Mongolian Eagle Festival and the Siberian Altai

Our trip begins at Barnaul International Airport (BAX) at 7.30am. The latest your flight can arrive therefore is 7am.

On leaving the airport we drive through the area's rolling foothills, grasslands, lakes, rivers and mountains to Gorno-Altaisk, stopping along the way in Biysk for a lunch of Uighur cuisine, a Turkic ethnic group who live in East and Central Asia. Lamb is a staple and the basis for many dishes, usually combined with hand-pulled noodles, steamed buns, dumplings and homemade bread. Our journey from here is along the Chuya Highway. Considered to be one of the most beautiful roads in the world, it travels through scenery of forested mountain slopes, clear blue rivers and vast grassland steppe. On arrival in the small town of Gorno-Altaisk we'll take a walk around before enjoying a dinner of traditional Altai cuisine. Altai dishes are generally meat-based and slow cooked, often using the region's favourite ingredients of pine nuts and honey.

This morning we visit the Anokhina Museum which gives us a great introduction to the historical way of life of the region, and features artifacts from the grave of the 'Siberian Ice Maiden' - a two and half thousand year old mummy of a local woman which was found in an undisturbed burial chamber on the Ukok Plateau and is thought to have been a person of noble blood.

Leaving Gorno-Altaisk we drive along the northern route of the silk road towards Uch-Enmek National Park, via one of our first mountain passes (Semiskiy Pass). Along the way we may be able to stop for a scenic walk for some hilltop views across the scenic mountain landscapes. Once at Uch-Enmek we'll get an insight in to the unique culture of the region with a performance of Tuvan throat singing. This incredible skill has been recognised by UNESCO in their Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list. The singer produces a continuous note while simultaneously creating other notes that form the melody. The songs in the Altai region tell epic tales of ancient heroes that are passed down from one generation to the next. They are usually sung only after dark, adding to the atmosphere of the performance.

This morning we drive towards the village of Kupchegen, not far from our base in Uch-Enmek. Here we'll pay a visit to the Altai arts centre where saddles with intricate designs and other pieces of art by local artisans are on display. Our journey then continues along the scenic Chuysky Highway where the autumn colours of the hillside forests will line our journey. We will stop a few times including at the confluence of the Chuya and Katun Rivers where there are Turkic Ininsky stelae and kurgan (grave mounds), and at the rocky area with mysterious petroglyphs at Kalbak-Tash. Here there are thousands of depictions of animals and mysterious beasts alongside warriors and shamans, the oldest dating from around 8,000 years ago.

We arrive at the village of Chibit, located on a lush green plain with the Chibit River on one side and the towering peaks of the Altai range on the other. The village is small with only around 700 inhabitants, and was formed by Russian missionaries in 1801.

Today we venture out from Chibit to explore some of the villages and countryside nearyby. We drive through the stunning Katu-Yaryk Canyon, which is the legendary home of the Turkic people to the Altaian villages of Ulagan and Balyktuyul. The inhabitants are Turkic speaking indigenous Altaians who retain ancient beliefs in shamanism; each community's shaman is an important figure whose spiritual knowledge is highly revered and respected. Visiting the villages will give us a chance to learn something of a very ancient way of life and culture. Both are small settlements that consist of traditional style houses made from logs, and in Balyktuyul we will enjoy a home-cooked lunch of local soups and boiled meats in one of the houses.

Close by we visit a cluster of five Pazyryk kurgans, frozen tombs dating from the 4th - 5th century BC. High status people were buried here and the artefacts that they were buried with indicate how sophisticated their society was. Items made of precious metals and complex carts have been uncovered, and the mummies were adorned with intricate tattoos depicting animals and mythical beasts. Some mummies even show signs of having undergone cranial surgery and surviving to live for some time afterwards.

Leaving Chibit, a three hour drive across the spectacular Chuya Plateau, which is surrounded by high snow-capped mountain ranges, will bring us to the town of Kosh-Agach. Here we switch to Mongolian registered vehicles and continue to the border at Tashanta. The border formalities can take a few hours , but once through we continue towards the town of Ulgii for our overnight stay.

We travel along gravel roads across barren landscapes to meet the eagle hunter family that we will be staying with for the next two nights. Accommodation is single-sex dormitory style and either in the home of the family or gers - the traditional round shaped yurt-type dwellings of the nomads. In the summer the nomads move around the area living in gers, taking their livestock to different grazing pastures. The community are ethnic Kazakhs and they have preserved their native language and culture. Their tradition of using eagles to hunt is almost two thousand years old and involves taking young female golden eagles and training them to capture wild animals, in particular the native red foxes. It is believed that a strong emotional bond is established between the hunter and their bird. We will be able to sit and chat with the nomads and understand how they live, and the part that is played in their lives by their herds of Yaks and their hunting eagles. They will extend us traditional nomad hospitality and we will be offered tea and treated with the deep respect that is offered to visitors.

The Eagle festival starts today in a barren valley in the Altai Mountains . It is a spectacular event with many of the area's active eagle hunters attending and begins with the all the hunters entering the arena on horseback with their golden eagles. The skills of the birds and their handlers are demonstrated with various tests and competitions including releasing the eagles from the hills to pursue and capture a fox skin which is pulled behind a fast-moving horse. The hunters are also judged on their costumes, horsemanship and ability to control the birds, making superb subjects for photos. Traditional horse games such as bouzkhasi, a kind of horseback version of tug-of-war, and picking up objects from the ground at full gallop are also played. The purpose of the festival is to celebrate and keep alive the ancient traditions of the community so all that we see is very authentic.

Today we'll attend the festival again, with further time to meet the eagle hunters and watch as they demonstrate their skills. There'll be more competitions and local sports and games, some of them rather unusual such as 'kiss a woman on horseback', 'pick up coins from the ground at full gallop' and 'Kiz Kuar', a horse race between man and woman which involves the woman chasing the man with a swinging whip - the couple who completes the course the fastest wins. These demonstrate the incredible horsemanship of the nomads and their ability to control their animals at speed and with tremendous accuracy. In the late afternoon, the winners of all the different events will be announced in the awards ceremony.

Driving further east into Mongolia we stop at Tolbo Lake which is renowned for its clear waters for a walk along its shores. We also drive past the dramatic snow-capped Sair Mountain and stop off at the scenic Doroo Lake, one of the Naiman Nuur, or \ eight lakes\ that were formed by volcanic eruptions, before continuing to Hovd. A small town that is a melting pot for many of the region's ethnic minorities. These include the Myangad who are celebrated for their ability to breed and race fast horses, the Dorvods whose ancestors migrated to the area from the Xinjiang region of China around 500 years ago, and the Dzungar tribe who are thought to be successors of the original tribe of Western Mongolia. We'll see a mixture of the traditional dress as we wander around the town's market place with its colourful stalls and visit the museum. This houses some excellent examples of ethnic costumes and Buddhist and Kazakh art from the region.

Nearby Khar Us Nuur National Park is our destination today. The park has several large lakes and the largest reed beds of Central Asia. It attracts many birds including wild ducks, geese, wood grouse, partridges and the rare relict gulls. We'll take a walk on Jargalant Hairkhan Mountain, where the incredibly rare snow leopard lives, and enjoy the mountain's landscape of natural springs and a 20 metre high waterfall.

This morning we fly to Ulaan Baatar and take a walk through the town to Sukhbaatar square. Despite its concrete façade, Mongolia's capital has a bohemian edge, and an energy that contrasts with the tranquillity of the Mongolian countryside. Many of its inhabitants can be seen in their traditional dress and a huge proportion continue to live in gers in the suburbs. In the square we'll see Government Palace which houses the offices of the President and Prime Minister and is flanked by impressive statues of Genghis Khan, considered the founding father of the country, and his sons who succeeded him, Ogedei and Kublai Khan. The centre of the square has statue of Damdin Sukhbaatar, the hero of the struggle for independence in the early 1920s after whom the square is named. He daringly smuggled a letter asking for Soviet support in the hollowed out handle of his whip and then led the Mongolian People's Partisans as their commander-in-chief. Around the square is the Cultural Palace which contains the Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery and the National History Museum presenting Mongolia's 5000 years of history from the stone age through the Genghis Khan era to the modern age and there is time to visit both of these and get an understanding of Mongolia through the ages.

This morning we visit Gandan Buddhist Monastery. The name translates as 'the big place of complete joy\ and is home to several hundred monks. It houses a large statue of Megjid-Janraiseg surrounded by a thousand statuettes of God Amitabha. Megjid-Janraiseg was a monk who had gained enlightenment and devoted himself to helping others to do the same. An earlier statue of him was used as a symbol of the independence movement but was later demolished by Soviet troops and allegedly melted down to make bullets for the siege of Leningrad.

After exploring the monastery we drive to Hustai National Park and take an afternoon jeep safari to see the world's only true wild horses, the majestic Przewalski's horses. They became extinct in the 1960's and were reintroduced from animals that were kept in captivity around the world in 1992. Today the horses are thriving back in their natural habitat. We will also see Wapiti deers; they will be rutting at the time of our visit so they'll be less timid and more vocal than usual, and displaying some interesting behaviour as the males challenge each other for the rights to mate with the females.

As well as the wildlife, the park's beautiful scenery is varied with mountain steppe, grassland plains, sand dunes and river wetlands. We'll explore on foot today taking a walk through the countryside which gives a sense of the vastness of the Mongolian wilderness and we are likely to enjoy further sightings of the horses and deer. There are several wonderful view points from which we are likely to spot black vultures, eagles and falcons.

We drive back to Ulaanbaatar along a different route, travelling through Hustai National Park and along the Tuul River Valley. This takes us through an area where Halkh Mongolian Nomads live, a culture that although nomadic, differs from the Kazakh nomads we met in Western Mongolia. The Halkh people consider themselves to be the true Mongolians and direct descendants of Genghis Khan. They will prepare a traditional Mongolian meal for us of buuz, steamed dumplings filled with meat, and huushuur, dumplings that are deep fried in mutton fat. These are usually served with rice or noodles.

Once back in Ulaanbaatar there will be some free time to enjoy the town this evening.

The trip ends after breakfast at our hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

There are no activities planned today, so you are free to depart from Ulaanbaatar at any time. If your flight is departing later in the day luggage storage facilities are available at our hotel. If you would like to receive a complimentary airport transfer today, you need to depart from Chinggis Khan International Airport (ULN), which is 30 minutes' drive from our hotel.