I and my Red Bench housemate Sylvester, a Russian-speaking, philosophising French poet (undertaking a very feeble attempt to stop smoking in an effort to remove superficial, inessential things from his life), were persuaded to go and volunteer in the Altai Republic. The Altai mountain range extends across southern Siberia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. It is one of the poorest parts of Russia, has no railway, and is only just opening up to tourists.

Since Sylvester’s budget for three years is almost the same as mine for three months, spending money was not really an option. Instead we hitchiked and spent three days walking along roadsides, picking up lifts in dark gleaming cars and rusted vans with no seats, also picking up the occasional old man in need of a chat.

The first evening we were dropped twelve kilometres outside the city of Barnaul and went to stay with a couple, Anton and Liza, friends of a friend of Red Bench. They live in one room on the sixteenth floor of a new turquoise apartment block; they have a tiny bathroom without a door, and the flat’s one tap is in the bath. We were shown their belongings, which included a bazuka, blueprints for a nuclear bunker from 1984, and a mentos tube containing seven and a half years’ worth of toenail clippings. After dinner, we all trooped to Anton’s mother’s flat in the next door block, where we sat on the balcony, smoking and drinking tea, and then were taken to another flat where we were expected to wash.

We drank beer and ate salted fish until midnight when a friend arrived to take us for a drive. She turned up the music until the bass thumped through the entire street, and we tore up and down Prospekt Lenina. ‘What can we show someone from London?’ asked Liza. Administrative buildings, broken fountains, an illegal brothel, gangs of gopniks (‘the Russian equivalent of chavs’), and more administrative buildings. Ten litres of beer and several trips to alleyways later, we returned home, crammed into the bathroom for a final cigarette, and pulled out the bedding and briefly slept.

The next morning, after a long search for wellington boots without heels, and after a breakfast identical to the previous two dinners, we set off towards the River Ob. A warm wind howled and blew furiously – it was wonderful. To begin with we didn’t have much luck hitchiking, since we hadn’t got the right pose  and it looked like we were selling things, but by 10pm we finally made it to Gorno-Altaisk, capital of the Altai republic. A cafe full of Turkic Altai faces was still open, so we hung around until closing time. Then we wandered through the pitch black streets until it started to rain, and took shelter under the porch of a shop. Out came the sleeping bags again and we stared at the crossroads, where a smiling politician gazed down on us; a tree, lit up by traffic lights, had turned into a clown-faced Pinnochio, gobbling and chattering in the wind.

Drunk men would walk past, stop, stare at us in a confused way and hesitate, before walking away or staggering forward. I had some sense of self-preservation, but Sylvester was perfectly happy to sleep; when needed he would politely explain that we had no money and give them directions to the bus station, while I tried desperately hard to stop myself laughing out loud. As the people began to disappear, I was left with only the wind and the ever more animated and cheerful Pinnochio. Gradually it grew light and the outlines of mountain appeared through the cloud. We set off at 5am, just as the drunk men started returning, and were soon picked up by a Ukranian man late for work. He invited us to his garage for Israeli coffee, we were introduced to his father-in-law, and discovering his shop had no electricity, he took us home. Sweet strong coffee couldn’t have come at a better time.

We passed through smaller and smaller villages, the cars getting fewer and fewer, until our final lift to the village at the end of Lake Teletskoe. The couple was silent and the wife looked especially glum. ‘It’s a dump’ was the only thing they had to say about the village. When we arrived it was just beginning to rain, and we sat in a cafe for three hours watching wild horses graze outside as it switched rapidly between sunshine and thunder and hail.

At last a small boat sped towards us, and we rode back across the lake for an hour until we reached a small peninsula, hidden behind which was a little jetty and a cluster of wooden houses at the foot of the mountain. It was a tourist eco-village that takes on a few volunteers alongside the summer staff. And it was paradise: only mountain behind and lake in front.

Lake Teletskoe means Golden Lake, and is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Russia; its water is sacred to the Altai people, but more recently has acquired New Age fame as being the gate to Shambala. The air is pure and the water is completely clear. Every morning I drink and wash in the stream which runs down from our waterfall. All you can see is forest, a few snowy mountain peaks in the distance, and water. We live in a small attic room above the banya, so every evening the rooms fill with the smell of birch. Glancing into someone else’s room, I saw animal skulls, knots of driftwood, crystal rocks and stones from the lake, and the wall was hung with rifles. All I have to do for this is hammer a few nails into decorative rope or peel some potatoes.

But there is nowhere to go: we are stuck on this little peninsula, the steep mountain behind forming an enormous wall that is impossible to walk or climb. I can’t help thinking it is just like an earthly paradise. Or perhaps it’s more like purgatory. Having crossed the great lake we walk through the forest, and returning, we remove every piece of clothing and inspect ourselves for ticks. This allows for a healthy dose of daily introspection.

It’s not a question of whether you have any ticks, but how many are on you, have you been bitten (do you want to go to hospital or risk it), and are there any still on you. I have been bitten at least once, and the following 72 hours were spent in a mild panic and state of hypertension. But I didn’t die and I didn’t go mad. Though I’m not quite sure how I would know if I had gone mad or how anyone else would know. In fact, just the paranoia about ticks is enough to drive anyone mad.

Tiny flowers and huge clouds of mosquitoes mark the arrival of summer. Already it is too hot, but it is still snowing. I find this weather extremely confusing.

Little has happened, but we do now have a primitive running water system! The cows go off every morning, goats roam the streets, and the forest is full of birdsong. One house in the village still flies a ragged hammer and sickle. I have seen a man suddenly pull down his trousers to pick off a tick, and another man showed me a small plastic bag in which he was storing ticks until the evening fire when he could burn them.

Red Bench celebrated its first birthday for the second year. I couldn’t quite work out why, but it was probably a branding exercise (see my videos below…). I went cycling through the forest (not the real wild taiga though according to the pale northern hippies) and cartwheeled, and went and helped in the village bakery. But in my excitement I fell off the bike and sprained my arm.

In the evening of the birthday, we took the red 60s hippy bus to the lake, all sitting cross-legged on the floor. We set fire to the driftwood and listened to psychedelic trance until the children started screaming to go home at 3am. It was cold and boring and my arm really hurt, but I did get to hear some amazing throat singing.

I am now abandoning the trans-Siberian route to go to the sacred waters and mountains of Altai.

Zavyalovo is a large village in Western Siberia two hours from Novosibirsk.  I arrived by bus with two German students also heading for the same place. We crammed onto a bus which was already full, but more and more kept squeezing on so that by the time we set off along the bumpy track, we were all awkwardly hanging in each other’s faces, breathing in an alcoholic air. Everyone looked old and had large hands and fat fingers, and even the teenagers had furrowed brows.

We arrived at Red Bench, a set up describing itself online as a ‘family project’, which turned out to be more family than project. Three year old Vera, all curls and brown face, showed us around the ramshackled collection of wooden huts and outbuildings, and we were then taken into the yurt for lunch. Dreadlocked Dima, Vera’s father, put on some music (my heart sank when I heard the tuneless sounds pumping out of the speakers) and with a sad smile he talked about the village’s dislike of hippies.

We guests have a little wooden house of our own, no running water but a very effective stove, thick walls and doors padded with quilts. The kitchen has a small old fashioned wooden sink that you fill up from an electric pump outside; it empties into a bucket which must then be emptied into the toilet, a rather nice squatting hole housed in what looks like a brightly coloured chicken house.Every night we water the seedlings on the window sills, brush the earwigs off our clothes and beds, and check ourselves for ticks.

The village has a tarmacked main road, but is otherwise a sprawling mass of wooden buildings. Of chief importance among these, especially in winter, is the banya: ‘No, we don’t have shower, we have BANYA’  said Alya (mother and manager of Red Bench), as though mentioning something sacred. It is a small wooden hut with two rooms; in the larger one is a stove to heat a large vat of water which fills the room with steam. You go in and lie down on the wooden bench and soon begin sweating, the air so thick and fragrant with pine and birch it can be difficult to breathe, and you just relax. The ritual is supposed to include being beaten with branches of birch, but I haven’t tried this yet. When it all gets too much, you splash yourself with cold water and go into the other room to cool down, or better still, outside to rub yourself in snow. It is such a warming, relaxing, cleansing experience,  I don’t know how I will possibly be able to go back to showers!

We are supposed to be fed here, but people are poor, life is tough , there isn’t much food. We eat leaves from the garden for lunch – dandelion, nettles, chives, rhubarb (or some non-poisonous version). Vera and I wander around the garden eating all the weeds, spitting them out if they taste inedible or poisonous. And we mustn’t be too enthusiastic in our weeding of the fruit bushes or there won’t be enough to eat.

However, aside from tinned peas and beans, the food is nearly always excellent – warm milk from the cow next door, a neighbours eggs, a friend’s sourdough bread. Best of all is the honey – thick, dark, flowery honey from the Altai mountains, and there is an entire milk churn of it. It has become a drug.

This is the time of year for birch juice. You tap a hole in the trunk, stick a straw in, hang a bottle underneath, and by the end of the day you have a few litres. It is very refreshing, slightly sweet, but doesn’t keep well, so at the moment we are turning the leftover into kvas.

To begin with our work was to clear the field. It was satisfying, idyllic, pastoral work,  where we could break for birch juice by the river as the birds of prey flew low overhead. But we’re not allowed to work too hard (‘it’s not our way here’). Each day we have a nominal job, like weeding or cooking or babysitting, and then we have leisure time for as long as the children aren’t screaming.

Just before midnight at Easter, I went to the small village church which was completely packed. I squeezed in and stood listening to the choir of village women warbling in a rather lovely way as the priests intoned. A group of men carrying processional icons and loaves of bread gathered at the back, and we all poured out into the starry night carrying candles, bells ringing, and we walked around the church singing. We re-entered and the Easter liturgy began. At some point I decided I had had enough, but just at that moment an old lady came up with a skirt for me to wear, saying it was a holiday and insisting I stay with such a kind smile I couldn’t leave. When the women rushed forward for the eucharist, arms crossed on their chests, I realised I knew them from the bus.

Once we had all kissed the silver cross and the priest’s sleeve, benches suddenly appeared in the middle of the church and everyone brought out their Easter food – homemade kullichs and paschas decorated with lit candles, painted eggs, even chocolate eggs, loaves of bread and sweet buns. We and all the food were sprinkled with holy water and everyone shouted the Easter responses, looking so happy, and then everything was packed away as quickly as it had appeared, and we went out into the early morning light.

We were allowed the day off work, so we lay outside under the perfect blue sky. Later, we drove cross-country to Zavyalovo lake for an Easter picnic, past beaver’s dens, birch forests and taiga . They say Russian cars are built for Russian roads, but even this track was too much when we came to one particularly deep ditch. So our driver got out, picked up a tree trunk, dropped it in the dip, jumped on it to smash it into pieces, filled the dip, and drove over it – all in under a minute. We finally reached the lake, which is small by Russian standards, but is 100 km wide and is called a sea. Until the mountain snow melts, the lake is emptier than usual, revealing long beaches and enormous trunks of driftwood

The next day it snowed. I and my new French housemate retreated indoors to the fire, but the Russian men just lit the banya and went fishing – it’s the best time to go: no mosquites and no ticks. But it turns out that part of the river has no fish.