24th of August and it is monday: The office of Altai expedition is open and the very friendly owner Андреи welcomes us. Just at the same time an author of the Lonely Planet for Central Asia visit him and they actually discussed what to write in the new edition. They also discussed the matter of the border zone permission. Both say you need a border zone permit to go the Markakol Lake in the Altai Mountains. Unfortunately the permit takes at least 30 days and even the fast processing of 12 days seems not to be possible anymore. Well first that is bad news for us, since we do not want to wait 30 days for this permission. I explain him that I want to go to the lake from the North by using the Austrian road. This road is quite a Off-road challenge but promises beautiful views into the valleys and peaks of Altai mountains. I explain him my plan and he tells me that I could at least go to the Austrian road in the area of the National Park of Katon-Karagai (Катон-Карагаи). That is at least something but I do not want to go back to Oeskemen to go to the South to Almaty. So I ask him if I could go south from there too. He just says maybe you are lucky and there are no border police. This sounds like a "nice" plan and we hope that there are no posts on our way to the south using the way over the Austrian road, Lake Markakol, and Tereki. We buy food for some days and go further in the east in the direction of Katon-Karaigai. Андреи gave us a good explanation were the Austrian road starts.
From the steppe to hilly area, along yellow sunflower fields with blue sky, Rolling Meadows, potato harvesting families; that is what we saw on this way. Somewhere in between, we just want to buy a Diesel, we get invited to eat. Kumbat and his wife Kamschat just came back from their potato field and saw us at the petrol station. They were quite busy since he and his son still had to harvest potatoes. Nevertheless he invites us to come to his house were his wife and a friend will prepare a dinner for us. We follow his Lada Samara, which is loaded with 4 persons and 200 kg potatoes, until his house. He is living in a Russian style apartment block. But the apartment is decorated in the same style as the houses in the steppe. Maybe the only difference is that here you do not have the old nice Samovar anymore, the modern Japanese water cooker is used instead (:). We experience again the hospitality of the Kazakh people, with the self made noodle, a lot of meat, self made marmalade, and of course tea with milk and sugar as much as you want. After we are full he shows us his new магазин (shop) and guides us to the street that goes to Катон-Карагаи. We just drive a little further since it is already dark and make a camp at a meadow with hills of fresh cut grass. (N 49.21422°, E 84.39357 °)
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