We started our adventurous 7-day hiking trip from the basecamp in Tungur village with too little food, without a stove and a proper topographical map of the mountains. Fortunately, we hiked together with two much more experienced hikers - Steven and his wife Carolina. For the first three days we hiked up along the Kucherla river to Lake Kucherla. For the next two days we climbed to and crossed the Karaturek pass (3400 m) to Lake Akkem, where we could see Mount Beluhha - the highest peak of Altai mountains (4506 m). The descent back to the basecamp along the Akkem river, hiking over Kuzujak pass took us another 2 days. These 7 days were quite tough, especially at times when we got lost. It was around zero degrees at night and about +35 to +40C degrees when the sun was shining.
After three days of walking through heavy rain and on muddy paths along the freezing mountain river we reached the beautiful Lake Kucherla.
Accidentally, we took the hardest path to the Karaturek mountain pass. It was getting quite chilly up there...
In front of the snowy mount Beluhha there's Akkem glacier where the Akkem lake starts...
Down and down and down we go...