Mount Narodnaya, up to the highest peak of the Urals
Thanks to my Facebook friend Maciej Besta from Poland, we are able to do virtual tours to the highest peak of the Urals. Even though the peak is not too high - 1,894 metres (6,214 ft), I doubt, I will ever dare to get there because…well, take a look…
Today is probably below -40C. with the wind chill factor
The expedition was launched in winter 2011 by 4 Polish explorers. It was the first Polish winter ascent of Mount Narodnaya and probably the first winter traverse of all the way from Inta railway station (a town in the Komi Republic) to Narodnaya (on foot)
Mount Narodnaya is located in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and is the highest point in European Russia outside the Caucasus.
Maciej Besta: “The exact distance from Inta (a town in the Komi Republic) to Narodnaya along the truck route is 150 km. When we were going to the mountains we covered part of the distance on a truck. But, when we were coming back, we were going only on foot. I did the distance in 6 days (the last day was 50 km of non-stop march), the rest of the group did it in 7 days. However, it is essential to know that the conditions on a route were pretty OK - the snow on route was hard thanks to good weather and trucks.”
Let's the virtual tour to Narodnaya (photos and interesting comments by Maciej Besta):
Pancake week of Maslenitsa
This Sunday is the last day of the Pancake week also known as Maslenitsa. Maslenitsa is a pagan sun festival in Slavic mythology, celebrating the end of winter. The weather in Yekaterinburg didn’t indicate the imminent end though. It was -7 with heavy snows in the morning. But colorful Maslenitsa in Kharitonovsky Park was in full swing.
It’s not only about eating pancakes – symbol of the sun. Maslenitsa also suggests snowball fighting for children, fist fighting for grown up men, sleigh riding and sledding. At the end of the party the straw effigy of Maslenitsa is put to the flames of a bonfire. The main events were held on the ice of the lake in Kharitonovsky Park. The ice is still very thick and it will remain so untill April.
This Sunday is also called Sunday of Forgiveness, so don’t be surprised if a stranger comes up to you and says ‘Forgive me for everything’.
Enjoy the photos and forgive me for not sharing the tasty Altay honey with you that I’ve bought there!
Hot springs in cold Tyumen. From the Urals to Siberia
Living on the border of Europe and Asia, Yekaterinburgers tend to look westwards. Though sometimes it’s worth taking a look to the east to arrange a weekend in cold Siberia. Namely, in the mineral hot springs outside Tyumen.
Tyumen is the nearest Siberian city – 340 km from Yekaterinburg (about 4.5 hr by car if you do 120km/h) Take Sibirski Trakt (sometimes it’s also called Tyumenski Trakt) and simply drive straight on all the way. Tired of partying in the Urals my friends and I decided to take a trip to heat up our bones on January 3. Frankly speaking, the only thing that could lure me to Siberia in the middle of winter was the fact that their springs are hot, I mean really hot +45C all year long. We, however, took an old longer road to Siberia. It was bumpy but our first stop in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha was definitely worth it.
- Saviour Transfiguration Church in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha was built in 1823 in Siberian baroque style
Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha is a small village and an open-air museum of wooden architecture. Local carpenter Ivan Samoylov gathered abandoned chapels all over the Urals and restored them in his native village
Our next stop was in Irbit - the only town on our way where we could have a lunch before submerging in healing mineral waters of Tyumen. Irbit was a disappointment both culture- and food-wise. What was once the biggest fair ground in Imperial Russia trading with tea and furs, is now a row of grey shabby houses with no infrastructure. All eateries were closed because of winter holidays. After New Year celebrations local supermarkets looked like in the worst times of war starvation: empty counters with only frozen vegetables to offer. Meanwhile we were frozen too. Siberian frost was getting more and more apparent: if it was -10 in Yekaterinburg, closer to Siberia it was already -22. Interestingly, the shelves with vodka were all full of bottles. Probably, the citizens of Irbit drink something else, but we chose vodka as the only remedy to get warm, animated and to forget about hunger. No wonder, the only photo taken in Irbit is a bit of a blur:
- Although Irbit is not worth a visit, there is one thing to attract foreign tourists: famous bike Urla is still being manufactured at the Irbit motorcycle factory.
Honestly, we wanted to have a sober day but Irbit forced us to drink and apparently this is the only way to finally enter Siberia. In the old times Siberia wasn’t only an exile but also a symbol of freedom to runaway surfs and to the persecuted in Moscovia old-believers. There is an old Russian saying: Good bye Russia, I’ve crossed the Urals, I’ve run away! With the same feelings we crossed the marked border between Ural and Siberia and also between Sverdlovskaya Oblast and Tyumenskaya.
Typically Ural faces: where Asia meets with Europe. Larisa of semi-Asian Bashkir origin (left) and me with Belarusian roots (right)
We did find a nice café near the border. Café Ogonyok provided tasty meal, welcome prices and interesting (Siberian?) ambience:
And finally hot springs!
Directions: before entering Tyumen at roundabout take exit to Roschino. In 3-5 km watch for a sign on the left “Verkhniy Bor” Hot springs are outdoors swimming-pools with mineral water springing from 1.233 m depth. Mineral water contains bromine and sodium chloride. Water temperature is +45. Hot springs are open daily until 4 a.m. Entry fee - 200R. There are indoor changing rooms, cafes and saunas. However, the place may be packed during public holidays. Then you can drive further down the road (20-25km) to get to the second larger pool near Pionerski Lager (Children Camp). That’s where we went to. There is no infrastructure though, so pull up to the pool as close as possible. You’ll have to change clothes in a car and what’s more to run good 30 meters to the water in your bathing suit! That was a challenge with outside temperature -25. What’s more, one of my friends left slippers home and had to run barefoot. Needless to say, he sobered up immediately!
Useful tips: - bring your towel, slippers and a woolen hat if the air temperature is -10 or lower
- stay in the water for 15-20 min. then take a break before bathing again
- you will feel very relaxed after bathing so a driver should consider having some rest before driving back
Hotels to stay:
Istochnik Hotel (3.000R a night, includes entry fee to the hot springs)
Sosnovaya Hotel (1.600R a night, 3.100 for a cottage for 3 persons)
Baza Zeya (860R for a 3 persons bedroom)
plus you can book any hotel in Tyumen
Happy New Year, part II. Old Style Celebration in Nizhni Tagil
New Year celebration in Russia does not stop until mid. January. The party is not over yet for there is Staryi Novyi God (Old New Year) to be celebrated on January 13-14. A strange word combination doesn’t seem meaningless to the Russians at all. While Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on January 7, it’s only logical that New Year comes a week after. And it used to be so until 1918 according to the Julian calendar. After the revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks replaced it with the New Style Gregorian calendar used in the western countries by shifting 14 days backwards. Russian Orthodox Church, however, decided to stick to the roots and still live in the Old Style. Hence, Christmas and New Year are celebrated in January.
Old New Year is not a national holiday in Russia, thanks God! The official 10 day holiday in January is already much too much. New Year in Old Style is just a good excuse for TV channels to repeat their New Year shows. It’s also a good chance to eat up the leftovers of the Christmas party and hit the last bottle and to ease the post holiday shock. Of course, in some cases instead of easing the shock one can end up in rehab.
You can celebrate Old New Year in the main square of any Russian city – the party ambience with a Christmas tree is still there. I took pictures in the Theater Square of Nizhni Tagil for you. It is the second largest city in the Mid. Urals. With dressed up horses and a drunk accordion player, this New Year fair looks very much Old Style!
Christmas in Church on the Blood
January 7 is a Christmas Day in Orthodox Russia. The main celebrations in Yekaterinburg are held in and around Church on Blood in Honor of Tsar Martyr Saints' murder. Every year the best Russian ice sculptors come to create breathtaking symbols of Christmas and Mother Russia's saints all made of ice.
Tsar Martyr Saints
This year the most prominent sculpture is no doubt the ice icon of the Romanovs family with young Tsarevich Alexey in front. Wish you all Merry Christmas!
Here are some more pictures, Iv'e taken today:
Ice Town 2011 in Yekaterinburg
Every winter right before New Year holidays the main square of Yekaterinburg turns into an ice town with a tall Christmas Tree and a skating rink in the middle. Little Yekaterinburgers go riding, skating, taboganning while adults take photos of magnificent ice sculptures.
This year the theme of the ice town is Cosmos as 2011 is 5oth anniversary of the first flight into outer space.
On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a citizen of the Soviet Union piloted a successful flight into outter space that lasted 108 min. Gagarin and his famous smile (above picture) became the simbol of all that was good about the USSR. The other symbol is an apple tree from the popular Soviet song on cosmos invasion: 'Apple trees will soon bloom even on Mars' Many apple trees are already blooming in the Ice Town of Yekaterinburg.
The bitter Ural weather doesn't scare anyone (it was -20 when the photos were taken). Just put on a warm parka and a thick woolen scarf to make sort of a balaclava like these little tiwns below. By the way, look at the glistening things on the snow sculpture behind them - those are coins!
It's a new tradition - people stick five or ten copeck for good luck and wish to have a prosperous new year. You can stick one too! There's plenty of time as the ice town is open until mid. February.
Here are more photos and more ice sculptures created by sculptors from all over Russia. Welcome to outer space!
The most popular Russian drink
Yekaterinburg Museum of Local Folklore on Lenina 69 opened new exhibition dedicated to the most popular drink in Russia. On a cold December day when it’s -30 outside this drink keeps you warm and the drink is chai (tea). You could have thought it would be vodka. Well, vodka is certainly the most famous Russian brand but as for popularity here’s simple statistics: I haven’t got vodka at home (I’ve got a bottle of tequila, yes, but no vodka), my brother has only some beer in the fridge, my neighbors don’t drink alcohol at all. But I bet you’ll find at least two or three sorts of tea in every Russian home!
'Merchant's wife drinking tea' by B. Kustodiev, 1923
Tea came from China that is why the Russian name of the drink was derived from cha – a common pronunciation in Northern China. Chai traveled via Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tobolsk and Tyumen finally to the Ural town of Irbit (204 km from Yekaterinburg). The annual Irbit Winter Fair was the second largest in Russia with fur and tea brought from Siberia and Asia. It took a year and a half to deliver tea to the Ural Region on camels’ and horses’ backs then by ships. Here in the Urals tea would be packaged in finely decorated boxes and sent further to Moskovia Region. Ministry of Tourism of Sverdlovskaya oblast is now developing a new route: Great Tea Road, which will be a good opportunity to visit some off the beaten track places in the Urals and Siberia.
The symbol of the Russian tea ceremony is a big iron samovar. The whole family would gather around a hot shining samovar in winter, thus a samovar in Russia played a similar role as a fireplace in the English houses. The Russians like it piping hot that’s why they would sip tea from saucers. Gold-rimmed saucers cool down tea very quickly. Russian noblemen however found this way vulgar and inappropriate. They copied the English tea ceremonies and had their morning tea with cream.
Samovar was invented by the Cossacks as a portable kettle during their exploration of in the Urals. Russian tea from samovar is accompanied by jam and baranki - ring-shaped dry biscuits
In the Soviet times tea was delivered mainly from India when Khrushchev made friends with Indira Ghandi. Tea industry was booming especially under dry law. Young people celebrated dry weddings drinking tea. But let’s not idealize those days – vodka was often poured to the boiled water in a tea cattle, disgusting but at least alcoholic.
Before tea got to the Russian Empire people had brewed herbs and made zbiten. This traditional Russian drink is becoming more and more popular nowadays and you can find it in some cafes of Yekaterinburg or can make it yourself: for 1 big cup take 3 tbsp of honey, 3 tbsp of sugar, 2 bay leaves, 2 cloves, some ginger. Boil 10 min. Drink piping hot and -30 outside will not bother you anymore.
Note! If you want to tip a waiter in Russia, you leave na chai (it means small money for tea)
Public transport in Yekaterinburg
My foreign friends in Yekaterinburg keep asking me the same question about public transport. Car is not always a good option – some central streets are very narrow and they are even narrower in winter when there are only two ruts in snow. It seems that Yekaterinburg has a good transport system with many buses, trolleys and trams. But does it work well when you don’t know the city and can hardly speak Russian?
First of all, there is no determined timetable for public transport. You just go to the bust stop and hope for the best. While buses and trolleybuses stuck in traffic jams every now and then, trams are more reliable. However, Russian drivers and renowned for being terribly impatient so they often use tram tracks to overtake the others and block the traffic completely. Note that some trams have weird routs. For example, if you take Tram 3 form the train station to Lenin Avenue, it doesn’t mean that you can get back to the train station by the same tram as it runs one way in circles. Even after 10 in this city I get perplexed by their routs so it’s a good idea to ask (in Russian) people at the bus stop or a conductor in a tram where it’s heading to.
Those who have already been to Russia know about marshrutkas (minibuses). They duplicate bus routes and run 
quicker though not safer. Marshrutkas belong to private companies that tend to hire unqualified emigrants from the former Soviet Republics as drivers. They don’t always know Russian, let alone Russian traffic laws. Still the main problem is that in order to make more money marshrutkas drivers overwork sometimes spending twelve hours a day behind the wheel.
Let’s not forget about the metro. Yekaterinburg Metro used to be listed in the Guinness Record Book as the shortest underground in the world. Now that it’s got 7th station, it isn’t famous anymore but is very short all the same. Local metro stations are good for sightseeing. They are decorated with marble and Ural gems and they are not as crowded as in Moscow.
If you travel by Trans-Siberian and arrive at the Main Train Station you can jump into any trolleybus. They all go to the city centre and stop at Church on the Blood. Or you can use metro from Uralskaya station to Ploschad 1905.
Public transport can be complicated for foreigners. On the bright side of things it’s cheap: 18 roubles and you can pay directly to a stout lady-conductor in a bus or a tram. Besides, public transport in Yekaterinburg and all over Russia never stops functioning even when it’s -35 and roads are covered with one meter of snow!
What is the Ural weather like?
One word - unpredictable! Right, ok, it's not changing here every 30 minutes like in London but within a few days the weather may change dramatically. When I was younger and could party all night long, I remember one day getting to a night club in my flimsy summer dress and the following morning I had to jump over snow on my way home. And that was in June! This is of course an extreme example and it doesn't happen every summer but...
In the Middle Urals we mainly depend on the winds, whether it's a lovely warm wind from Kazakhstan or bitter Arctic wind or you-never-know-what-it-gonna-bring western wind from Europe. These are literally winds of change that change the Ural weather in a day.
Today (Sept. 2) it's +10, the forecast for tomorrow is +27. Looks like Indian summer is coming! Because my birth day is in mid. October I know exactly that as a rule it first starts snowing on 13th-15th of October but this snow will quickly melt down. The whole region will be covered with snow by the end of November. Then again, last year we had + temperatures until mid. December and skiing resorts were very unhappy with that.
Average winter temperature is -15 -20. It's very pleasant actually because the air is dry. So don't be afraid to go out for a walk at -15, just don't forget to put on winter boots, a fur hat, a shuba (Russian fur coat) and be ready for changes. New Year is the most popular holiday in Russia. Last year it was spoilt by severe cold -35. People had to stay in and drink. Athough a few years ago New Year was accompanied by zero temperature and our beautiful Ice Town in the main square of Yekaterinburg turned into a grey slush.
Winter lasts until end of March. April can be tricky: sometimes warm, sometimes miserable with occasional snow. Spring (and we talk here about a green season when trees and flowers are in bloom) begins somewhere in May and be prepared for something between +5 and +25. Not really a helpful piece of information, eh? As for summer, until this year I could have said that it's rather cool +17 +22 with many rains and a week of hot sunny weather if you are lucky enough. The summer of 2010 however was unusually hot and dry all over Russia with melting asphalt in the city and fires in the woods.
To cut the story short, when going to the Urals just hope for the best and check out the weather forecast one maximum two weeks ahead because the rest is a mystery...
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About the Project
AskUral.com is the blog dedicated to my lovely region known as the Urals or the Ural Mountains in Russia.
My name is Luba Suslyakova. I am based in Yekaterinburg (Russia), and I would love to share useful information about my area as much as possible and be your travel adviser.
Just keep asking me via the contact form and I will come back to you with answers!