Urals' Nature Reserves (Minus the Cave but Honouring the Wild Bee)

---

In the Ural Region one of the popular destinations is the Kapova Cave (Shulgan-Tash) with its prehistoric wall paintings. I’ve decided to visit the cave, but, given the lack of public transport on the final short 30 km section to the cave, I decided to join a guided tour, and a real success it was, but, damn it, I saw no interiors of the cave. I’ll try to make the story as long as possible, including every major or minor detail. This entry adds to the previous pictures of the Urals drawn in “Iremel Twice” and “Abzakovo”.



I found a three-day bus tour with Tengri Company, offering a visit to three Ural nature reserve, with a comprehensive visit to the cave and its area. I paid the price in advance by a card transfer (very convenient, just a couple of clicks – for me it is very important to pay travel expenses in advance). It was also necessary to print out, sign the agreement and send a photocopy.



The starting point was Ufa, so I got up early in the morning and took a bus to Ufa, where our minibus would await the group by 10 o’clock. People were from different places, such as Moscow and Samara, and some other localities I didn't memorize. First of all, our guide suggested us seeing the monument to the Bashkir hero Salavat Yulayev because all the people were from other cities than Ufa. I have been to that place two times, but didn’t mind visiting it once again and enjoying the views and the story of monument creation.



The guide checked up the list of tourists, and we started. The road became awful soon after leaving Ufa, and continued being awful for almost the whole 300 kilometers. Such a road needs no description, it must be experienced on one’s own. But, notwithstanding, we felt well and nobody vomited. The terrain changed to hilly quite soon after leaving Ufa. I hoped the trees would be already green, to make the picture livelier, but that was no problem because the main sceneries featured evergreen fir trees and pines mainly, with the bare hardwood trees not spoiling them.



Reaching the settlement of Inzer, we made a lunch stop where I had a substantial meal while many other persons simply drank tea with a pie. The hills grew larger and snow could be seen in many places, and spring rivers and rivulets were beyond their banks. We then made a short stop by the roadside and the guide told us about the South-Ural State Nature Reserve. Iwillbringforthsomeinformation.



It was founded in 1978 for protection and study of South Ural’s mountain-taiga ecosystems and is located in the central, highest portion of South Urals in the Republic of Bashkortostan and Chelyabinsk Region. On its territory, several mountain ridges, such as Mashak, Zigalga, Kumarda and Yamantau are located, with the mount Bolshoy Yamantau (1640 meters) being the highest peak of the South Urals. I think it cannot be easily visited because near it is a restricted-access town of Mezhgorye where some secret defence things are supposed to be located.



In a short while we made another stop at a viewing site, but it was under renovation and muddy all over, while the nebules somewhat obscured the panorama, but anyway it was good to make stops for rest and better hearing of guide’s narration. Several kilometers before the final destination, our attention was drawn to the Bashkir village of Kagarmanovo with the grave of Shagali Shakman in an old Muslim cemetery. Let us search the web for data about him, because he was of importance for Bashkirs as a nation and their voluntary joining Russia far back in the XVI century. He was head of Tamyan breed, one of the originators of the petition for joining the Russian State.



Finally, the village of Kaga and the Tengri Tourist Base was reached. The village was founded in 1740 when the Kaga Plant was built for iron making. The plant burnt down completely in the summer of 1911, ruining the village’s economic significance. At present, Kaga dwellers are involved in agriculture and forest management, tourism, and work at enterprises in the nearby villages. The Tengri Baset is housed in an excellent old timber building with spacious rooms and corridors, and is of wood everywhere. I saw skis, skates, bicycles for rent. The roundabouts offer excellent opportunities for travelling and leisure, such as horse riding, cycling, trekking, picnicking, skiing, rafting. I will take pains to arrange a winter skiing trip there with an addition of horse riding perhaps. They have washstands with a tank of cold water, a ladle and a bucket below the sink where the wash-offs are accumulated.



The group accommodated in large room of two tiers, with twin beds on the first and mattresses on the second; I chose the second tier to be somehow out of the hustle. It was very Spartan, sleeping on a simple but comfortable mattress. We had a meal and then gathered for a walk to a hill. It is allowed to ask for a second helping if you want, and you can also drink tea outside the standard hours of meals.



The base stands on a hill, so we descended it to reach the village. We saw a church and a water reservoir. I felt giddy while walking the walkway around the water dumping arrangement and looking at the water jets rushing down. The small-scale hydraulic power plant provides electricity for the whole village.



We entered the village, seeing horses, cows, hens, sheep, walking uphill to enjoy the views over tree-covered hills enveloping the river, and the village houses spreading before our eyes from the height. Snow-striped hills were seen in the far distance. Soon we entered the pine forest and I went a bit in advance of the group to enjoy the silence and think my own thoughts. It does not happen often when one is satisfied with every second of the journey, and I felt so glad of my decision to go here.



We emerged to a clearing in the wood, where from a rock the vastness of the forest far ahead could be seen, and the guide promised us that we’d still reach even a better viewing place. I actually did not think at all about wonderful views, when I planned this trip, so immersed I was about in thoughts about the cave. It was very dangerous to walk on the rock edge, because one’s life might not be spared if one fell.



One can, I guess, jump with a parachute from this viewing point – it is a steep high rock near the loop made by the river. Breath taking. It is the river’s loop, perhaps, that makes the place so special, and the soft fir trees look like a silk blanket. All of us were excited about the place and took lots of photos. As the excitement cooled down a bit, the group scattered here and there and we spent some more time on the rock, doing what we pleased. Then we started going back, I again in advance, enjoying the complete silence of the wood. The thing is I have long legs and find it hard to keep up with a short pace. Of course, I made stops to wait for the group. We returned to the base at 8 o’clock and had supper, and then – to the Bathhouse! (Also included in the price, but only once). You can never compare a bathhouse with a shower or any other sort of bathing or washing. I went together with the bus driver. It was so hot inside! One could not spend more than two-three minutes in the steam room, it was as hot as hell, but as pleasant as paradise! Even drops of resin dripped from the ceiling.



Our next morning began with a drive to Bashkir State Nature Reserve, founded in 1930. In 1951, it was put out of existence, and forest cutting began, but in 1958 the reserve was re-established. The nature reserve is mountainous, with ridge peaks smoothed and wooded. The reserves most precious insect is, I’m sure, the wild Bashkir bee (Apis mellifera), making, as Winnie-the-Pooh should remark, the truest sort of honey. We visited the Museum of Nature, seeing some graphics about the nature reserve, samples of minerals, animals, nests, birds, plants, and trees. Then we went to see deer (maral) – but the three of them were afraid of people and immediately repaired to the very far end of the fold. The museum employee told us about their efforts concerning the maral population (as I remember, wolves did their best to cut down the deer numbers). The task was to make the deer, brought from Altai, get accustomed to the place and mate with the local deer. Then the reserve’s employee showed us a ‘treasury’ of findings – skulls of different animals found on the reserve territory. It is required that each found skull be preserved and studied. Animals were not killed! I almost at once got out of the place, not liking the sight so much.



Here we are again, on a viewing area on Bashhart historic/geologic (and ecologic) trail. The view of a wooden tower at the hill top reminded me much of Poon hill on the Annapurna base camp trail, but of course its scale was incomparable. We then drove to the village of Starosubkhangulovo and the final 30 kilometers of difficult earth road to the cave’s museum complex on the territory of Shulgan-Tash Nature Reserve. Theroadwasanythingbutpleasant.



Shulgan-Tash Reserve was created in 1958 as an affiliate of the Bashkir Nature Reserve, and became independent in 1986. The main hero is the Bee – pure-bred indigenous population of the Mid-Russian honey bee, otherwise named the Burzyan wild-hive bee. The affiliate was the world’s first area guarding indigenous wild bees. I might have mentioned somewhere that Bashkirs had wild-hive beekeeping as one of their main occupations.



We had a hearty lunch of buckwheat and fried chicken before the excursion. Like the bolt from the blue, I heard the news that, most likely, we’d be absolutely unable to enter the cave because of the flood – the cave river flooded the entrance portal. I was very much disappointed, as everybody else, because it was the cave I longed for. I rather dislike when circumstances make me return to a place, if I fail to see something. After the meal, we started our three-kilometer walk to the cave entrance. We were at least going to see that! On the way, we saw the small mammoth grotto (there is a Russian animated cartoon about a small mammoth searching for his mother, with a song with the words “It cannot be that children are lost”), an apiary, wild hives, and the bee museum. I listened very attentively to the narration about wild-hive beekeeping and bees’ behaviour.



The development of wild-hive beekeeping in Bashkiria was facilitated by specific natural conditions – the abundance of lime and maple forests. Moreover, the local folk mainly engaged in nomadic cattle breeding, hunting and money gathering, the forest being intact. As forests were cut down in the XIX century, undisturbed forests remained only in remote, almost roadless spurs of the Ural Mountains. Really, you cannot even not easily get to the cave, you either have to have your own car or hire a taxi, but the most pleasant way is of course rafting down the river. Wild-hive beekeeping, known already in the Ancient Rus, means the keeping of bees in tree hollows where they make honey and are disturbed only once a year (only a part of the honey is taken away, to prevent bees from starving). Hollows can be either natural or be gouged out in thick trees.



Then we visited the cave museum where the guide told us a lot about the cave’s history, its grottos and various other things. It was a poor though informative substitute of the cave itself, with a 3D digital tour available on a small touch pad in the museum and also on a website. Most of the cave is closed for tourists in order to preserve the ancient drawings because the human body tends to adversely affect the interior microclimate, so the calcium melts and flows over the drawings.



The whole path lay near the Belaya River and I noticed how fast the river current was! There were beautiful tree-covered and bare rocks near the cave, a huge entrance portal, and the tumultuous Shulganka rivulet. Having seen the entrance, we all went back, me alone thinking hardly of how to arrange a return trip to see the cave interior. A comprehensive story about the cave will be told, I hope, in July this year.



On the next day we visited the Kaga church (notable for its architecture and some frescoes) and heard all about its history, and then visited the village museum within the excursion “History of Kaga and Ural Iron-Making Plants”. The various museum items can be seen in the photos. The museum guide sang us several folk songs, and, frankly speaking, they were touching almost to tears. We then went to the Sazhelka holy spring to drink water. The trip was coming to a close. The village houses were distinctly mirrored on the water reservoir surface. Finally, we had lunch and drove back to Ufa.



In Ufa, I went to Mir Shopping Mall and had a pizza, bought food for the train journey to Moscow, and stayed at the train station, had shower and stayed in a comfortable chair in a separate hall for a modest price, watching the film ‘Air Force One’. The he train departed at 1 o’clock past midnight.

---