Are real shamans left in Altai?

We went to find out if they are really popular today. We tell and show.

The car was shaking off-road so that everyone banged their heads against the ceiling.

- Why don't you have asphalt paving!

- What's the point? - the driver, accustomed to such questions, was calm. - They will make a good road - tourists will start driving on their own, we will stop earning. Better look at the views around!

Can not argue. Neither the logic of a taxi driver, nor the luxury of Altai landscapes. Mountains covered with green velvet forests, alpine meadows for kilometers. Winding rivers, as if on the go, collecting colorful flowers along the banks. Freely galloping herds of horses and unafraid cows, turning in surprise at the passers-by. Huge waterfalls in the rocks look like streams from afar. Yes, you yourself feel like a grain of sand in the vastness of this scale.

A talisman swayed on the windshield of the car.

Are there really real shamans in Altai?

“The shaman helped me, she was protected from her,” the driver shared. - Maria's name. She removed the twelve evil eyes from me.

- Wow! And how did you feel that you helped?

- I was sick, but after her ritual it became easier.

Altai is generally all shrouded in mysticism, it seems to be in the air. People come here from all over the country and, as it turned out, not only for beauty. Officials and businessmen are asking for good luck in business. Girls dream of a happy marriage. Why, even Roerich at one time here was looking for an entrance to Shambhala. And shamans and healers are still held in high esteem here.

Shaman Valera and haymaking

It seems to you what is simpler: you came to some Altai village, where there are shamans - every second, you can easily recognize by the smoke from the village. But at the end of summer there is no time for you. Because haymaking. The time when shamans turn into ordinary people, put aside amulets, change tambourines for a scythe - and into the taiga. The line of thirsty people will never end, and the neighbors will not collect grass for the winter for you.

- Surely you know the chief shaman, - we asked the locals and received one answer:

- Valera from Kosh-Agach.

- Valera, everyone is going to him.

- Valera. He was my classmate. No one could have thought that he would become a shaman. This is how life turned out ...

It turned out that Valera from Kosh-Agach can be dialed on a mobile phone. Well, are shamans not people? We called for three days. During this time, we have already seen the Mars Mountains, the Geyser Lake, the Mazhoi Cascades, and the Chulyshman Valley ...

- Valera is making hay, - the shaman's wife Sonya answered the phone. - Come in the fall.

We have other plans for the fall. Eh, Valera, I had to look for another.

With a request to Leonid Ilyich

Who knows everything in small villages? Of course, the shop assistants and the waitresses in the cafe. The waitresses about the places here are loudly said. As well as about the cafe. In the south of Gorny Altai, you cannot find good service, like a shaman in haymaking.

In the roadside cafeteria, the menu is handwritten on a checkered piece of paper. Dumplings, three types of pies, tea and sea buckthorn fruit drink. Maybe they don't know about the assortment of dishes here, but they are definitely guided by the shamans:

- Go to Leonid Ilyich, he is also very much praised!

- Do you yourself believe in the power of shamans?

- Of course, the locals also turn to them. Just think of which request you will go with.

- Shouldn't the shaman feel what they come to him with?

- Well ... You still have to come up with your desire.

The sea buckthorn fruit drink was surprisingly great. I was also lucky with Leonid Ilyich, he did not leave for haymaking and made an appointment:

- If it doesn't work out with the taxi driver, call my brother, he will bring you to me.

- Thank you, we have already booked a transfer!

On the eve of the trip at eleven in the evening, our driver said that he was suddenly sent on a business trip. How can one not believe in a shaman's clairvoyance? I had to wake up his brother Vladimir.

Employment center official

Vladimir turned out to be talkative. While driving, he explained the meaning of the tradition - to stop at the passes and tie ribbons to trees. It turned out to be an offering to spirits, a way to ask for health or a good road. Tourists, however, are not recommended to repeat: the ceremony must be performed according to the rules, otherwise the spirits will get angry. Therefore, the locals do not like it when half-naked girls are photographed near the sacred places or drunken men bawl. It's like going to church and throwing a party there.

Vladimir also told about his brother. Only one who already had people with utha - a gift in his family - can become a shaman. Leonid Ilyich's grandfather was engaged in healing. My father also had abilities, but in the USSR they preferred to hide them. Leonid Ilyich himself did not want to do this for a long time: shamans do not ask for money, they take whatever they give, but they have to spend a lot on tambourines and amulets. But when his legs gave up, the doctors threw up their hands.

- It often happens with those who leave their destiny, - stated Vladimir.

- I had to promise to help people. And then the illness receded.

Leonid Ilyich worked as a deputy head of the Internal Affairs Directorate and a lawyer, now he runs the employment center. We have already introduced an official in a suit who receives a portrait of the president in his office and asks sternly what is the purpose of the visit. But then the car stopped on the outskirts of the village near a building resembling a hut.

Vodka for perfume

A smiling man in a sweater with a picture of a wolf and sweatpants came out to us. Not in skins or feathers.

“Excuse me, I'm not in full dress, it's hot in it near the fire,” he invited inside the hut - the shaman's ail.

We got the gifts that Leonid Ilyich talked about the day before: cookies, sweets, milk, tea and two checks of vodka. We admit, when we bought, we giggled: probably, a shaman needs alcohol to enter a trance. But these were offerings to spirits.

The shaman lit a fire in the center of the ail made of larch. Sparks flew up, the sun's rays made their way through the cracks and illuminated the room. There was something mystical about it. While Leonid Ilyich was sending cookies and milk to the fire, they looked at the structure. There were canvases on the walls: red - a symbol of fire, yellow - the Moon and the Sun, blue - water, white - good. Nearby, the paws of a bear, a wolf and a kite dangled on a rope.

- The spirits took the treats and allowed them to stay. So they came with good. Recently, TV men from Moscow waited for several days. But they had to refuse, - the shaman explained. And he held out the cloudy liquid in wooden bowls - milk vodka. We felt like the hosts of Eagle and Tails, who had a chance to drink a scorpion. Well, since spirits are treating, who are we to contradict?

Dancing with a tambourine

For each of us, Leonid Ilyich performed a ceremony: he fumigated a juniper with smoke and asked to inhale deeply in order to cleanse from the inside (the lungs left the chat, and our cough was heard at the other end of the village). It was scary and unpleasant when he drove around the body with burnt branches (“If only the hair didn’t catch on fire and the sole of the sneakers didn’t melt,” we worried), and then he took out a knife and with the words “don’t be afraid” (as if it works) "Clean off" with a blade "everything bad" from the face, hands, neck.

After that, the ritual of kamlanie began: the shaman took a tambourine from a maral skin and muttered something in a local one.

“Ask what you most want, the spirits will fulfill,” he promised.

We left the village in disheveled feelings. No "I see that you want a house on the Faroe Islands - it will be!" But we can't even call it a show for tourists: we were looking for a shaman for a long time, he spent five hours with us and did not ask for a penny. At another time, a queue would have lined up behind us, and by appointment, but then haymaking played into our hands.

In our presence, Muscovites and relatives of a local girl who had a terrible accident called the shaman (by the way, she survived, we found out). To contact the spirits, in our time it is not necessary to personally come to the village, you can arrange a communication session by phone. Gadgets now link completely different worlds.

Head of Stylish Travel Club

This year, a huge number of tourists came to Altai, they began to book accommodation for the summer in February, - says Olga Medvedeva, head of the company Stylish Travel Club... - In the hotel business, they already say that in 2022 the flow will increase two to three times due to the construction of new tourist clusters. Local residents, with all their cordiality and hospitality, fear that vacationers will harm nature. And the Altai people have a special attitude towards her: they deify her, ask for strength and thank her for everything. Do not litter and do not write names on stones, let's preserve what is so dear to the inhabitants of Altai and what we, tourists, admire