This report is about the tour: Ghost Valley 🗓 11–July 18, 2008
Memories of summer and the hike "Water and Stones" July 11-18, 2008.
This hike should have been called “Descents and Ascents” - this phrase very correctly reflects the mood of the hike. If we go down in the morning, then we go up in the evening, or vice versa, and so on every day:) So don’t think that it will be easy... But it will be beautiful for sure!
Immediately after the train, station, trolleybus Simferopol-Yalta, road and everything else, we put on our backpacks, walk the first 15 meters of the climb and find ourselves among the bright greenery of the forest. And somewhere off to the side of the path, under the stones, is the first source of water.
Another hour passes, and now the first climb has been overcome!!!
I want to photograph every step in the mountains, and every step in the mountains with a backpack I want to photograph even more so that I can remove the backpack as soon as possible:)
But now we have to go down! And, as it turned out, if you don’t run down the hill, but walk slowly and watch your step, you can find very tasty things, which are then fried and added to pasta and the result is a very tasty dish!
- Have you eaten? And now we're coming here! - says Volodya, our guide. Fear and horror are in our eyes, but practice has shown that this path can be done in half a day.
That day, while climbing, I was solving a problem that Yulia suggested that I solve so that the walk wouldn’t be boring:)
The son of the professor's father beat the father of the professor's son when the professor was not at home.
Who beat whom?
It turns out that when you go uphill and with a backpack, your head doesn’t think well:)
I walked for a long time and thought, wondered, repeated to myself like a mantra, and after lunch, I climbed a tree (why???:)) and shouted the answer from the tree, but Nikita didn’t hear the answer and is still deciding:)
We're on our way.
- What time is it?
- 8 am
- And in Moscow people are already at work...
Having descended from the mountain we stopped for lunch.
And a butterfly landed on me. I don't really like it when someone sits on me, but she was... she was weightless. I didn’t feel it at all. I walked and sat with her and I had a feeling of boundless happiness and a fairy tale. Blue, beautiful, then she flew around me for a long time.
We explore the surroundings
We appeared in the Valley of Ghosts at noon, so we ourselves frightened the ghosts with our stories. Who knows the real story about this valley? And we will tell you!
The result of our collective creativity:
A long time ago there was a village at the foot of the mountain. And there lived a beautiful young man in this village. And he loved a girl named Anastasia. One day they went for a walk in the mountains. And the glorious young man turned away for a minute, and when he turned around Anastasia was not there, but a stone stood. And he went to look for the girl. He searched all the surrounding caves and examined all the gorges, but he did not find his beloved. He returned to the village and the whole village went to look for Anastasia. But not even an hour had passed before the villagers, one by one, turned into stones. And the young man realized that his Anastasia had also turned into stone, but he could not understand which stone was his beloved. And so he still walks and looks for his beloved. And if he finds and kisses the stone on the lips, his beloved and all the villagers will come to life.
Frequently asked questions and answers while hiking:
“We still have a long way to go,” Valera often asked Volodya
“No, 1.5 hours,” Volodya almost always answered.
- Will lunch be soon?
- Yes
- Will there be pate for lunch again? - this is Yulka
- Yes
“Hurray,” Julia rejoices.
You might think that she really loves pate, of course yes, but the main reason: she carries pate in her backpack and after every lunch the backpack becomes lighter:)
The worst thing was that we saw the sea on the third day, and we had to walk for three days in the other direction from the sea. So we sat and enjoyed the view
And in a clearing with strawberries, a herd of horses came out to us! Wild, but cute.
They approached each person, allowed themselves to be petted, then pestered the backpacks and chewed the straps. ALL are unsavvy. We decided that they felt the salt in us, that’s why they licked us:) These horses were like something out of a fairy tale - they emerged from the forest and went into it, leaving us with a feeling of childish delight.
Since we were walking a little ahead of schedule, we had free time, which we spent on a walk on the plateau popularly called “table-mountain.” In one direction the horizon merges with the green of the grass, in the other with the blue of the sea, and very close by a jew’s harp plays and the wind blows in our faces.
“I want to eat something,” Lyuba sighs.
- Go and collect firewood. Without firewood there will be no food, I tell her.
- What is firewood?
Well, she’s so good at being a blonde!
Before the sea, everyone washed themselves in a warm and clean lake
Moreover, I didn’t want to leave the lake for the sea, and rightly so, because the sea turned out to be dirty and cold, but so desirable, because it meant that I no longer had to carry backpacks, not walk up and down the mountains, not collect and disassemble scarves every day, not swelter from the heat and much more, but only mountains can be better than mountains.
This summer we will go to Crimea again, and you?
Nikulina Anna.
P.S. More stories and photos from this hike can be found in my LJ .