Hello everyone!
One of the places that I visited in Russia was the Kapova cave or Shulgan-tash.
It is necessary to travel a very long way to visit this cave. There were a lot of tourists on the day we visited the cave. During the day, this place was visited by about 1800 people, which is a lot, given the distance of this place from big cities.
The cave is located on the territory of Bashkortostan. To reach it, you need to take a short walk through the territory of the Shulgan-Tash State Nature Reserve. During the walk, we got acquainted with the national craft of the Bashkir people – beekeeping - getting honey from wild bees, visited the honey museum…
Shulgan-tash or Kapova cave is a four-story cave in which rock paintings of the Paleolithic era were found. Research has shown that the oldest drawing on the wall in the Kapova Cave was made 36,400 years ago! It's just really interesting!
The entrance to the cave is a 30 meters high arch. In front of the entrance to the cave there is, at first sight, a small lake . Its width is 3 meters, but its depth is 85 meters! Many people consider the water in this lake to be curative. You can't drink it, but we washed ourselves with this water.
Since the cave paintings are greatly influenced by temperature and humidity, the upper floors of the cave were closed. My wife's father was in this cave 45 years ago, when all floors were accessible to visit. He told us how interesting it was on the upper floors, but less organized. Now everything has become more civilized, there is more light inside and more stairs.
We were only able to visit the first floor, but it did not affect us to be less impressed. We had to get dressed warmer because it is very cold inside, even though it was July. Inside we saw stalactites and stalagmites, rock carvings and heard from the guide a lot of different facts about this place. It is very interesting when you can see with your own eyes a cave where people lived more than 30 thousand years ago!
After visiting the cave, we did some archery. Previously, hunters in these areas got their food in this way.
Then we continued our journey. I like this place very much and advise you to visit if you ever happen to be in this part of the world.