Mountainous Tajikistan. One of the highest points in the world is located here. The Pamirs are often called the “Roof of the World”. More than 90% of the country is occupied by mountains and ridges. And it’s not just people who live here. In addition to the peaceful shepherds with their dogs and the sheep they look after, there are many creatures in the mountains much older than humanity.

A lot of strange things happen in the mountains. Climbers have many unwritten rules so as not to offend the spirits of the mountains. And those who break the rules usually have a hard time in the mountains. There are injuries, death, and fear. According to ancient legends, it is in the high mountains that cruel and terrible demons live - the Devas and the beautiful Pari. But it is better for a person not to encounter them. No one was seen alive after such meetings.

Humans are only about 10 thousand years old. And the mountains here often expose red soil, which is the root rock. There are places in the Tajik mountains where dinosaur tracks are clearly visible. In one of the mountain villages, archaeologists found a chain of footprints of a dinosaur and a person passing through at approximately the same time.

My father, a geologist, told me that there are places in the mountains where, even if you are completely alone, you feel someone’s invisible presence. There are such wild places high in the mountains that a person sets foot here once every few decades. And this is felt in everything. In immeasurable silence, for example. When you hear a drop of water falling tens of meters away from you. This is felt in the untouched nature. And in the rejection of human nature. Or not by nature. And those who live in those places for thousands, and maybe millions of years.

The spirits of the mountains are clearly unhappy with such human intervention. That’s why climbers don’t stay in the highlands for long. In addition to ancient spirits, over the past few decades the army has been replenished by dead tourists and climbers. It’s rare that anyone can be rescued; usually those who died in the mountains are left there. By the way, this is why single routes are prohibited for geologists and tourists. After the death of one of the miners, names remain. So one of the Varzob rocks, called “Fang”, was later renamed “Natasha”, because It was precisely this that the very experienced climber Natalya fell off during a routine training session. Many other rocks and ridges also bear the names of people who died trying to conquer them.

I myself, when I was on a week-long transition from Siyoma to Labijai, across the glacier at the Pass of the Four, not far from the Crown of Siyoma, often felt someone’s gaze on me, clearly not human or animal. This was especially noticeable on the glacier. At an altitude of 4,200 meters.

Our tourist group of 13 people climbed the glacier, but instead of the usual 3 hours, the climb took us almost the entire day. It was as if someone had deliberately rolled us down. But the most terrible things began to happen when we descended from the glacier. At night, someone crushed all the tents. We woke up in sleeping bags and a pile of rags instead of well-stretched tents. And one could attribute everything to stray animals, but there were no animals, according to those on duty. There were no traces of animals, unless they were flying bears. And each of us really wanted to see the sunrise as quickly as possible in order to quickly get away from these terrible, frightening places, where we were clearly not welcome, despite the backpacks weighing 25-30 kilograms on our shoulders.

It would be possible not to attach importance to one’s own fears, to attribute everything to altitude sickness. However, all photo and video equipment also failed. True, it started working properly later, already when we went down to the camp. So all we have left to remember is the filming before the glacier.

Spirits of Altai

In Altai, at the beginning of the 20th century, ancient ideas about “master spirits” were preserved, according to which every object or phenomenon of the surrounding nature, be it a mountain or a river, a tree or a stone, a bird or an animal, thunder or rain, etc., had its own owner, who in the imagination of the shamanists was an independent, but not a human being, as if merged with a given object or phenomenon. This owner not only had a mind like a person, but also stood out for his (imaginary) appearance, often anthropomorphic (near a mountain or river, lake) or zoomorphic (in birds, animals, etc.). The religious ethics of the Altai shamanists demanded a respectful attitude towards various deities and spirits, depending on which both the fate of an individual person and the entire family as a whole depended. There was a whole set of rules associated with human presence in nature: in the mountain taiga, in valleys and high mountain pastures, on mountain paths and passes, on sacred mountains or not far from them. These rules and norms of human behavior in such places boiled down to a series of various prohibitions that protected from people the peace of the spirits - the masters of the local nature and the flora and fauna. While staying in the mountain taiga hunting animals, it was forbidden to exterminate animals - it was considered punishable the owner of the taiga, if a hunter killed at once, for example, several deer, make noise, shout and swear. Some Altai people spoke about the inadmissibility of uprooting grass, motivating the ban in this way: grass is the hair of the earth, and the owner of the area was angry for the pain caused to the earth, he punished the guilty in the same way as for cutting down young trees without extreme necessity.

In case of violation of these rules, the Altai people conducted various rituals with sacrifices and prayers to honor and propitiate deities and spirits. Any misfortune: illness, fire, drought, failure to hunt, death was considered as a punishment of spirits and deities for a person’s violation of any rule of behavior. And to correct the resulting disharmony in the relationship between spirits and humans, an atoning sacrifice was required that could “cover up” the violations and appease the spirits. According to the Altai people, spirits, when they send down disasters - illness, for example - expect ransom and gifts from a person, and he willingly gives them to them.

General well-being for everyone: an abundance of animals, herbs and pine nuts, offspring for livestock and the health of people were asked from the spirits at solemn prayers. Periodic rituals of this type were considered obligatory and were regularly held in a number of areas inhabited by the Altai people, and violation of this rule was punished by deities and spirits with all kinds of disasters and misfortunes.

Spirits of the mountains

The Altaians distinguished the spirits of the mountains into a completely independent category; These spirits have nothing to do with either Ulgen or Erlik. The spirits of the mountains live not in the heavenly space, not in the lower world, but in the sphere in which man himself lives. These spirits are strictly individualized and associated with a particular mountain, therefore the geographical names of mountains are not simple names, but proper names of spirits. And the mountains themselves are not only living beings, but also deities to whom the Altai people prayed, as beings capable of showing their anger, sending mercy and answering human prayers.

Each mountain had its own special spirit - the owner. If a person climbs a mountain, he should not shout loudly, swear with someone or make noise. Usually, at the pass, people threw a pile of oboo stones; passing through the pass, a hunter or traveler left a stone or a bullet, bowing to the local spirit - the owner. Ribbons were hung on a selected tree adjacent to the “oboo”. Under such trees and on the “oboo” they threw coins and sprinkled araka (milk vodka) or tea.

One hunter went to hunt. Arriving in the taiga, he made a hut. He walked and hunted, and returned to the hut to spend the night. Having lit the fire, hung the cauldron, prepared a bed for himself, lay down and fell asleep.

At night he woke up. Waking up, he sees: a red-haired girl - the mistress of the mountain - standing with an earring in her nose. As soon as he saw her, the hunter laughed loudly.
The mistress of the mountain, the red-haired girl, said: “What did you see, that you are laughing?”
The hunter replied: “I saw the earring in your nose and laughed.”
The mistress of the mountain, the red-haired girl, took possession of the hunter's mind. The red-haired girl took the hunter to her home, and they entered the mountain.
We spent three nights, she said: “Don’t go outside.”
The hunter thought: “Why shouldn’t I go outside?”
The red-haired girl brought the mountain animals - deer, goats, deer - to the door and milked them. The hunter opened the door slightly and took a look. Watching the mistress of the mountain milk the mountain animals, he stood and thought: “If I drink the milk of these deer and goats, I will no longer be able to return home!” He suddenly opened the door and went outside. The animals ran away.
The mistress of the mountain, the red-haired girl, said: “I wanted to live with you. If you lived with me, you would become a big rich man. Why did you open the door?! If you want to return home, go this way. I won’t give you another beast!”
So the hunter returned home.

hunting legend of the Kumandins

Each person traced his origins to the ancestral mountain, the master spirit of which was the patron and guardian of life on clan territory. The Altai shamanists had special norms of behavior towards the owner of the ancestral mountain. The dependence of people on the sacred (ancestral) mountain was especially strong and unconditional. Its owner did not allow any deviations or violations associated with the presence of people here, not only in relation to himself, but also to the animals and vegetation of these places: he kept the shamans themselves at bay, for many of whom he was a patron (he gave them tambourines, etc. .d.). He observed the behavior of women who lived nearby. Women were not allowed onto the sacred mountain: a married woman was a stranger in her husband’s seok (clan), and her touching such a ancestral shrine as the sacred ancestral mountain could not go unpunished.

The spirit - Altai-eezi - was considered the owner of all mountain peaks and all of Altai. He was revered everywhere and in each locality they pointed out the particular mountain on which he lived, usually the highest. They also said that he lives on glaciers and in caves. The spirit of Altai is omnipotent and merciful to people. But, like all other spirits, he can punish a person: send a storm and bad weather in winter, destroy livestock, deprive hunters of success in hunting if people forget about the sacrifice that they must annually bring to the owner of Altai. A white ram with a red head was slaughtered for him, and he was treated to milk and chegen. Duality towards people is a characteristic feature of all Altai spirits, but human misfortune is not their “specialty”. Evil overtakes a person only in response to his disrespect, neglect and greed...

Water spirits

Master of flowing waters!
Your army is on birch bark boats,
Master of the blue sea!
Stormy blue sea
The gray horse is a victim to you!
We'll treat you to some araka that hasn't cooled down!
Don't put us in the water
Don't throw us into the sea
Like Katun, you laugh!
The Biya River is your nipples!..

The spirit of water was considered the creator and owner of all water spaces of Altai. Like other powerful spirits, the water spirit was not considered clearly good or evil. Everything depended on the person...

Along with the spirit of all Altai waters, the owners of each reservoir were also revered. It was forbidden to pollute “flowing water”, i.e. rivers, streams, springs with all sorts of sewage, household garbage, since the “owner of the water” does not tolerate this and sooner or later punishes violators with various troubles and diseases.

The springs flowing from the earth - arzhan suu, which were considered medicinal, were especially revered. Ribbons were tied to bushes or tree branches growing nearby, and coins were thrown into the arzhan. Staying on Arzhan required observing prohibitions: you cannot dig the ground near it, break bushes, tree branches, cut down trees, shout and swear: The owner of the water was described as a huge beast that breaks the ice on rivers in the spring with its horns and teeth and screams like a bull, like a young girl...

It was a long time ago. The present before, the former after. One young man saw in the spring, when the river was breaking up, as if on an ice floe, a girl was sitting, combing her red hair. After that young man: “What will be, will be!” speaking, he took the gun, took aim and fired, knocking the girl off the ice. That girl fell off the ice. Having fallen under the water, she screamed in frustration: “Someday the time will come - I will drag a rude young man like you under the water, even into a shallow river!”

Afterwards, when he heard what the mistress of the water said, that young man was very frightened... After some time, that young man forgot the anger of the mistress of the water, he crossed the river on a horse and the mistress of the water pulled him in:

In addition to the owners, all kinds of spirits and creatures could live in the water. To fight evil spirits, Altai shamans called upon water monsters - Abra and Yutpa, who lived somewhere in the rivers of Altai and whose appearance resembled snakes with four legs.

According to the Altai people, evil spirits could not move along the river against the current. They had only one way: down, to where the river flows into the mythical ocean, hidden somewhere deep underground or on its edge...

Cult of fire

One of the oldest cults is the cult of fire. Fire was revered as the deity Ot-Ene (mother fire), personifying the fire of the hearth. For a good owner of the ail, the fire mother appeared in the guise of a plump and kind old woman, for a bad one - thin and angry. In addition, her appearance changed in accordance with the time of day and even the month.

During the new moon she was a beautiful maiden, and during a bad month she turned into a very old woman. In the evening she is a red maiden wearing silk clothes, in the early morning she is an older woman wearing coarse clothes. If women at home sewed a dress, then scraps of material were certainly thrown into the burning hearth to dress the goddess of fire. If you ever saw an old woman in a red outfit in a dream, it meant that the mistress of the fire herself had appeared, and she must be fed during the day.

Mother Fire gave warmth and light, constantly protected the home and family from evil forces, brought good luck and wealth to the owner, and lived with the cares of the house.

It was considered completely unacceptable to desecrate fire, i.e. throw some kind of garbage or sewage into it, step over the fireplace.

On their wedding day, newlyweds poured fat into the fire of their future ail. The first pinch of the new brick tea was thrown into the fire. The first drops of smoked araki were dedicated to the fire. When slaughtering domestic animals, pieces of blood sausage or meat were thrown into the fire before eating. At dusk, at night, at the birth of a child after forty days, it was not allowed to take fire out of the village.

In case of illness, a person smoked himself with lit juniper, moving the smoking branch around his face. Fire also served as an intermediary between man and deities and transferred sacrifices to various spirits.

Altai shamans

It is difficult to say when shamanism appeared in Altai, many centuries ago.: But already in the 20s of the twentieth century, after the revolution and the separation of the Orthodox Church from the state, which led to a crisis in the Altai spiritual mission, many baptized Altaians returned to shamanism, rituals with domestic animal sacrifices. The slaughter of livestock as a sacrifice to spirits has reached such proportions that it has become a concern for the local authorities of the Oirot Autonomous Region. The ongoing collectivization put an end to the cult practice of shamans. For some time, shamanic rituals were still carried out in some places in a narrow circle of believers without a tambourine or sacrifice. Can we say that there is no shamanism in Altai now? No, most likely, shamanism simply changed its form of life:

Scientific ethnographic research on shamanism was carried out in Tsarist Russia, then in the USSR, starting in the 30s. And now in modern Russia, new studies of this regional religion - Altai shamanism - are published from time to time. To illustrate the rituals of Altai shamans, compilations from modern works are meaningless, the words of an eyewitness to the rituals, that’s what you need.

To perform sacrifices, the Altaians, like other Siberian foreigners, have a special class of shamans, whom they call kamas. Kamami are not only men, but also women; According to the Altai people, kama are born with an irresistible desire to perform rituals, i.e. play tricks. This title is not hereditary, and the son of a kama is not always a kam, and also not every kam has a kama as a father, but still the disposition of kama activity is to a certain extent innate, and if not in the son, then in the grandson or nephew. The urge to perform a ritual in a person is revealed by the fact that he cannot calmly endure the spectacle of a ritual, and even with the distant sounds of a tambourine, convulsions begin with him. These convulsions intensify over time and become so unbearable, that entry into the kama becomes inevitable for the unfortunate martyr. Then he becomes an apprentice to one of the old kama, learns chants and hymns, acquires a tambourine and is initiated into the kama rank. If this call to ritual manifests itself in a member of a family in which there are no Kams at all, the Altaians think, probably, there was some Kam among their ancestors. All Kams consider themselves descendants of one Kam, who was the first on earth to begin performing rituals. He was much more skillful and powerful than today. His name was, according to one legend, Kadylbash, according to another - Tostogosh; There are also legends that give him the name Kayrakan, Khan-Khurmos. This is the most ancient kam, the ancestor of the modern kams and the founder of shamanism, the first person on earth who jumped under the blows of a tambourine, and was far more skillful than today. They do not possess even a hundredth part of the power and knowledge of their ancestor, who was able to fly with a tambourine in his hands across large rivers, bring down lightning from the sky, etc. There is no need to talk about how he ruled over death itself: there was not a single dying person whom he did not return to life. There are numerous legends about him. One of them says that the khan, bored with the deceptions of ordinary shamans, ordered them all to be burned. “If,” he said, they all burn, there is nothing to regret: that means they were all deceivers; if there are true shamans between them, then they will not burn.” Gathered all the shamans in one yurt was covered with dry grass and brushwood and lit; but the fire went out, and in place of the fire there was wet mud; They piled up twice as much brushwood and grass, lit it again, and again the same result. Finally, for the third time, they piled up even more wood, this time the fire burned with the yurt and all the shamans who were in it, with the exception of one, who flew out of the fire unharmed with a tambourine in his hands. Altai shamans perform rituals with a tambourine in their hands. The tambourine consists of a rim on which leather is stretched on one side. The ritual is mostly performed after sunset, before the fire: first, the tambourine is heated over the fire so that the skin becomes stretched and the roar of the tambourine comes out louder. Then they throw juniper berries into the fire and sprinkle milk into the air. Meanwhile, the shaman puts on a special cloak and a special hat. This cloak, called a maniac by the Altaians, is hung all over, both back and front, with plaits of varying thicknesses and bundles of belts. The cords are sewn from multi-colored materials, vary in thickness from a finger to the thickness of an arm above the hand, and depict snakes, some of them with eyes and an open mouth. In addition, many small iron rattles are sewn onto the back and sides of the shaman. The shaman's hat is lined with cowrie shells and so-called snake heads and owl feathers.

When the tambourine is ready, the shaman, dressed in his cloak, takes it in his hands, sits by the fire and begins to beat it with a small handle, accompanying the blows with the singing of invocations and hymns. These blows are sometimes rare, sometimes more frequent, reminiscent of the trampling of horse feet. The shaman jumps up from his seat and begins to beat the tambourine, standing and dancing, or, more correctly, wobbling his body and shaking his head, because he dances without moving his legs. In addition, he either bends or straightens his torso, then strongly twitches his head, then tilts it, then hides it in a tambourine, then throws it to the side, as if exposing his face to a side current of air. With these with head movements, the owl plume decorating the shaman’s hat flutters wildly in the air; at the same time, the snakes or strands hanging from the cloak either scatter in a fan-shape around the shaman’s body, then gather together again, forming serpentine movements in the air. The shaman's assistant, who usually is his wife for a man, and her husband for a shaman, diligently continues to add juniper berries to the fire so that the smoke intensifies the stupor of the dancer. Sometimes the shaman becomes quiet, he sits down, the blows become rare, and the singing of the hymn is heard again. The tambourine sways quietly in the shaman's hand. If a shaman or shaman has a strong voice, a song resounds far in the silence of the night, similar to the plea of ​​an oppressed or powerless soul. This artistic part of the shamanic action is suddenly sometimes interrupted by the cries of a cuckoo, the growl of a bear, the hissing of a snake, or conversation in an unnatural voice and in an incomprehensible language. This means that the shaman found himself in the company of spirits. Then suddenly an explosion of frenzied ritual follows again - blows continuously rain down on the tambourine, the shaman shakes his body, his head spins in the air. Finally, he spins quickly, like a top, on one leg, and the strands stretch out almost horizontally in the air. If the yurt in which this performance takes place is small, then the movement of air produced by the shaman’s clothing and the snake-like plaits hung on it extinguishes the fire of the fire, the coals and sparks scatter in different corners. Sometimes the shaman, at the end of such a fit of fury, rushes at people, curling his fingers in the form of the paw of a predatory animal, baring his teeth and emitting a dull grunt, or falls to the ground and begins to gnaw on the heated stones lying around the fire. Tired, he stops; They hand him a pipe, after smoking and calming down, he becomes accessible and begins to tell what he saw and what he foresees in the future for everyone:

G.N. Potanin

When writing this section, materials from the Rare Book Fund and the local history department of the Shishkov Library (Barnaul) were used. Section leader - N. Zimin

I spent eighteen years of my life on the Malay Peninsula, catching wild animals; Returning to America, I wrote a book about my adventures. I have received many letters from readers with all sorts of questions: “What is the strongest animal in the world?”, “What is the size of the chest of a large orangutan?”, “Can an orangutan defeat an elephant?” Doctors wrote to me, interested in the causes and history of the common jungle fever that I suffered from. The elephant trainer asked me for information about training methods.

I had a lot to do. I sent a whole shipload of wild animals to the Sydney Zoological Gardens. But I really wanted to get a rhinoceros and several tigers and leopards, which the Hamburg Hagenbeck Zoo needed. I decided to go again to Trengana, which abounded in wild animals.

Arriving in Kuala (capital) of Trengana, I immediately went to the familiar Sultan. He was very happy to see me because I brought him a gift - a phonograph. The phonograph occupied him unusually. He had already managed to create the position of “master of music” in order to operate the barrel organ (equipped with a drum, cymbals and other improvements), which I brought to him on my last visit. The Sultan summoned the "master of music" and ordered him to make the phonograph play from a distance. The “Master” trembled with fear at the sight of a new, mysterious, like a spirit, creature that reproduced a human voice. The Sultan, however, was not afraid of anything and was greatly amused by the fear of his entourage. The banjo and the orchestra positively frightened them. But they really liked the laughter. The women, however, were delighted with everything.

I told the Sultan that I wanted to go into the interior of the country to try to catch animals. He wished me luck and offered me his people.

After a five-day journey up the Trenggan River we reached the last kampong (encampment) in the northwest. Not a single native penetrated further. There lay Bukit Hanta - the Mountain of Spirits. She had a bad reputation. I have long wanted to go to these regions, because, according to the stories of the natives, they abound in wild animals. But the natives said that there were spirits there. Anyone who dares to climb this mountain will either be eaten by a tiger, or - even worse - will be turned into a tiger...

When I started asking about the road to the mountain, I came across an impenetrable wall of silence. There was no point even talking about the Mountain of Spirits. I decided to fight superstition with the same weapon, that is, with the help of superstition, and told the whole village that I was a pauang (spirit charmer). Assuring the natives that from the day I was born I had never been haunted by any evil spirit and promising them protection and safety, I asked them only to go with me to the foot of the mountain and undertook to get guides from the Sakai tribe who lived nearby in the jungle, and spoke so confidently , which convinced the natives. In the end, I managed to gather a sufficient number of men who were willing to come with me. I decided to climb the Mountain of Spirits, if it is at all possible for a person, in the hope of finding some river flowing from there to the sea. After all, I was in the interior of the country, and if I managed to catch any animals, I would need to find means of delivery.

We reached the nearest kampong and found its penghulu (elder) in a state of great confusion. He was surrounded by women and children crying and screaming. He rushed from side to side, vainly ordering: “Hush!.. Hush!..”

He shouted to me: “Trouble, trouble, tuan (sir)! Oh, what a disaster!..”

I asked him what was the matter. His answer would have surprised me if I had not known the customs of these regions so well. It turned out that there had just been a terrible battle for possession of the durian tree, which grew wild in the jungle. The natives are ready for any feat, any sacrifice, just to get the extraordinary fruits of this tree. Four men and one woman were killed in the massacre, and two men and one woman were seriously wounded. The dead had just been buried. Now the elder had to go to Kuala and report everything that had happened to the Sultan. At this moment he was going to send the wounded to the capital to imprison them there. They lay right there on rough stretchers; their condition seemed hopeless to me. I was sure that they would not endure the road and would die before they arrived in Kuala. I told the elder so, but he replied that he did not care about the suffering of the wounded. If they die on the way, then this is the will of Allah. But they must be in the kuala, no matter whether they are alive or dead, otherwise the Sultan will punish him. As an elder, he is responsible for everything.

Desperate battles for the possession of durian trees happen there all the time. If such a tree is found on the border line, it happens that entire tribes exterminate each other in the struggle to capture it.

The fruit of this tree is a bit like a pineapple in appearance and size. It is encased in a green skin studded with hard, prickly thorns. Although the peel is very dense, it is easy to cut or tear off. The fruit itself is divided inside into five or six lobes, like an orange. Unfortunately, no one can try this fruit without visiting the jungle: it spoils too quickly and it is impossible to export it. The tree on which the fruit grows is similar to our elms, only its bark is smoother; it reaches sixty to seventy feet in height. When ripe, the fruits fall to the ground on their own, so the natives do not have to climb the tree to get them. When the time for ripening approaches, the natives build huts around the tree and wait. At the same time, they are very careful that the falling fruits do not touch people, since the sharp thorns of durian cause dangerous, bloody wounds.

These fruits have an extraordinary taste and smell. When a wagonload of durians is being transported, the smell can be heard long before it appears in sight. For a European, the smell is disgusting. It was so disgusting to me that it was only in the eighth year of my stay on the Malacca Peninsula that I dared to try it. The natives persuaded me:

Try it... ok... it will get hot.

But as soon as I smelled it, I turned my head away. The first time I decided to try it, I did it with the greatest caution, holding my nose. A group of natives gathered around me, they really wanted me to like their favorite delicacy, and they laughed at my grimaces. The first sip seemed dubious to me; after the second one I thought that maybe it was tasty; after the third I realized that it was very tasty. The softness of the fruit resembles cream; If you grind the banana pulp, mix it with an equal amount of heavy cream, add a little chocolate and heavily flavor it with... garlic, you will get a mixture reminiscent of durian. At the same time, the smell is extremely subtle and at the same time strong; before I left, I became really addicted to durian; and now, when I write about it, I have an unbearable desire to eat ripe durian right there, right now.

At the height of summer, both people and animals feel such a need for durian fruits that they go straight to some kind of frenzy.

As a trapper, durian served me very well: where it grows, there is a place for a hunting trap; no animal, apparently, is able to resist the temptation of its smell. The elephant rolls the fruit along the ground until all its sharp thorns are dulled, then it tears the fruit, carefully stepping on it, and eats first the pulp, and then the peel itself. Rhinoceros, tapir, wild boar, buffalo and deer trample it until it cracks. The bear, tiger, leopard and smaller animals of the cat breed tear the fruits apart with their sharp claws.

It is very funny to watch how a little monkey copes with durian. Monkeys, of course, do not have to wait for the fruit to fall to the ground, and it often happens that the baby monkey will grab the not quite ripe fruit and pluck it from the branch. But then the question arises: how to clean it? All you need is a small crack so that the monkey can just stick his finger through it, and then the peel will tear. The monkey climbs up the branches, throws the fruit on the ground and rushes after it. But it may happen that another animal located under the tree grabs the prey and carries it away before the monkey has time to jump from the tree. Then her screams are heard throughout the entire jungle. The screaming, noise and quarrels of monkeys often help to find a durian tree.

One kampong where I stayed had the rare fortune of having as many as four durian trees in its possession. It was surrounded by a high fence of bamboo, woven with reeds and lined with long, sharp teeth. This made the stockade inaccessible to the fallow deer and wild boars that abounded in the area. I once shot eighteen wild boars there in one hour.

But no fences protected from birds and monkeys, and it was necessary to come up with something, otherwise there would not be a single durian left. What no thorns or points could achieve was achieved by noise. The natives ingeniously constructed huge rattles from bamboo. A bamboo trunk, hollow inside, was attached to the branch of a durian tree, and the second one hung freely, but in such a way that if the rope was sharply pulled, the second bamboo would hit the first and produce a deafening noise. One of my favorite pastimes was to watch the children who sat down early in the morning in groups of seven or eight under each tree and took turns pulling the rope. It looked like a simple child's game, but its effect on the monkeys and birds was irresistible and caused them to panic. Later, in the afternoon, when the sun was at its zenith and the heat was unbearable, the monkeys and birds stopped looking for food and the children peacefully fell asleep.

It happens that the natives force trained monkeys to collect durian fruits in the same way as in other areas coconuts. When I first saw the monkey doing this, I was very surprised. That a monkey held by its owner on a long rope can be made to climb a certain tree is quite natural, but how can it be made to choose exactly the desired fruit? This seemed difficult to me. However, the monkey easily placed his paw on the first thorny fruit that he could reach and looked down timidly. But this was not the fruit her owner wanted. He pulled the rope sharply and shouted: “Tidak, tidak!” (No no).

The monkey touched another, then another...

Finally she got it right and her owner shouted, “Eeyore!” (Yes).

Great, but the fruit was still on the tree!

Careful so as not to be hurt by the thorns, the monkey twisted the fruit in one direction; from time to time she was forced to stop in order to quickly move her paws to drive the midges away from her eyes and nose.

When the stem weakened, she bit it with her teeth. The fruit fell down. You should have seen the monkey’s face at that time - it had everything: fear, impatience, and, finally, joy when the owner shouted words of approval to it.

We left the village where durian brought death, and continued our path to the Mountain of Spirits. With me were the elder, ten of his men, three of my boatmen and a Chinese fighter. We had to make our way through the virgin jungle. Each man carried thirty pounds of rice and dried fish.

After walking for about three hours, we suddenly emerged from the forest to the edge of a clearing strewn with clean sand. It stretched for one hundred and twenty-five feet. I was just about to go forward when Elder Wen-Mat grabbed me by the sleeve and exclaimed:

Beware, Tuan! Stripes of quicksand!..

He saved me and my companions from a bad adventure. However, I have never heard of animals dying in quicksand.

We moved forward in single file, ten men from the kampong leading us. Soon the front line began to loudly curse and shout. They came across sharp bamboo pegs, which the Sakai usually stick into the ground to protect themselves from a barefoot enemy. An unimaginable noise was heard: blows against a hollowed out log, screams, curses. Out of nowhere, people fell from the trees.

One-Mat shouted: "Don't shoot - it's me, One-Mat!"

He stood motionless and called the Sakai elder. He explained to him that I was a white raja and then made his salam (greeting). He said that I was under the protection of the Sultan, and then everyone made salam. They must all help me, no matter what I demand, otherwise they will incur the wrath of the Sultan.

If he hadn't protected me, the hidden Sakai would have shot me with their air tubes... An air tube that shoots poison arrows made from the midrib of a palm leaf is a dangerous weapon.

When we arrived at the camp, women and children scattered in all directions. It was not out of modesty: they were simply afraid of me. They had never seen a white man before. But although no one was visible a minute after my appearance, I felt that dozens of eyes were spying on me from behind the trees or from the thicket of foliage.

The natives communicate with the outside world through the elder of the nearest village, to whom they sell raw rubber in exchange for rice and dried fish. The elder conducts trade and is the representative of his village. He sells rubber in the form of balls: the raw rubber is put in hot water, it becomes soft like molasses, then it is rolled into balls and added layer by layer. And since it is bought by weight, pebbles are often placed in it. In this way the natives cheat the local traders. But they never manage to fool the Chinese. The Chinese takes a long, razor-sharp knife and cuts the ball in four places, so that the pebbles are exposed.

The Sakai are considered the original inhabitants of these places. They are darker than the Malays. Their hair is curly, often tangled. They are a restless, nomadic people who do not like to stay in the same place for more than a few weeks; they often migrate and build their high huts (like pile buildings) in different parts of the jungle. Instead of ladders, they use bamboo trunks on which they make notches. Men, women and children climb these pillars like monkeys. Instead of any clothing, the Sakai wear a piece of rough cloth around their hips, and the women wear a kind of apron or a piece of leather that hangs from their waist.

Sakai are very superstitious. Once I handed one of the sakai a razor mirror. He looked into it, then stuck his hand behind the mirror and, with his eyes wide with fear, began repeating the Sakai word, which meant “spirits.” The Sakai believe that the soul of the deceased remains at its burial site; Therefore, after the funeral, the entire camp collects its belongings and, in horror, goes away to look for a new place.

We, however, were not “spirits”, but completely living people, friends of the Sultan. So the Sakai allowed us to stop and camp with them. We chose four young trees to build a hut from. We had to cut down the surrounding trees so that in the event of a storm they would not damage our fragile structure. Then we made a canopy of branches about twenty feet from the ground. After that, we covered the building with a roof made of bamboo, which we took with us. Then our "tikars" - mats for sleeping - were laid out, mosquito curtains were attached, and our apartment was completely arranged for the night.

In all my adventures in the jungle, I had never seen such a mosquito hole. Every conversation was interrupted by constant “slap… slap… slap…” and curses. I wanted to escape under the canopy, but as soon as I lifted it for a minute to take my dinner, whole clouds of mosquitoes swooped in. Fortunately, I made sure that my people from Kuala and the battle were stocked with curtains, but Wen-Mat and his companions were simply exhausted. There were many crocodiles lying in the river below us. They opened their mouths and held them until their wet tongues, sticky as fly paper, were completely covered with mosquitoes and night insects. Then they noisily slammed their mouths shut. And again they opened it, like a living trap, and again they slammed it shut noisily - and so on throughout that long, sleepless, endless night. This sound was mixed with the incessant “slap, slap, slap”: it was the natives who beat the mosquitoes, fearing that they would eat them alive. The only thing that kept people from jumping up and running from these places was the fear of the darkness of the jungle. In the morning it was scary to look at them.

And yet the Sakai voluntarily lived in this mosquito hole, without any sign of mosquito nets: their skin was probably impervious to bites.

Using Wen-Mat as a translator, I spoke with Nazar, the leader of the Sakai. He said he had seen tracks of elephants, rhinoceroses, tapirs and tigers, and pointed in the opposite direction from where we had come. Nazar explained that they never went more than half a day's journey from their camp. He didn’t know how to get to Bukit Hantu:

No, no, tuan! No one goes to Spirit Mountain, no one has ever been there!

The leader looked at me with some kind of dull amazement. I made him promise that he would come one of these days to the camp of Wen-Mat, and promised him that I would show him how to set traps for tigers and leopards and how to dig traps. I was convinced that he was a wonderful master when it came to networks, snares and snares.

During this conversation, people prepared everything for our return journey. They were extremely happy when I gave the signal to set off. Going back seemed like a joke - the road was open to us. As we approached our camp, men, women and children ran out to meet us, frightened, sure that our unexpected return meant some kind of trouble on the way to the Mountain of Spirits. Having learned that everything was fine and that all our wounds were from mosquitoes, they began to laugh and make rude jokes; but we could not laugh with them: we were staggering from fatigue and wanted to sleep.

The next day, Nazar, the elder of the Sakai, appeared, accompanied by six men, to learn how to build traps. We built a crude trap and they watched with interest. The trap resembled a huge mousetrap: the ground served as the floor, and instead of wire there were stakes dug into the ground. Everything was covered with branches. We showed how the door works and why it slams shut as soon as the animal enters the trap. The Sakai watched our every move, and I could see from their faces that they grasped the essence of the matter. It was a practical lesson without words. Then we offered the Sakai a treat: tea in coconut shells instead of cups and white sugar. They saw all this for the first time and were afraid to drink tea, tasted it on their tongue and said: “It’s bitter.” We put sugar in the tea - they liked it, and they began to drink it in large sips, but they liked sugar even more; it seemed to them that it was wasteful to spend it on sweetening bitter tea. The Sakai rejoiced at the treat like children. They left us in good spirits and hoping to earn “ringgits” (dollars) by catching animals for the tuan.

While we were waiting for Nazar to return, we placed snares and snares in different places in the neighborhood, but without brilliant results. We waited for a whole week, when Nazar suddenly appeared. He ran at a gallop and shouted:

Tiger!.. Tiger in a trap!

We immediately began making a portable cage. It was made from branches and trunks of young trees. For the floor, we fastened them tightly and tied them with ratan (reed). The roof and walls were through: the branches were spaced one and a half inches apart from each other. All connections were connected with ratan. The natives did this work with amazing speed, and by the evening the cage was finished. It was long and narrow, that is, of sufficient size for a large tiger to fit in it, but such that he could not turn around. It was attached to two long poles, which protruded far forward at both ends. At one end of the cage there was a hole into which the tiger had to enter.

The next morning, at dawn, we set out for our prey. Inside the cage they tied a live chicken for the tiger's first treat in his prison... Nazar led us, and after about four hours we reached the place where he had set a trap. In the trap was a magnificent full-grown male tiger, about nine feet tall. The animal was in excellent condition - one of the most beautiful examples of the cat breed that I have ever seen.

We placed the cage with the entrance to the trap, pulled out some of the stakes from the ground and began to chase the tiger until it crawled into the opening of the cage. Closing the cage was already an easy task. In general, there is nothing difficult in transferring a tiger from a trap to a cage - for a hunter there is much less fuss with him than with a scurrying and screaming monkey.

Entering the cage, the tiger fell to the floor, pressing his ears tightly to his head and half-closing his eyes. His upper lip lifted, revealing his magnificent fangs. His breath hissed from his chest. The live chicken fluttering above her head irritated him. With one blow of his paw he killed her, but was too enraged to eat the chicken at that moment. In his best mood, if he had not been hungry, he would have started playing with her like a cat, tossing her around and imagining that she was alive and trying to escape from him.

Catching animals is not a sport for me, but a profession, but I have always felt the excitement of the hunt and always enjoyed the grace and strange habits of the animals themselves. This tiger was full of mystery, the mystery of his breed. I looked into his eyes, but he avoided my gaze; I tried to guess the degree of his ferocity; in captivity it would turn against him. It happens that caught tigers in cages eat their own tails. They do this when they drive themselves into a frantic frenzy. I have never myself seen such an attack of rabies, but one native described such a case to me.

I decided to handle my precious prize as carefully as possible. The carrying of the cage was entrusted to sixteen porters: eight Malays from the kampong and eight Sakays. One-Mat, another man with a gun, and I led the procession. The road ahead of us lay open. We got what we came for, and there was a festive mood throughout the little procession.

Suddenly, a roar and a scream was heard from the thicket of the jungle...

The squire quickly lowered my Winchester, turning around to hand it to me, but accidentally hit me with the muzzle so hard that I fell off my feet. I got entangled in a thicket of bushes and vines and tried in vain to get to my feet, while screams, screams and howls were heard all around. Raising myself halfway, I saw a huge mass rushing past me. The first word I could make out in this chaos was “badak” (rhinoceros).

"Badak!" - people shouted in every possible way in wild horror. Somehow I freed myself from the tenacious thicket of bushes and got back onto the road. The fragments of the portable cage lay in front of me; the tiger was buried under its ruins. A large wound gaped in his side, blood poured out of it in a stream, and with every breath he roared pitifully. His roar was almost drowned out by a terrible human scream. Three sakayas lay on the ground about three fathoms away. One of them was already dead, the other two were seriously wounded. The others shouted and waved their arms.

Everything happened so instantly that people did not have time to put the cage on the ground and run away. The rhinoceros burst out of the jungle, bent its head to the ground and rushed to attack. Trying to get to the tiger, the huge animal killed one sakai and knocked down two others. With one blow of his head, the rhinoceros smashed the cage like a toy, with his horn he tore open the tiger's side, and then the hundred-foot carcass dragged behind it both the cage and the tiger for four fathoms. Then, with a roar, he threw them away from him and, growling and grumbling, disappeared into the jungle. He probably did not even understand that, in essence, he had encountered an unusual thing: a tiger, which was carried in a cage, like a lady in an old-fashioned sedan chair. He simply smelled the tiger, dealt him a fatal blow and went on about his business.

The rhinoceros is a short-sighted animal, but it has an unusually subtle sense of smell. He always finds and attacks tigers by smell. He does not enter into a fight with an elephant. Both huge animals are afraid of each other, although, of course, the rhinoceros cannot cope with the elephant when he, having moved his trunk so that it does not interfere with him, uses his tusks. But the tiger cannot defeat the rhinoceros, and he does not even try to fight him: he does not have a weapon strong enough for this. His way of killing large animals when he attacks them is to break their necks, such as a bull. The tiger stands on its hind legs, and with its front legs it grabs the bull - one by the shoulder and the other by the thigh, then it grabs the neck with its teeth, throws back its head and jerks the bull's neck back and forth until it cracks. Of course, a tiger cannot do this with a rhinoceros: its skin is too dense. Therefore, he avoids meeting the two named animals in every possible way. In general, the tiger is far from being as powerful and fearless an animal as people think. And, despite the fact that the leopard tries to stay out of his sight, I think that two small leopards can easily cope with a large tiger. They can bite and scratch three times more in one minute than a tiger. I have not seen anything like friendship or alliance between dissimilar or even homogeneous animals: wild animals are instinctive enemies.

Our tiger, wounded by the rhinoceros, made desperate efforts to free itself from the cage. There was not the slightest hope of saving him. The only thing I could do for him was to reduce his suffering. I took my gun away from the native, who was making some senseless movements with it, and shot the beast with an explosive bullet. He coughed, wheezed, and died. I did not waste time on fruitless regret and took care of one of the wounded Sakai. He made a bandage from the cleanest scraps of his own linen and applied surgical splints from the fragments of the cage to the broken leg. The second sakai's back was so badly injured that I could no longer help.

Mid-spring is a great time to travel to the mountains. When planning a hike, study local beliefs so that if you meet the ethereal inhabitants of the mountains, you do not repeat the fate of the pioneers.

Old Boris, or Bob, was famous throughout the area. He lived in a lonely hut on the Karakol Lakes, at an altitude of almost two thousand meters. The only way to get to Bob was an eight-kilometer narrow path that climbs almost vertically to the Bagatash Pass. And yet people came and went to the old man in an endless stream.

We walked too: we climbed up the mountain along a narrow slippery path running through coniferous thickets, mountain rapids and blackberry glades. Halfway through the path, an icy stream crossed the path, and a young girl guide asked us to stop and listen. Feel the air, its taste, temperature, wind force. Soon we were to enter the kingdom of other elements, on the other side of the stream. A rippling stream of icy water, like a portal, transported us to the other shore, where we were greeted by cold, humidity, indescribably clear air and low, heavy pearl clouds.

This road is the only one leading to the lake region, which rests in a bowl between two ridges, far from human settlements. At the end of the path, a spruce grove awaited us, a blackberry carpet strewn with cedar cones, and behind the edge - the mirror surface of the first lake. We left the shady cool of the forest, entering the holy of holies of Altai - the valley of the Karakol lakes.

Seven lakes, connected by underground channels, permeate the mountain gorge in a chain and rise in steps to the snow-covered Bagatash Pass. Here the blinding sun disappears behind moisture-swollen clouds abruptly and without warning, catching even experienced guides by surprise. In this place filled with strength and energy, on the shores of the largest lake, lived the shaman Bob, who treated people from all diseases.

Travelers seeking healing left the old man's house with a smile on their face. No matter how much pain a person came with, a conversation with Bob brought him relief, because he knew how to point out truly important things and instill hope, making him forget about the disease. “It seems to me that shamans are just very good psychologists,” grins Ivan, a guide from a camp site on the Karakol Lakes. Many years ago, his mother, who then worked on horse trails, almost lost her life under the hooves of a mad horse. The animal smashed her head and broke her bones, as a result of which the woman fell into a coma for a long time. When the doctors had already lost hope and wanted to turn off the life support machines, friends kidnapped the woman from the hospital and took her to the shaman Bob in the mountains. And a miracle happened.

Having risen to her feet, Ivan’s mother built a tourist base not far from the shaman’s hut so that travelers could also become familiar with the secrets of the Altai mountains. When there were too many visitors, Bob packed his things and left to live out his life on Lake Teletskoye, where he died two years later, having managed to become the region’s champion in snowmobile racing. He was Russian, but the Altai people revered him as one of the last true shamans.

Shamanism is not just a belief. This is a conscious interaction with the world of spirits. Shamans are not just magicians, but mentors, confessors, healers, healers of soul and body. Altai shamanism was born from the mythical ideas of local residents about the unity of man and the natural world and that intermediaries endowed with a special gift must connect these two elements.

Ivan still remembers a wise old man who knew how to talk with people and spirits. “I still have medicinal mixtures that he himself prepared from herbs growing here in the surrounding mountains. He knew which plant relieved a sore throat and which one from migraines,” recalls Ivan.

The next morning we go up to the pass, to the mysterious Castles of Mountain Spirits. From the top you can see a necklace of mirror-like, tear-clear lakes and a forested valley covered with weather-beaten gray ridges. Behind us, the pass goes into the distance, towards a wide plateau, overgrown with dry yellow lichen, open to all winds. In the distance rise stone ruins, reminiscent of the fortress walls of ancient castles - these are what we will talk about.

Ivan tells us a story about Soviet travelers who once found themselves here on a rainy night. Darkness caught them at the pass, and in order to hide from the raging wind and rain, the tourists climbed into stone caves carved into the rock, like royal chambers. They say that even Genghis Khan, passing through the Altai mountains, ordered to build these stone mansions for himself, which were then inhabited by the spirits of the mountains. The tourists lit a fire and, having warmed up, went to bed. The next morning, neither of them woke up.

For many years, scientists tried to find out what kind of phenomenon led to the death of people and, not finding a reasonable explanation, decided to blow up the “locks” out of harm’s way. Ivan claims that the harsh spirits who punished the travelers for their unceremonious invasion still hover over the ruins of their possessions. I ask if anyone has seen these spirits. Ivan shakes his head and says that there are people who have a special gift - to see the “embodiment of the spirit.” For example, the one-armed old man Kurbashi, the oldest instructor of horseback riding in Altai. Now he lives in Barnaul and carves amazing paintings on wood. One day in the forest, Kurbashi saw the embodiment of a spirit, returned home and with his only hand carved the image that appeared to him on a tree.

A few years later, a young philharmonicist from St. Petersburg came to Barnaul. Seeing the image made by Kurbashi, the young man was horrified: without a doubt, he had once seen the same thing.

Ivan for a long time did not want to answer what exactly these two such different people saw, but finally said: “It was an old Altai man. An old Altai man walked through the forest and looked at them intently.”

Anna Efremova
Student at the School of Interethnic Journalism, Moscow