The Teletskoye Lake

The Teletskoye Lake is one of the main adornments and mysteries of Altai. It is located in the northeast, far from cities, there are no busy automobile roads; to the present day, the lake has preserved its primordial beauty and energy.

A huge mass of purest water lies in the basin, surrounded on all sides by mountain ridges. In the east, Korbu ridge stretches, behind it are Chelushinskie snowdrifts with eternal snowfields. In the west there are the golden mountains of Altyn-Tu, the ridges Sumutinsky and Iolgo, the Chulyshmanskoe upland comes up from the south. From shore to the shore of the lake, almost no more than 2-3 kilometers, but in length the water surface stretches for 78 kilometers. The depth reaches incredible values: 332 meters! In the deepest place of Teletskoye under the water easily disappears 120-storey skyscraper. And the age of the lake is measured by dozens of millions of years - a time that is not able to embrace the human mind.

The Diamond Wand

Local people for a long time called the lake Golden. Altaians say - Altyn-Kol, Mongols - Altyn-Nor, and Chinese - Altai or Artai. And very few people know that these places have one more name, ancient and sacred, which was received many thousands of years ago: Yachavaray, "diamond wand". The symbol of purity, firmness of spirit, power and wisdom.

"The white fog is vining, the beauty of the Golden Lake,

White flowers blossomed on five banks, the Golden Lake.

Birds grow up chicks on the five banks of Yachavaray,

With good, we ourselves, equal to each other, have come here "

Like so sang numerous generations of people who lived near the lake and respected it. Today, the original name is almost forgotten, and only devoted shamans-kams pass from the grandfather to the grandson the oldest name, and this song.

About the Golden Lake people tell a lot of strange. In secluded bays, a golden woman, the Lake Keeper, is shown. Boatmen in a whisper narrate about the silent funnels that arise on a sunny day in calm water. There are persistent rumors that at the bottom are hidden untold treasures; But in the deepest place, under the unimaginable thickness of ice water, all the living beings that the lake took away for millennium are preserved in a primordial state. From steep banks, from the secular taiga, from unknown depths, it is blowing with secrets.

Many people who have touched the Golden Lake have a strange feeling. As if between the silent mountains there is not a mass of water, but a huge, unimaginable ancient living being with a mind and a calm contemplation. It is not involved in good and evil, it is so different that human standards are powerless here. In its detachment, this living thing allows people to settle on the banks, disturb the mirror-like surface, delight and admire themselves. But how long will this detachment and contemplation last?

Between the two lake capes Kuvan and Chichilgan, where Teletskoye has the smallest width, under the huge thickness of the water lies a real underwater ridge. Its height above the bottom of the lake is 200 m, and another 100 m separates the tops of the ridge from the surface. The stone giant stretched across the lake, like a strange underwater snake. The ridge was opened in 1960 with the help of special equipment, and half a century earlier the visiting ethnographer recorded on the Teletskoye Lake an old legend about how the dragon wanted to burn and trample the Altai land, but the hero grabbed him by the tail and threw him into the long lake. The dragon fell

across in its narrowest place, drowned and petrified, lying deep under the water... Coincidence? Or a piece of a secret knowledge, reflected in folk tales?

People tell on the Golden Lake and another very old legend that one of the mountains on the shore is not a mountain at all, but a fallen asleep hero Kulyuk. The people put him to sleep, because he was stupid, but so great and strong that the ground beneath him sagged and collapsed. And when the hero awakes, then the end of the world will come. The legend even tells how the stars stood when the hero fell asleep. Out of pure curiosity, several Moscow scientists decided to set chronological points. Imagine their astonishment when the calculated time of "falling asleep" Kulyuk exactly coincided with the time when the active period of the formation of the Altai mountains ended, the period of catastrophic earthquakes!

Rocks and waterfalls

Shores of Teletskoye are almost everywhere steep and precipitous, cut by canyons, in which mountain rivers ring. The dark taiga, the chaos of the huge rocks, hidden quiet bays, blue vastnesses of water form amazing landscapes. Unique in its wild beauty the Stone Bay - the place of the fall of the ancient meteorite. At the narrowest place of the lake, two capes, Nyanskoch` and Azhi, meet each other. If you look from a distance, it seems that they close together, but with every second of approaching the shore more and more diverging to the sides, like the doors of an old gate. The legend tells that the Dragon Gates let only the ones who have pure souls pass into the widest part of the Teletskoye Lake... The northern and southern parts of the lake are separated by the cape Kuvan, and after it catch the breath for dozens of kilometers of space framed by majestic mountain ridges.

In the right bank of the wide canyon, the Big Korbu River breaks out, on which the famous waterfall is located. A snow-white wall of water falls from a stone ledge with clouds of sparkling dust; with blinding colors play in the sun arches of rainbows. They say that when nature smiles, a spring appears, and when it bursts out laughung, a waterfall is born. According to the Altai beliefs, the waterfall has its own guardian spirit named Eelyu, who lights the rainbows above the water.

There are a lot of other waterfalls on the Teletskoye Lake: more than half of the rivers, running to it, crash into the lake with ringing cascades. Opposite Korbu, on the other side, the picturesque Chedor lights up the rainbows. The 20-meter Big Shaltan hides in the Priteletskaya taiga. With a boiling stripe falls into the secluded stone bay the wide Kishte. From the water you can see a wonderful waterfall on the river Ayukechpes - "the bear will not cross", and then... two more no less beautiful on the other rivers with the same name.

At the Sacred Places

On the southern reach of the lake you can only get by water, by boat: around the Golden Lake there are even no roads, but even no well passable trails. Here, the Chulyshman River flows into the Teletskoye, a high-water stream dividing into numerous branches. In the south there is only one small village and few tourist bases; untouched, primordial places please the eye and the soul.

All the south of the lake is the ancient sacred places. Along the left bank stretches the ridge Altyn-tu, the Golden Mountains. It was called Mountain Ik, a sacred mountain. The top of Altyn-tu, rising to the sky next to us, is still worshiped by local residents. The western part of the Tualok mountain massif, in which the lake abuts, was named Ik-pash - "the sacred peak, the sacred source". Yak-pash, "sacred" - is called a healing spring near the estuary Chulyshman. In the wide river delta, the waves wash the stone island Kamayin - "the shelter of a shaman".