Maya Erlenbaeva is mapping sacred sites for the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai. She has spent the last two years meeting with elders and visiting sacred places around Kosh Agach and recording detailed information and locations on maps. Maya’s colleague, Chagat Almashev, explained: “Russians don’t recognize spiritual places, they’re intangible. So our strategy is to ‘passport’ sacred sites, to record information that will validate them in the Russian system, with every detail properly recorded. Then they will exist—they will be real.”

After we interviewed Maria by the fire in her yurt, with a brilliant sunbeam shining down from the hole in the ceiling, she invited us to visit a sacred spring in the mountains nearby. Maria wanted to perform a purification ceremony for Maya and to show her some standing stones above the spring.

We drove across rugged country and climbed into a beautiful valley. Maria built a fire and offered milk as she whispered prayers and sang. Chagat, Maya and Maria prepared prayer clothes which each of us tied to a tree next to the spring. After hiking up into the hills, Maria showed Maya a field full of standing stones and carefully explained each one to the diligent sacred site mapper. We will have to wait for translations to know what Maria told Maya, as we filmed the whole scene without any idea what was going on.

After we climbed down and a chill breeze whistled up the valley, Maria insisted that I take off my clothes and bathe in the frigid waters of the sacred spring. It was a necessary ritual. She and Maya sat down by the fire and turned their backs as I followed the shaman’s instructions. I don’t think they peeked, but I could hear them laughing.