The lasthiking day

Except for public figures, the names of people in this story have been changed for privacy.

The eighth chapter of the Putorana Plateau trip. The day promised to be an ordinary one, but sadness was already in the air: tomorrow we leave 🥲

A base that turned out to be a museum

In the morning we had a tour devoted to the base and its founder. “Bunisyak” is the first tourist base on the Putorana Plateau, and it only started operating in 2014. And it’s not only a tourist base but also a museum: artefacts of the Nganasan people are collected here. The founder, Oleg Krashevsky, was considered a white shaman, and indigenous peoples gave him their things: clothing, jewellery, household items. There are paintings on the theme too.

The exhibition is very rich: there are so many things that you don’t know where to look. It seemed to me that more about the Nganasan is collected here than in the museums of Norilsk and Dudinka. That’s very impressive.

We were told how the Nganasan lived and what problems they face now: alcohol, young people leaving and the fact that only about six hundred Nganasan are left. Their way of life is very harsh, and when there’s a chance to move to a big city with comfortable conditions, such a life isn’t for everyone.

We were also told how Oleg built up the base, studied these lands, talked to local people and shamans and how he was accepted. He died in 2024, and now the base is run by his wife and children: his son Nikita is the manager, he led our photo tour, and his daughter gave us this tour. A lot became clear to me: our base is not just a tourist base for visitors, but a real house-museum with a history of its own.

The “Feminine Energy” waterfall

In the afternoon we went to a waterfall named that way, heaven forgive them, by ufologists who lived here for a while. In the tour programme the route is called more modestly: “Basalt Gorge”.

This time Denis invited me to his group, so for the whole tour I was in two groups at once 😅 He understood that Anya and Dasha would be a bit bored, and prepared more fun: according to the plan we were to climb to the second step of the waterfall, but we got up onto the third.

I was filming myself with a drone and suddenly saw another drone opposite, on the other side, Misha’s. I see it, it sees me, I look down. Misha is waving that he’s about to film. In the end a video came out!!! Huge thanks to him.

We walked around a bit more, stood with a view of the river and went down to the foot of the waterfall.

Whose cabin is it?

Before setting off, we climbed to one more place: a cabin in the mountains. The climb is small, and the views are beautiful. Nobody knows whose cabin it is. In it:

• the main cabin with a table in the middle, benches and a stove, there were even things inside;
• an outdoor chill-out area with benches;
• the unfinished frame of another building;
• a small structure on stilts with no doors, presumably a toilet. I wanted to look inside and remove a prop, but I was afraid the wall would collapse on me, so I left it alone, just to be safe.

Because of the wind, getting away wasn’t easy: the boat first has to be pushed off from the shallows, and the wind kept pushing it back. In the end we pushed with an oar and pulled out in reverse. A wave splashed me a little, I moved to the other side and enjoyed the sunset. In the middle of the lake we even stopped to photograph it. It was wonderful.

The farewell evening

During dinner Nikita and Denis came in with white boxes: they congratulated us on finishing the tour and gave us merch: badges and a phone stand. I’d just been thinking I wanted something to remember it by. And those who climbed the plateau were given a beautiful medal too 🥹

At 10 p.m. we were expected by the fire: watermelon and champagne. Misha went off to photograph the aurora. Always working. And then it turned out by chance that the base has a hookah… Those who know, know: I adore hookah 😅 It took a long time to heat the coals, but in the end we had a hookah on the Putorana Plateau!!! A dream. With a light northern lights display in the background.

I’d brought crisps from Norilsk (they were eaten instantly) and brewed my Korean ginseng tea. Some liked it, some didn’t, but the experiment worked. Finally Nikita brought out a telescope, and we looked at the constellation Taurus and one pulsating star. It was flickering like crazy 😅 Then, slowly, everyone went off to bed.