Underground megalithic complex and bell caves of Hurvata Midras (Adulam National Park) and Luzita (Israel) - Land before the Flood: disappeared continents and civilizations. Bell Cave Caves of the Southern Urals Bell Cave

There is a whole cave city in this place. In some guidebooks this place is called “Serpievsky Cave City”.
Most of those who visited this place were shown only two large caves (Mayskaya and Kolokolnaya), a couple of grottoes and the Ring Rock and that’s it! And I'll tell you how to find all the other objects. There are at least 2 more caves there that are worth visiting.


The order of objects here is as follows (from right to left on the map):
Mayskaya Cave (Serpievskaya-1), "Small Serpievsky Grotto", Kolokolnaya Cave (Serpievskaya-2), Skala-Ring, "Big Serpievsky Grotto", Vodyanaya Cave, "White Queen" Cave (Serpievskaya-3). On the opposite side of the road there is another cave - Straw. I don’t recommend even trying to go there. She collapses due to highway. In addition, I heard that in Solomennaya there were cases of gas that was unsuitable for breathing.

2. Map of the location of the caves. Please note that the White Queen cave is located away from the main complex. They usually can’t find it precisely because they don’t know that they have to go quite far.

From the photo where the caves are marked, it is clear that a dirt road approaches the caves. Friends, let's not drive a car into a clearing! There is convenient parking next to the highway. Everyone has alarms, no one will touch your car without you noticing.

3. Forest on a rock, in the depths of which there are caves.

4. 200 meters from the road, and you are standing on a rock located in the middle of ridges covered with taiga.

5. View of the Sim River in early spring. The ridge that runs on the other side of the river is called the Ridge.

6. If you look to the left while standing on the rock, you can see the straight line of the road.

In the middle of the rocks, there is a steep descent to the river. From the descent to the right there will be the Mayskaya and Kolokolnaya caves. You won't confuse them with others. Below I will provide photographs of the entrances to all the caves.

7. Entrance to the Mayskaya cave (Serpievskaya-1).

8. View from the cave.

9. Immediately after entering Mayskaya, a long and rather low passage begins. It’s more convenient to move here the way chimpanzees move. Speleologists call this method of movement a “crawler walk.”

10. Until April, stalagmites made of ice are preserved in the entrance part of the cave.

11. In the far part of the passage leading from the beginning of the cave, the ceilings are covered with mondmilch. This is a special state of calcium - plate-shaped crystals. The substance feels like cottage cheese and you can squeeze water out of it. Unfortunately, the visitors ruined everything.

After a small but unpleasant selfish act, we find ourselves in a huge hall covered with white scum.
This the only place in a cave where you can stand up to your full height!

12. Great hall.

In the hall there is a huge mountain of stone blocks. Over many centuries, they became covered with calcite crust, which made them slippery. It is most convenient to climb to the top along the right side of the mountain.

13. View from the top of the mountain. Look how heavily the boulders are overgrown with sagging.

14. Ceiling slabs hang overhead. They are so smooth that it is difficult to believe that this is a creation of nature and not man. There are a lot of white streaks on the walls.

15. In the wall of the grotto opposite from the skinner, a piece of the wall fell out. The destruction in this place continues. Every time I see fresh stones and clay under the hole. One day, a second entrance to the cave will open here.

Between the Mayskaya and Kolokolnaya caves there is a depression in the rock, the arch of which is covered with soot from fires. This is the "Small Serpievsky Grotto". Primitive people lived here and burned fires, and modern savages are not averse to smoking ancient stones.

16. "Small Serpievsky Grotto".

The Kolokolnaya Cave (or Serpievskaya-2) is famous for the fact that religious services were held here and the cave was used as a temple. They say that scientists found drawings here primitive people. Now they are all hidden under a layer of soot and inscriptions from contemporaries. There is a lot of soot in the cave. The soot is left behind by torches that travelers used to light their way.

17. Entrance to the Kolokolnaya cave.

There is a legend that a large bell used to hang in the cave. Supposedly that’s why it was called Kolokolnaya. Personally, I think this is not true. The entrance to the cave, if you look from the inside, is very similar to a bell. Look at the following photo.

18. View from the Kolokolnaya cave.

Not far from the entrance, the cave divides into two passages. You can go any way. They connect after 15..20 meters. At the junction there is Big hall.
In the right wall of this room there is a passage leading to the second floor.

19. Go to the second floor.

There is nothing to see on the second floor. It's dangerous to climb there. You can easily fall down from a decent height. But if you climb to the second floor level, you get some good photographs from below.

20. Moves.

The floors of the cave are covered with dense clay. It was compressed over many years of intensive visitation. There are a lot of broken bottles and cigarette butts in the clay. The scoundrels don't stop, unfortunately.

21. In the area shown in the photo there are mysterious artificial notches on the ceiling slab. They say that in the grotto where this slab is located, there used to be an altar.

By the way, modern people also carry torches, which puts me in a state of complete misunderstanding! Flashlights cost pennies. But people stubbornly continue to breathe fumes and smoke the walls of caves.
Nature doesn't give up. In some places, fresh sinter formations began to appear on top of the soot. The cave hides injuries received from people.

23. White streaks on the wall.

A narrow, sooty passage leads to a small crack, from which we find ourselves in the destroyed gur baths.

24. Once upon a time, water flowed here from one snow-white bathtub to another. At the bottom of the baths lay cave pearls. Now everything here has been smoked and broken down.

25. Those who did not give up and climbed through the narrow hole to the very end will find a huge swelling, similar to a woman’s breast.

26. Plan of the cave.

In the second part I will talk about the Vodyanaya and White Queen caves. And also about the Rock-Ring and the “Great Serpievsky Grotto”.

Continuation

Shouldn't we go to the underground cities? See the unprecedented halls hidden from strangers, dip your palms in the icy water of the lakes, admire the fantastic patterns of calcite deposits and bizarre limestone sculptures created over the centuries.

Yes - these are caves! Dark, mysterious, alluring with their unique beauty, ancient secrets and treasures hidden in the depths.

This coming weekend, frosty and invigorating, you shouldn’t sit at home, but rather rush to natural Park"Serpievsky Cave City" and become a conqueror of the underground kingdom. Moreover, winter - best time to visit the caves!

Just a warning, caves are not for neat people. The stone walls and floor are wet and dirty, but beautiful and... unusual. It is not always possible to move in them while standing, and often even to walk on your haunches or crawl on your knees. Sometimes you have to lie down on your belly and crawl. Crawling, crawling and crawling...

But today the story will be about two caves, where new impressions do not require the skills of Plastun movement.

Cave city

The valley of the Sim River is famous for the abundance of a wide variety of caves. There are more than 150 of them! But the most popular and easily accessible are located near the village of Serpievka, Chelyabinsk region. It is these caves that are called the “Serpievsky Cave City”. underground city stretches along the river bank for 15 kilometers! Karst caves are located here one after another. Among them there are funnels, and failures, and niches, and arches, and grottoes. IN large caves underground rivers flow, forming lakes.

Serpievsky Castle is not only famous a tourist route, but also a unique archaeological site of world significance, since in many caves and grottoes traces of the presence of primitive people were discovered and many bones of prehistoric animals were found.

Caves are ideal for ordinary tourists, not accustomed to cramped caves and manholes, but very curious tourists. Kolokolnaya, Mayskaya and famous all over the world Ignatyevskaya.

Conquering the underground kingdom

The path to the caves begins from a steep cliff on the bank of the Sim, from where a picturesque view of the pine forest and the river valley opens.

The first cave that you will meet on the way is Mayskaya. The entrance to it is wide, but you need to go bent over. But the children are just the right size.

Inside, at a distance of about one meter from the floor to the ceiling, there is constant fog, which settles as moisture on the ceiling and walls and immediately turns into a snow cover, similar to large white moss.

The clay floor of the cave is decorated with unusual decorations for the winter. Water dripping from the ceiling gradually creates transparent columns of ice that dot the entire floor. Ice stalagmites look like rock crystal crystals that flicker and shimmer under the rays of lanterns. A very unusual sight! At other times of the year you will not see such beauty!

The entire cave is essentially one large corridor. The exception is the hole at the end, through which you need to go on all fours or crawl. He leads into another large hall. Mayskaya Cave is easy, it is impossible to get lost in it.

On the way to the next cave, Kolokolnaya, we will meet a couple of small grottoes in the rock, unremarkable, but nevertheless we need to look at them with one eye and be amazed at the beauty of our native land.

The second cave is quite spacious, with a high ceiling. It is impossible to get lost in it, because the cave has only one main passage.

The entire floor of the cave, as in Mayskaya, is strewn with ice columns. But there are much more calcium deposits and limestone figures here, turning the smooth, torch-smoked walls into incredible paintings.

People with a good imagination see in rock patterns fossilized echoes of the distant past of our planet: ridges and bones of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, trunks and branches of giant trees and ferns, shells of prehistoric mollusks and even prints of unprecedented paws and claws.

However, who exactly lives in the cave are bats! Small brown creatures hanging from the ceiling can be easily spotted by lifting their heads and lighting up the upper walls. Mice hibernate during the winter, so be careful not to disturb their long sleep.

Once upon a time in Kolokolnaya, in its very depths, there was an Old Believer church and services were held. According to one version, the cave got its name because of the bell that hung in the back room. To make it ring, you had to pull the rope hidden at the entrance. Only initiates could know about it. Thus, the caller warned others that “one of their own” was coming into the cave. On one of the rocky ledges there is a bell that rang during church services.

There is also a hole in the cave, about eight meters long, which can only be overcome by crawling. The guides say that this tunnel was one of the elements of ritual initiations, through which boys climbed in pitch darkness, symbolically passing through the birth canal, saying goodbye to childhood and already becoming adults.

In our times, the Kolokolnaya cave has not lost its mystical appeal either. And still serves as a place of worship higher powers, judging by the candles placed in the hall and the symbol of the sun-Svarog on the stone in the cave.

They say that scientists have found drawings of primitive people here. Now they are all hidden under a layer of soot and inscriptions from contemporaries.

Near the Kolokolnaya cave there is a small rock arch called Ring rock, and under the arch lie two stones carved in the shape of hearts, which bring happiness to lovers if a certain ritual is performed.

There are many legends and traditions associated with caves, mountains and rocks in the Urals. They intertwine tales of Old Believers-hermits, and belief in magical stones and wonderful places. In the same Kolokolnaya there are stones that, according to legend, give male strength, treat women’s problems, help with infertility, cleanse the body, heart and soul. Believe it or not is a personal matter. But local residents they sincerely believe.

And finally

Underground travel has its own charm. You enjoy the adventure in pitch darkness (the dim light of lanterns does not count), from unusual place and atmosphere and come to the surface realizing yourself as a dungeon conqueror, because everything here is REAL. Here, as in the popularized tourist caves (Kungurskaya, for example), there is no foppish concrete path, no electricity that goes out right behind the tourists, no annoying screams of organized groups delivered by Ikarus every 15 minutes - only genuine caves, as they were hundreds of thousands of years ago and you.

By the way, not far from these two caves there is a very famous Ignatievskaya Cave. A whole Art Gallery Paleolithic era - there are only two such caves with so many ancient paintings in the world - one is located in Spain, the other in France. And, in addition, here is the greatest treasure of the Ignatievskaya cave - the miraculous Ignatievskaya Mother of God, created by nature itself. But that story is for the next article.

How to get there?

From Ufa we take the Chelyabinsk highway, past the city of Sim, to the fork to Kropacheva. We turn right at the Serpievka sign and drive to the village. We pass it, and right behind the “ancient” ruins of a farm, which cheerful tourists dubbed the local “Stonehenge,” there will be an exit from the road to a pine forest. We leave the cars and go deeper into the forest. After 200–300 meters there will be a rocky cliff and several equipped gazebos and fire pits. You're at the place.

Immediately after the Small Serpievsky Grotto, the Kolokolnaya cave begins. Their entrances are separated by a small wall; perhaps they will someday be connected or, conversely, were once connected.

The entrance to Kolokolnaya is high, and then there is a high corridor. You can walk through almost the entire cave without bending down even once. Friends walked along the main gallery, and my son and I walked through a narrow rounded hole; we had to crawl almost the entire time. As a result, we met with them in a large hall.

There are many small stalactites and stalagmites in this room; apparently, the large ones have already been broken off, and traces are visible. From this hall there are a couple of narrow passages ending in dead ends.

The Bell Cave, like Mayskaya, has one main corridor; it is simply impossible to get lost in it. Just like in this cave, almost all the walls of the corridors and manholes are smooth, as if polished by regular visitors.

It also contains rock paintings, which we, unfortunately, did not find. Apparently, due to the fact that almost everything in it is smoked from torches. But there are many modern inscriptions, starting from the 50s of the last century, ending with this year. And so throughout the Serpievsky cave city, and not just in Kolokolnaya.

 

It might be useful to read: