In the third of my posts about travel blogs, I set myself a challenge. How would I blog about a difficult bit of travel, in a way that didn't moan, exaggerate, or trivialize? The photos in that post record one particular climb, with its own particular set of frustrations. But that whole journey to the Altai Mountains, in the summer of 1993, was pretty tough.

Two factors contributed to the difficulties, one personal, one geopolitical.

The personal element was my own extraordinary naivete. This was my first experience outside a Western culture. So I was encountering for the first time a less "developed" environment. This was disconcerting at times (I'd never flown with anyone like Aeroflot domestic; I'd never stayed in a hotel where the walls were peeling along with the wallpaper; I'd never encountered road conditions like these), but on the whole it was interesting rather than worrying. More significant, and much harder to deal with, was that this was also my first major culture shock. I guess I'd expected Russians to be "like us". And they really weren't...

The geopolitical connection is, admittedly, more speculative. This all happened not very long after the demise of Communism. With the shackles of a controlled economy removed, any number of people became "businessmen", convinced that this path would make them very rich very soon. At that point, there hadn't really been time for all this new entrepreneurial ambition to shake down, succumb to a bit of healthy regulation, adjust to the limitations of the infrastructure, or otherwise acquire a dose of reality. I wonder if this affected our trip. While the people at the coal-face of our little trekking expedition were hard-working, dedicated, and downright wonderful, somewhere further up the tree, someone had planned this whole expedition rather badly, and left it dangerously under-staffed and under-equipped.

Roll all this together into a day when we have to cross a high pass (well over 3,000 metres). The logistics have broken down almost every day so far because of porterage and provisions problems. This has reduced everyone's sleep, and forced everyone to carry more than he/she had bargained for. Many of us have not been well. The weather that day is like it often is in the mountains: bleak, misty, snowing on and off. The going is very hard.



And every time you ask how far it is to the pass, the answer is always "two hours". The infinite torture. "How much longer?" "Two hours." Always, into eternity, "two hours".

Only later would I understand that many cultures in the world hate to give bad news. Instead, people ask themselves what you would probably LIKE to hear, and that is the answer they then give...

"Are there avocados?" "Yes."

"I want to go to Riviera. Do you know where that is?" "Yes."

The more accurate answers would be: "There will be avocados after I have sent this child round several stalls to find some. This will be a lengthy business," and "I have no idea where that is, but I will drive round till I find some inspiration or you work it out."

Only later did I learn not to ask such questions if I wasn't prepared to enter into the spirit of the answers.

Anyway, we got to the top of the pass. And we got down again. And we trekked safely out of the Altai. We didn't die up there on the bleak, beautiful mountains.

But there was a lot of digesting to do afterwards.

I'd foolishly built this Altai trip up in my imagination as something that might be my own little "Snow Leopard" experience. You can see it in my diary: I'm desperate to hang on to the positive, to derive some spiritual sustenance from all that's happening around me, but bit by bit the chaotic reality was busy eroding these heady ideas.

Yet, as a traveller, this was the most extraordinary learning experience. I never really suffered "culture shock" again. (Cultural misunderstandings, yes, of course. You never wholly outgrow those. But "shock"? No. It's as if this experience was one gigantic immunization.)

And despite the downright disappointment of many aspects of this trip, it left me desperate to travel more. All this new (and shocking) stuff was, at the end of the day, incredibly fascinating, and I longed to know more.

I also canned any specifically spiritual expectations of travel. Expect to learn, and you will. Expect some specific experience, and you'll be disappointed.

And the rewards were great. On my own two feet, I've still never been higher than the top of two-hour pass. Without undergoing this purgatory, I'd have missed amazing views, and tantalizing glimpses into totally different lives. And I'd have missed the bagna at the mountain rescue place down by the lake. I can still feel the heat, and smell the birch twigs...







Indeed, from this whole journey I take some of my strongest travel memories ever. The smell of cedars; the taste of fresh cedar nuts; the bright flames of a campfire, when all around is pitch, pitch dark; encounters with Altain horsemen who, to me, looked as though they'd stepped straight out of some fable...

So, put all this together, and you get something that was exhilarating, disappointing, eye-opening, and trying, probably in equal parts. Oh, and life-changing... Yep, definitely, life-changing.