Tuesday 31 May 2011

Interesting places in Novosibirsk Region. Bolotnoye and Turnayevo villages

Today I was looking through new threads at Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum and again I came across an opinion that Novosibirsk and Novosibirsk Region are in a total lack of any interesting sights.
This is not true, of course, as people have inhabited this region for hundreds and even thousand of years, and a region with such a long history just cannot be that uninteresting. But it is true that you have to do some kind of work to find these interesting places here.
The first thing I recommend is to buy a guidebook. I did this some time ago and I was surprised to read about all these sights, both of natural and human origin.
I am lucky to have a husband and children who don't mind going on sightseeing tours, even if these tours involve somewhat long and tiresome driving.

On the way to Tomskaya Pisanitsa (http://mytravelog.blogspot.com/2011/05/tomskaya-pisanitsa.html)
we decided to have a look at Bolotnoye settlement and a wooden church in Turnayevo village built in the end of the 19th century in the style of the famous churches in Kizhi.

Bolotnoye, situated somewhat 150 km to the north-east of Novosibirsk, turned out to be quite a big settlement with a couple of wooden buildings built in the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. I didn't take any pictures of them as there are quite a number of such houses in Novosibirsk.
The nature around Bolotnoye is very nice. We were there in the beginning of May, but now in June it should be even more beautiful.


 Turnaevo is located 12 km away from Bolotnoye, and I expected the road to be very bad, as the guidebook says there are only 60 houses in the village left. But I was wrong and the road was surprisingly good. When we arrived to the village, we thought that the village didn't look as deserted and poor as the guidebook says. And it definitely has more than 60 houses. Of course, the village is not prosperous and there are lots of destroyed houses and administrative buildings, but we expected it to be much worse.

The church is amazing. Again, the guidebook was wrong saying that it is nearly destroyed and no one takes care of it. The guidebook was released in 2005 and the situation changed a lot since then. The church does look nice and  taken good care of. The priest's house in front of it looks even better and richer. The churchyard is clean and it is evident that the village does want to care about its heritage.



And we liked the scenery around the village even more than the church. This place could be the right one for a small camping or something like that, with the church as the main attraction.

I do hope that more visitors will wish to see this place, it is definitely worth it.

Sunday 15 May 2011

Tomskaya Pisanitsa


Recently I have discovered one more attraction not far from Novosibirsk, which is definitely worth  visiting and spending the whole day there. I read about it some time ago, but it was only a week ago when we made the tour. Now I include this tour into the program I offer and recommend to my tourists and to all visitors of Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Bald peaks of Bugotak (Bugotakskie sopki)

Recently I've received an inquiry from a potential client, who is going to go on a sightseeing tour of Novosibirsk and who wishes to see the bald peaks of Bugotak after that. Though they are only 70 km away from the city, I never visited them as a destination and never had a chance to explore them in detail. So I didn't think long, and the last weekend I told my family we were going to see the bald peaks and maybe to have a small hike.