Tour along the Chui tract to Geyser Lake for 1 day 2023/2024

Excursion along the Chui tract from the hotels Ai, Manzherok, Turquoise Katuni is a trip along one of the oldest amazing roads in the world. These are the delightful mountain landscapes and emotional locations that you will remember for a very, very long time.

Chui tract

Our route will pass along the road, which is known in the circles of travelers around the world. This is not just a road and not even just the main transport vein of Altai. This is one giant attraction, passing through four natural zones: from the steppe to the rocky semi-desert. Chui tract is one huge monument of nature and history with a length of hundreds of kilometers.

In 2014, National Geographic magazine put Chuisky tract in the top ten most picturesque roads on the planet. Since then, the popularity of Altai has increased among foreign travelers.

And one of the first places we visit here is the Seminsky Pass. This is the highest point of the Chui tract 1894 m. The old Altai name of the Seminsky Pass is “Dial-Menku” (“Eternal Mountain”).

The ascent to the Seminsky Pass has a length of 9 km, and the descent is 11 km. From here opens a picturesque panorama of the blue Altai, Sarlyk Mountain (2507 m), cedar taiga. The pass has long preserved the “cult of the mountains” – the heritage of distant ancestors in the form of rites and beliefs such as monuments “ob”.

The next object along the route is the Chike-Taman Pass, “A Thousand Devils”, as the diggers said about it. The Chike-Taman Pass is located on the Chuisky Track, behind the Seminsky Pass. The height of the Chike-Taman pass is 1460 m, but due to its steepness it seems much higher. From the saddle of the pass, the old Chuisky tract is clearly visible, which is still passable for prepared all-wheel drive cars. In stone rashes at the exit of the old tract on the saddle of the pass, you can find mountain crystal and beautiful stones with crystalline intersperses of quartz.

Descending from Chike Taman, we follow to the sand cliffs, an amazing natural formation, which is a sheer cliffs of pressed sand, due to constant wind and erosion, any inscription scratched on these rocks disappears in a couple of weeks. Then we drive through the village of Inya, behind which there are "Stone Women", standing in the steppe, a little away from the road, next to a large stone round embankment, under which there is an ancient burial.

Along the way, you can sometimes see the surviving fragments of the ancient Mungal tract, the predecessor of the Chui tract, fortified with stonework. Bizarrely twisting, the road leads us to the confluence of the Chuya and Katun rivers. It is one of the most sacred places of Altai. From above, you can clearly see how the dark waters of the Chui River flow into the turquoise Katun and for some time two jets of different colors go parallel to each other gradually dissolving. From above there is a beautiful view of the valley of the Katun River and the surrounding rocks. A few kilometers from the merger is the Chuya Oaza Cafe, in front of which are sculptures of people and various animals. The cafe is the traditional stop of most tourist groups following the Chui tract, the cuisine is represented by both Asian and European dishes.

Further, following the Chui tract, we get to one of the most amazing and ancient monuments of the Altai Mountains - petroglyphs Kalbak - Tash. Here the rocks are covered with thousands of cave paintings, ranging from scenes of hunting and everyday life and ending with mystical signs, incomprehensible to us religions of bygone times. The place is saturated with the ancient energy of mountains and peoples who left their mysterious trace here, in the form of drawings on stone.

The next stop is Shirlak Falls. Waterfall on the Tektu River (Chui Basin) on the Aigulak Range. Translated from Altai: Girl tears. The waterfall is strikingly beautiful, washing its way in the rocks, with a strong noise, the flow of water along the huge stone steps falls down from a 10-meter height, forming a rainbow glow on a sunny day, and in winter it becomes a huge ice sparkling column covered with bizarre frozen cascades of a beautiful bluish hue. And our next object is an amazing Geyser Lake, at the bottom of which there is a slow eruption of several geysers, forming unusual and mysterious pictures. Having visited this amazing place, we climb again to the Chui tract, where a majestic panorama of eternal glaciers opens in front of us. They're called Squirrels. This stunning view is the final chord of our journey and now we have to return to the starting point of our journey.

We take tourists from hotels and tourist centers located in the area of Lake Aya, in the Special Economic Zone "Turquoise Katun", Manzherok, etc.

The tour includes several locations between which we travel by bus.

We walk through the locations themselves. On the route, a stop is planned for lunch in a cafe.

Food is not included in the cost of the tour.

Throughout the tour, the group is accompanied by a highly qualified guide.