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This report is about the tour: Orient Express 🗓 20–May 25, 2008
It was clear even before the start of the hike that the route would be interesting and difficult. We had to follow guerrilla paths and cross Karabi-yayla with its “lunar landscapes”.
Surprises for me began even before the start of the campaign because, having submitted an application a month in advance, as the “unit commander” Kirill had warned, I learned before leaving that no one expressed a desire to walk 75 km from Perevalny to Sudak! As Kirill later explained, after the peak of tourist activity in May, people decide to go to the mountains again, only in incredible heat and when water sources have dried up (July-August)! Thus, losing for yourself the beauty of flowering plateaus and yayls, not yet scorched by the sun!
Day one - Partisan.
We started together (note the number of participants in the hike) and reached from Simferopol to Perevalnoye. It was necessary to walk under the sun, along the plain, looking at the military fooling around on an armored personnel carrier. Then the ascent to Dolgorukovskaya Yayla began. This is where I felt the lack of acclimatization and running practice after last season. Well, never mind, wiping off and breathing heavily, the first line was taken. To be precise, I was the only one breathing heavily.
Along the Dolgorukovskaya Yaila we went to the Mound of Glory and to our first overnight stop, at the site of the partisan camp. There are so many monuments around dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War that we walked around, looked at and took photographs for more than an hour. While I was getting used to the Crimean air, which was too fresh for a Kiev resident, Kirill walked around a considerable area, photographed other monuments and even saw a deer.
They took water from a partisan spring, there was no mobile communication at all, and there were no people either, so the campaign was completely independent.
Day two - Chasing two birds with one stone.
The program of the second day included a transition to the Karabi-Yayla weather station. I would like to note that the peculiarity of this route and our hike was the trek for 10-11 hours a day (from the parking lot to the parking lot), the need to carry water with you for the entire transition (water is only available at the parking lots). A separate point of our program was the study of blood-sucking insects, commonly known as mites in the world. I had to look around, film and often take out these unpleasant creatures.
Leaving the Dolgorukovskaya yayla, we go to the Tyrke plateau and see the most beautiful mountain peonies (later I found out that this is a thin-leaved peony) against the backdrop of bright green vegetation. These are the advantages of the spring Crimean campaign!
Then we descended into the canyon of the Burulcha River, which pleased me with clear, cold water (although the “commander” did not recommend drinking from the river) and trees covering the already scorching sun. It was not difficult to walk upstream of the river and the journey was pleasant. But the war, which ended long ago, reminded us of itself with a shell that we found on the river bank, and because... We had no desire to make the surrounding area known with an explosion, so we took a photo, surrounded this dangerous find with white stones and continued our way up along the river.
Climbing the slope from Burulchi we reached the Orta-Syrt plateau. This is where space and beauty open up in all directions! Kirill knew that there was a monument “with an airplane” here and pointed it exactly to it. Here we stopped and had a snack. This monument is dedicated to the partisan airfield, which operated here since April 1942. until April 1944, rusty spent cartridges were piled up at the foot of the monument (as experts told me from photos of the cartridges, from Soviet rifles and German carbines).
Here, leaving him as the “strongest” to look after food and water, Kirill literally ran around the surrounding area, looking through interesting objects, found and examined a cave. He had no time to rest...
Then we had to look for a descent into the tract and cross to the other side, the weather station was already visible, but oh, how far away! We started looking for possible paths, but came across two hares jumping through the bushes with such a bang that we thought they had hit deer! We don’t understand what these hares were sharing so noisily with.
We couldn’t find the path, so we followed the “boar paths,” noisily breaking branches and slipping on leaves. It was not easy, not quickly, but we descended and climbed to the spurs of “Karabi-yayla”. Thanks to the fact that the “commander” had modern navigation aids, we knew that we had a long way to go before reaching the station. Again we scared away the hare and by 19 o'clock we reached the weather station, where there should have been water.
By the way, the weather station employee was the first person we met during our two-day hike! This is Crimea at the beginning of summer! The water there is imported, and therefore paid for, 5 UAH per person. The same employee suggested that we put up a tent just below the weather station and use gas to cook dinner.
Everything prepared by Kirill was very tasty and was eaten very, very much! Here at an altitude of about 1000 meters, at night we saw enough of the stars and satellites, the viewing latitude is very large!
Day three - Off-road.
The morning of the next day began with the fact that the weather station employee was not there, and the shed with the “life-giving moisture” was locked. This made significant adjustments to our water supply for the coming day. We left with tea left over from yesterday evening, and when the source would be, how long it would take to get to it, largely depended on our speed of movement.
I won’t say that Karabi-yayla impressed me as a “lunar landscape”. Rocky, grassy terrain, replete with karst caves, sinkholes, and saucers. The elevation changes do not allow us to see how far we will go and what is next, but the stone tours helped us find our way. The peonies delighted our eyes with their bright colors and it wasn’t that hard for us. And there was no need to worry about ticks.
We had to walk along to the northern tip of Karabi and go out to the forests of the Shaitan-kapu tract, and our final goal of the day was the tourist stop "Lower Kok-Asan". Having passed the yayla, we came out to its edge, admired the open spaces ahead in the area of the village of Pchelinoe, and went deeper into the forest. Once we found the forest road, walking was not difficult at all.
We had a chance to see a “SPA hotel” for wild boars, which is “maintained” by local rangers. To the left of the road we saw a muddy puddle (jacuzzi), a pit full of dirt and traces (mud baths) and a wooden salt shaker (buffet). That's how much care there is for the natives of the forest!
The transition further was not easy, because the routes marked on the map did not correspond to reality, and only thanks to Kirill’s experience we did not for long break straight through the forest through the branches and came out onto a very overgrown path. But it was a trail, even with ticks, but a trail! And they even found a spring that finally gave us something to drink, otherwise the supplies of tea from the weather station were already critically low.
From the Shaitan-kapu tract, we climbed onto the Belogorsk-Rybachye highway and for the first time in 3 days walked as much as 2 kilometers on asphalt. At the entrance to the tourist parking lot "Nizhny Kok-Asan" a beautiful fox was scared away. She was dressed in a chic outfit for this time of year, but was matter-of-factly looking for “goodies” among the trash. This site has been known since the times of the Soviet Union and routes passed here, so we found shelters and an equipped spring and places for fireplaces.
Day four - Guinea pigs.
Here in the morning we were in the rain for the first time. This rain caused some inconvenience while we were passing through the Kok-asan canyon. The stones along the Kuchuk-Karasu River, the cornices, were wet and slippery, there were a lot of fallen trees, numerous transitions from bank to bank, jumping over waterfalls and from stone to stone led to very great tension in the muscles and required the greatest attention so as not to lie between the stones or fall into the river ( Video from the canyon).
All these “strains” were compensated by the meeting with the “mountain pig”. Kirill called me, walking in front, I turned around... The surprise was indescribable. A white domestic pig, stepping over the mud and stones of a mountain river, not paying any attention to us, 5 meters away, goes about its business. Having gone around us, crossing the river again, she began to climb a steep slope, falling through, but continuing to gain height and leaving us, the “tourists,” who were left in a great mood!
Then we admired the most beautiful small waterfalls and baths with clear water, there were fireplaces everywhere nearby, people were relaxing... Even further there was a meeting with another aborigine. The cat accompanied us for 1.5 kilometers from the canyon to the forestry. For which she was rewarded with pate, and we had a civilized snack on a bench.
Having rested, we continued our long journey and along the road we came across the small village of Povorotnoye, about which I had the subjective opinion that there were more pigs there than people. The village is very small and we only saw about five people, but there were about 30 pigs, probably the main profit of the local residents...
We moved on at a very fast pace, because we did not know where we could stop and where night would find us; we had to reach a place with water and gain a lot of altitude. We succeeded completely. By 19 o'clock we reached the Lower Shalen pass, saw civilization in the distance and were able to talk on the phones. The site was found near a small lake with boar tracks, without a spring, but with a hole in which they collected clean water for tea and porridge. We sat by the fire for a long time, looking at the fire and discussing that today we had successfully completed a very large part of the route.
Day five - Life in the bush.
The next morning we walked through the tourist camps “Masks” and “Voron” to the Ai-Valyk tract. Since there were a day left before our target time for the end of the hike, Kirill decided to walk the tract to the village of Lesnoye, where the route to Sudak is. In the area of \u200b\u200bMount Koshka, a view of the distant sea and Sudak opened up, where we were supposed to get to tomorrow. We walked easily, along a road that sometimes resembled a tank training ground, but there was water in the Akinak spring and we reached Lesnoy successfully.
But it was not easy to find a parking space. You can’t stand on the edge of the village, there are no parking lots in sight, so we had to wander along the slopes, stumbled upon a cemetery, wandered into bushes full of mosquitoes, but there were no better options.
Day six - Civilization.
I am grateful to Kirill for his attention and tact, because two strangers went on a hike, and 5 days on the route passed without conflicts or emotional conversations!