After a breakfast of steamed bread buns, pickled vegetable, cold beef slices and hot tea, we caught a bus up the mountainside to the base of the steps leading up to Viewing Fish Pavilion at nearly 3,000 feet, the most spectacular of all the lookouts in the region. It was a long but fairly easy walk up and the views to the milky aqua Kanas Lake, the grasslands and to Friendship Peak were fantastic. We spent some time at the top in the small pavilion with a crowd of excited Chinese tourists before descending back to the base of the steps.The scenery was so good and the air so pleasant that we didn't use our return bus tickets, preferring instead to walk down the mountainside on a winding dirt track that eventually led back to the village below. It was a very pleasant 90 minute walk through meadows of alpine wild flowers and we had the route to ourselves apart from one man we met who was coming up the track. We gave him our return bus ticket for which he was very grateful. The final section of the track at the base of the mountain led through a small Tuva Mongolian settlement of wooden houses. Just a little further on was the bus stop; from there we caught a shuttle back to our hotel.
