The whole Altai up to the border with Mongolia. Active tour

1 Group breakfasts take place at the campsite. If desired, you can choose a vegetarian type of food. Standard breakfast items are porridge, granola, eggs (omelet, glaze), sliced (cheese, sausage, vegetables, fruits), boiled sausages, pancakes, cheesecakes, croutons, tea, coffee, water, milk, yogurt. The names change depending on the camp sites where the group is located on each specific day of the tour. 

2 Lunches take place between excursions. The group stops at a cafe. The average cost of a complex meal (900-1700 rubles). During hikes, instead of lunch, you will be given a lunch box (dry ration) for meals in the mountains. 

3 Dinners take place at the campsite. As a rule, this is a salad + a second course, tea/coffee, sweet. If desired, you can choose a vegetarian type of food.

1) Practical Throughout the trip, you will have the opportunity to visit grocery and hardware stores, pharmacies. The guide will warn you in advance about the days when this opportunity disappears.

2) Almost all stores and many cafes have the option to pay with a bank card. But, nevertheless, cash is still needed in Altai, preferably in small bills.

3) Almost all along the route, you will have the opportunity to withdraw funds from the Sberbank ATM, which is available in all major villages.

1 Campsite depends on the date of the trip. If accommodation at a particular campsite is essential for you, then it is possible to coordinate this with the organizers in advance. 

2 You will be stationed at 4 different bases in different regions of Altai. 

Possible options are stated in this tour: 

• Base No. 1: "Territory of happiness" - Standard Tariff 
• Base No. 2: "Nomad" / "Shawlo" / "Podgornaya" / "Altai Village" - Standard Tariff 
• Base No. 3: "Stone mushrooms" - The "Basic" Tariff 
• Base No. 4: Artybash - Standard Tariff 
• Base No. 5: Igman - Standard Tariff 

3 Accommodation - Standard rate - double occupancy, shower and toilet in the room. Three or four beds are available on request. Single occupancy is possible for an additional fee. All rooms are booked with separate beds, if possible, you will be provided with a double bed. The "Basic" tariff is a double village or a wooden house for 2-3-4 people, facilities on site, there is a sauna. 

4 All the camp sites for the route are located in picturesque places on the banks of rivers, in the forest, near the mountain. The shower and toilet will be in the room throughout the trip, except for two nights in the valley of the Chulyshman River (there are no comfortable bases there yet, but it is there that the most beautiful places of Altai are located, these days of travel will be the highlights of the tour. 

5 All camp sites have baths, which can be ordered additionally. 

6 The cabins/rooms have sockets. But, as a rule, there are few of them (1 or 2). If you have a lot of electronic equipment, grab an extension cord. We also recommend that you take a powerbank with you. 

7 Please note that most of the campsites are powered by the electrical system of local villages. For the most part, these systems are old and disruptions often occur. This means that there may be a power outage at any given time. At this point, you will have no light, water, or heating in your rooms, as there are no centralized sewage or heating systems in the villages. Each accommodation facility builds its own heating system, digs its own well, and all this works thanks to electricity, or does not work at the moment of gusts. 

8 Rooms have a hairdryer, except for the campsite "Stone mushrooms" in the valley of the Chulyshman River.

9 As a rule, accommodation buildings are made of wood, but there are also camp sites made of brick and granite. You will stay in rooms at some bases, and in separate cabins at some camp sites. Bed linen is provided everywhere, but we recommend that you bring your own towel with you – they will be needed at the bases in the valley of the Chulyshman River and for use in the sauna, when bathing in rivers, etc. 

10 Hygiene kits are not provided everywhere, be sure to bring all hygiene supplies with you.

Air and railway tickets are not included in the price of the tour. You can purchase them yourself or contact us for help.

The coordinator will be able to advise you on the availability of Wi-Fi at each specific base immediately before the start of the tour. You will find something like the following communication situation:

1 From 01 to 04 days – MTS, Beeline, and Megafon mobile operators partially catch on the road and during field trips. The mobile operator MTS, Beeline catches at the campsite (other operators do not catch, there is a mobile Internet connection). 

2 From 04 to 06 days – On the road, during field trips and at the campsite, mobile operators MTS, Beeline, Megafon partially catch. MTS and Beeline are available on the database. Most likely, the campsite has Wi-Fi. 

3 From 06 to 08 – On the morning of the 6th day, mobile operators - Mts, Beeline, Megafon - will be catching. After lunch, the mobile connection and the Internet will end before the evening time of the 08 day of the program. 

4 From 08 to the 10th day – mobile operators MTS, Beeline, Megafon are catching. The campsite has Wi-fi. 

5. When the electricity is cut off in local villages for more than 3 hours, all mobile towers stop working, because their charge lasts only for 3 hours. No mobile operators will work in this case.

Public hospitals are located in the area of the tour program (except for the 7-8 day trip). There are pharmacy points (except for 7-8 days of travel). Medicines are purchased at own expense.

Insurance. You can purchase medical and life insurance from Ingosstrakh, Uralsib, baggage insurance, non-departure insurance, maternity insurance and other types of travel insurance for an additional fee. Insurance assistance will be provided to you in public hospitals, where treatment for citizens of the Russian Federation is free. So far, there has not been a single case of Ingosstrakh or Uralsib requesting payments from guests traveling under this tour program.

It is very important to tell about the ticks that frighten tourists.

The peak, when there are a lot of ticks, is the end of April and until the end of June. Not every tick is encephalitic. That is, many of them are completely harmless. But it is possible to distinguish a carrier from a regular one only in the laboratory.

How to minimize the risk of tick-borne encephalitis?

A few points:

1. Don't let the ticks bite you. Look around when hiking in the forest, take off your clothes on time. It is not difficult to notice a tick on the body. If you hit a bush, you looked at your feet, if there is a tick, just throw it off. In practice, this is a very, very effective way (and I'm writing about what I've tested, the advice is extremely practical). Additionally, it is advisable to treat clothes with a repellent.
2. Vaccination. It is done in a polyclinic. If you do a full course of three vaccinations, then immunity can last up to 3 years. I will not dissuade from vaccinations, but in practice, vaccination does not always work. A lot of people, hoping for a vaccination, get sick. Maybe that's why neither I nor my friends make them. This is a big topic for discussion, many believe that there is a lot of harm from these vaccinations, etc. Everyone makes their own choice.
3. After a tick bite, carry out emergency prevention. Within 72 hours, you need to give an injection of immunoglobulin and take iodantipyrine. This is not a vaccination, but a fight against an infection that has already been received. Such an injection is quite expensive (about 1,000 rubles per 10 kilograms of body weight).

But there is a method of protection that is used for the unvaccinated, and which allows you not to force your immune system unnecessarily. It consists of three stages:

• We insure against a tick bite from an insurance company, which allows us to compensate for the cost of an immunoglobulin injection. An application for tick bite insurance should be sent to us now if you have purchased a ticket for April-May.;
• in case of a tick bite, we pull it out and take it to the laboratory for analysis for infections (Gorno-Altaysk, 17 Kommunistichesky ave.). It is better to take it right away, since there are only 72 hours for everything about everything.;
• if the tick is "clean", then we sleep peacefully. If the tick-borne encephalitis virus is found, then we proceed to emergency prevention, then we reimburse expenses for insurance.

This method minimizes unnecessary medical interventions. I repeat, everyone is responsible for their own health, someone can just rely on "maybe", pull out the tick and move on.

There may be ticks on the route from April 20 to June 15. The highest tick activity is in late April and early May. Bites are rare from mid-May to mid-June. However, we recommend that you purchase tick bite insurance (the cost is 350-500 rubles). It is possible to administer immunoglobulin in local hospitals. If you plan to purchase insurance not through our company, please make sure that the Altai Republic, the village of Altay, is included in the list of places where medical care can be provided. Elekmonar or Chemal village, village Aktash, village Shebalino. We also recommend that you get a tick bite vaccination in advance, which is done in 2 stages.

Route 1 refers to active, adventure tourism, some trails have difficulty category 1A. On the days of the tour – 4, 5, 7, there are strong physical activities (hiking in the mountains without backpacks), if you do not want to experience them, you can pre-arrange with the manager the possibility of alternative pastime options on these days, or consider choosing another tour. You will be in the absence of civilization and familiar infrastructure. There are no signs, railings, or trash cans on the trails. The sightseeing sites are natural and historical, not prepared for the show and the reception of guests. Please note!!! There is practically no infrastructure in Altai. You're going to see nature. 

2 Altai has the lowest possible service, which is at the beginning of its development, but extremely friendly people who will try to improve your vacation. 

3 During trips on some excursions, there will be roads with dirt, dirt, stones, fords, and dust. From day 6 to day 8, there will only be a dirt road with a lot of dust on it.

Route 4 is suitable for participation with children from 10 years old. If you participate with younger children, you will have to shorten the program and leave only those activities available for younger children on the tour. 

5 Please note that the descent from the Katu-Yaryk pass on day 6 is carried out on foot, about 1 hour way down. At the same time, things are lowered by a car or passable equipment. This is due to the fact that the descent from the Katu-Yaryk pass is dangerous when passing it by car, bus or passable equipment. 

6 In Gorny Altai, we can experience both a hot summer and a frosty winter in one day. If the weather lets us down, the Guide will try to show us the maximum of the planned facilities. Depending on objective circumstances (especially weather conditions) we reserve the right to make changes to the tour program, to change the order of provision of services, in case it is impossible to provide services, to provide an equivalent replacement.

Any group on active routes is a team.

The team has accepted mutual assistance, friendly communication with all participants, and decision-making on issues not included in the program in consultation with the entire group and the guide.

The guide, who is also the head of the group, monitors the successful completion of the travel program and provides information about the sightseeing sites.

You will have one guide and driver for the entire 10 days of the trip.

If you are going to travel alone and you are worried about staying in a room with a person you did not know before the trip, we can inform you that very good, cheerful and interesting people from all over Russia and the world are going on active tours. We always try to select roommates who are as close to the same age and gender as possible, and the beds in the room will be separate. However, we must point out that the possibility of matching people of the same age is not always present. Also, for obvious reasons, we cannot know about the character, habits and temperament of the guest in advance. You decide on a double room with a check-in or an additional payment for a single room on your own. It is not always possible to resolve the issue of guest accommodation directly on the tour. Also, if you decide to check out directly on the tour, then the payment for half of the double room included in the price of the tour will burn out and you will have to pay the full cost of all rooms along the route.

If you are going to travel with a family or a group of 3-5 people or more and you would like to stay in a room with three or four or five people, then if possible we will take this into account, but you need to inform us in advance so that we can book a suitable room for you. You need to coordinate this moment directly with the manager who issues you a ticket.

If you want to travel only with your company / family, then we can offer you the organization of an individual program, just for you. We can adjust the route according to your wishes. The cost will depend on the number of participants, the class of accommodation along the route, meals and the class of the chosen car.

Documents for citizens of the Russian Federation:

• A valid domestic or foreign passport.
• Birth certificate for the child.

Documents for foreign citizens:

• A valid foreign passport.
• Birth certificate for the child.
• Issued a visa (if required).

Money:

• We have tried to save your money as much as possible by including almost all expenses in the price of the tour. Despite this, it is better to have a certain amount of cash with you to pay for souvenirs, personal purchases, meals in a cafe (lunch cost 250-300 rubles), baths, and additional services. Altai is a place practically untouched by civilization, so you will have to pay in cash, since the possibilities of non–cash payments with bank cards are very limited here.