Today we left behnd the last of the Altai mountains. From our riverside camp our route continued for much of the day beside the ever widening expanse of the Katun River, passng througn many small townships catering to holiday makers (we even found some good super markets). The road was excellent making it easy and the traffic increasingly dense and frantic. If we ever needed proof that Russia is a first world country with a large fun-loving middle class today was that proof.

The only big town of the day was Biysk, one of only 3 cities in Russia built at the command of Peter The Great (Moscow and St Petersburg are the other two). We were astounded to find that this city had a by-pass route just like lots of America highway towns. We were also surprised to see the state of the road on the nothern edge of the town. It was like a wilderness goat track - what happened to the beautiful smooth road of the remainder of the day? We guessed that the difference is that highays are funded by the federal government whereas city streets are the local communities responsibility.

After Biysk the landscape turned into farmland, flat countryside with large expanses of planted fields.


Towards the end of the day we started looking for a place to stop for the night and eventually selected a side road and parked on the edge of a cultivated field containing some kind of crop with pink flowers.

On a side note we were astounded today when traffic on the busy highway stopped for us and other pedestrians to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing; how civilized! We had become acustomed to the Mongolian practice where drivers, approaching a pedestrian crossing, actually accelerate in order to intimidate the pedestrians into staying on the curb (if the acceleration does not work they may also steer directly at any brave pedestrian who appears to be contemplating walking across the road).