two days to arrive at our friends place - where they had waited for us.

We gathered together those of us who were to set out for Tuva. With us were three hunters and two young boys (7 and 12 years), our travel and pack reindeer. We rode and walked across the Taiga for a week and along the way our hunters seized Kabary – a small deer with a loud call – so that we had meat and not only conserves. And we caught fish in the mountain streams.

When we reached the mountain crossing into Tuva the weather was dreadful and we were wet through all of the time. Although this was summer we were on the snow line. None of us had been this far before. It became clear that we were a little lost, of course!!!

 

Generally we spent a further week in the mountains and did not find our Tuvan friends who were coming from their direction to meet us. By this time our nourishment products were low. There were no animals for the hunters and we knew not to fish in the Tuvan streams. At the conclusion of our mountain crossing we had only boiled peas and tea without sugar!!!

It turned out that because we were so delayed our Tuvan friends with their deer had moved on, thinking that we had already passed through and gone on to our meeting station. They hoped to meet us halfway. In the end we all were lucky and we met each other.

The three reindeer that the Tuvan herders had brought for us, and that we planned to buy to expand the small Tofalarian herd, were young and beautiful.

 

No time to lose, the next day our Tofa friends set out for home with the deer to travel back to their village. We travelled for more two days with the Tuvan herdsmen back to their base in the village of Akcyk. Here we could complete the reindeer administration needs. From there were lucky to get a helicopter lift to Kizil.

From Kizil we drove to Abakan and from Abakan to the station at Xakacii. Finally, after a long railway journey, the second stop was our return to Irkutsk.