Altai- the short-version

The Landschaft
Since we left Barnaul we have, more or less been in the altai-region and the further we went, the more beautiful it became.
The first few days in the altai we had mostly pine forests and big rivers which were crystal clear, you could drink their water without problems.
Later on, the rivers became smaller but not less drinkable and the forests became thinner and opened up to green fields. The landscape also became more like a real mountain range, with painfully steep climbs and downhill parts which were a lot of fun because the road we are on is fantastic.
But the best part was when we first saw the first snow capped mountains in the distance.
By then the big rivers were behind us and we had mostly smaller streams which were, without exception, ice cold. Really nice to look at but if you actually have to wash yourself in them, they became a lot less nice.
The last part of our altai tour on the russian side, was on a series of plateaus on an altitude between 1500 and 2000 meters. There were even fewer trees, fewer rivers but beautiful mountains in the distance and a very rocky landscape with hills in all shapes and colours. Really cool.
Now at our last day in russia on our bikes, we are by a small, very nice river and really glad, how the altai part of our trip went.
Even though we are in the mountains, we only had one day of rain.
If I would have to say which part of our whole tour was the most beautiful, I would probably say the altai.
We hope Mongolia will be equally great.

The people
we met in the last days were mostly people who were part of the Mongol Rally, a Rally from London to Ulaan Baatar with old cars. Each day we had between two and nine of them passing us on the road. The only time we had the chance to talk to them was when they had to stop to fix something or took a break.
We also met two really nice couples, one from turkey ,one from Germany and France, who were not in such a hurry and could tell us a lot about what will await us in Mongolia. The roads won't be as bad as we feared and the longest stretch with no possibility to stock on supplies and water will be about 200 km. So hopefully everything should be fine.

The food
was exceptionally good since we discovered that we could make our own potato salad, which led to Cedric being on a mayonnaise-diet.
Also we discovered, that fried onions with honey, pasta and olive oil (in that exact order) make a fast and delicious meal.
No matter what Mongolia throws at us, as long we have onions honey (right now we have 1,5kg in case there is none in Mongolia) and pasta, we are fine.