Stamp, stamp, stamp.....

.....What stamp?

I emerged from the back roads into Rubtsovsk after a week camping next to rivers and lakes. In desperate need of a shower I went to check into a hotel and discovered that I was lacking a certain vital document....namely a collection of registration stamps. Despite being in Russia for more than 2 weeks, this was only the second time I have stayed in a hotel and with no record of me for the interim, this proved to be quite a bureaucratic issue. Before I knew it the police arrived.
All very KGB'ish, 3 plain-clothes police, replete with translator, ushered me up to my room for a 'chat'. For more than an hour they plied me with questions about what I was doing, where I had been, what I had seen, who I had met.....but eventually it all came back to the stamps. I should have registered every 3 days in the towns I was staying. It was almost incomprehensible to them that I was happy just to set up my tent for the night anywhere that looked good.
Eventually, still a bit bemused by what I was doing, they left and all I had to do was write a letter detailing where I had stayed each night.

This they then stamped.

The Chuysky Trakt

What sounds like either a new Country 'n Western dance or obscure part of anatomy is actually the stretch of road that runs through the mountains of the Russian Altai.

Like a yo-yo it winds its way down from the border, following rivers that would be a rafter's wet dream.

All on perfect tarmac.... Welcome to Russia.

Everybody grab your partner..Pass the border, don't look back, Now its up and down along the Chuysky Trakt.