Vyisky Pond, VSW.

• visit to the Museum of Tray Crafts (House of the Khudoyarovs).

Lacquer painting of trays is one of the most important crafts in the Urals. This direction arose in the middle of the 18th century at the Demidov factories in Nevyansk and Nizhny Tagil. Soon the painted trays became famous throughout the world. They were given as gifts to princes, kings and European kings. The works of famous masters - the Khudoyarovs, the Dubasnikovs - are today kept in Russian museums and private collections.

• dinner
• road to the Reindeer Farm in Visim (50 km from Nizhny Tagil)

Ural circumnavigation bus tour of the Urals > from Yekaterinburg Ural circumnavigation > "Golden Ring of the Middle Urals"

Ural Around the World "bus tour of the Urals > from Yekaterinburg Ural Around the World > "Golden Ring of the Middle Urals"

Ural Around the World "bus tour of the Urals > from Yekaterinburg Ural Around the World > "Golden Ring of the Middle Urals"

• A tour of a reindeer farm, where you have the opportunity to feed the reindeer by hand.
• Road to the ski resort Mount Belaya (37 km from Nizhny Tagil).

Ascent to the observation deck of Mount Belaya. Mount Belaya is one of the most beautiful in the Middle Urals. Climbing the mountain on a chairlift, you can see with the naked eye the cities of the Sverdlovsk region: Nevyansk, Kirovograd, Verkhniy Tagil and even Yekaterinburg.

Ural Around the World "bus tour of the Urals > from Yekaterinburg Ural Around the World > "Golden Ring of the Middle Urals"

Ural Around the World "bus tour of the Urals > from Yekaterinburg Ural Around the World > "Golden Ring of the Middle Urals"

Ural Around the World "bus tour of the Urals > from Yekaterinburg Ural Around the World > "Golden Ring of the Middle Urals"

• 19.00 - Transfer to Nevyansk
• 20.00 - Dinner on your own for an additional fee.

Day 7 (Friday)

Day 8 (Saturday)

I’ll say right away that the ring didn’t work out... There is no normal road between Merkushino and Makhnevo. And there is no bad one, there is only iron one. Our government cannot make a road just for the sake of tourism. If something useful had been found, the road would have been made. Although I don’t understand, is it so difficult (expensive) to cover about forty kilometers between Karpunino and Khabarchikha? There is the Simeon Path, which you can follow on foot. In the following parts I will talk about it in detail. Surprisingly, some navigation programs show that there is a road, going through Sankino, Chushino, Karabaevo. If we went there, it was during the time of the Tsar. And not even Nicholas II. Even in the first half of the previous century, when people lived in the above-mentioned villages and tracts, the roads were impassable for the transport of that time. According to eyewitnesses, waste was dumped into the swamps near Nizhny Karabaev during the scoop. One way or another, Karabaevo died out from cancer, the Chushino tract was abandoned fifty years ago, there are no roads, there is no life, there is no need to go there. So, let's go. Route number one, Ekaterinburg-Verkhoturye-Merkushino-Kordyukovo. Three hundred and seventy kilometers. Nevyansk. Don't go around, don't go around. A provincial Ural city. Famous for its leaning tower, founded by the famous Demidov. There is a beautiful church nearby. Above is the local, old cemetery, which is not easy to find. Hotel, several catering establishments (the food is quite tasty). Normal shops, a branch of the Kirov store, a little further down Lenin Street, the Yuzhny supermarket, you can stop by. Byngi, where the pottery workshop is located, Tavolgi, Serbishino remain a little aside. Further along the NikoloPavlovskoye highway. The Yekaterinburg-Serov highway in front of the village goes to the left, going around Nizhny Tagil from the west. If you have time, you can visit Nizhny. A good local history museum, a tank one. The city itself is quite unusual, I, for example, constantly get lost there, but I have a lot of experience. After Tagil, the proximity of populated areas shows little evidence. The mountain and the city of Kachkanar and the village of Kushva remain aside. The villages have unusual names, there is Laya, Vyya, Is, and the Skazka recreation center. You can drive onto the old Serov road, which in some places is quite suitable for travel, and appreciate how your ancestors drove. The traffic is quite dense, traffic police posts are possible. The further north you go, the fewer cars, the fewer posts. At 280 (I think) kilometer we turn right. Another fifteen kilometers, and here it is - Verkhoturye! An ancient Russian city, the capital of old trade. Monasteries, churches. There is a hotel, a cafe, even a restaurant, it seems. The service, however, is a little slow. I experienced power outages twice, both times with an empty tank. The shops are so-so. The city itself remained a remote province. Next came the old Russian villages. Zaimka remains a little to the side, we pass Glazunovka, Lebedeva, Krasnogorskoye. Kostylevo with the monastery. Here is Merkushino. A beautiful church, a place of pilgrimage. Holy place. A little further away there is a chapel where Simeon of Verkhoturye prayed on the river. If you have arrived, drive a little further, you will cross the railway, the “white clay” stop, there is a waterfall on the right. Well, then Voronskaya, Deryabino, where the asphalt ends, a little to the side Zapolskaya, where several hundred families once lived, has now burned out almost completely, Otradnovo, where several summer residents live. That's it, there is no further road. Let's go back.
The second route goes to Alapaevsk, Sinyachikha, Makhnevo. What I really liked about this route was the museum of wooden architecture in Sinyachikha.
In the following parts I will describe in detail what and how, I will find a photo.

At the instigation of Kachkanar officials, a large-scale campaign was launched in the Sverdlovsk region. The government is ready to allocate billions to replace the stereotype “Ural is industrial” with “Ural is a land of tourism.” The first money has already gone to Verkhoturye, next in line is Kachkanar and its environs. All that is required for the new life of the city is the adequacy of officials and the willingness of residents to assist in the development of the tourism business

Real prospects for small towns

Four tourism projects have already been launched in the Sverdlovsk region. All of them are radically different in concept, but are similar in that they require multi-billion dollar investments and colossal efforts on the part of the authorities and, oddly enough, the population.

The first of the four projects is “,” which mainly involves Kachkanar, as well as neighboring territories - Severouralsk, Krasnoarmeysk, Novouralsk, Nizhny Tagil, Pervouralsk and the Ural capital itself.

Automobile, family, ethnographic tourism, yachting will be developed here, and the main focus is on active recreation and sports.

Tour routes are already being developed in each city, including the main attractions. For example, in Pervouralsk there is a yacht club, in Nizhny Tagil there is Mount Belaya, in our Kachkanar there is a mountain with its ski complex and the only Buddhist monastery in the region. It is assumed in the region that a yacht club, aqua park and a SPA center will also be relevant in Kachkanar.

The second project - “Spiritual Center of the Urals” - is already being developed in Verkhoturye, Makhnevo and Alapaevsk. Its highlight is pilgrimage routes, rural attractions, the sovereign's road to Siberia, the famous Verkhoturye customs house, and historical festivals.

The third site - "Old Nevyansk Plant" - will give impetus to the development of Nevyansk and its surroundings. In the near future, travelers will see a full range of cultural, educational, rural and event tourism here. The list of existing attractions includes the Nevyansk Tower Museum.

The fourth tourist zone of our region - “Stone Gates” - includes Kamensk-Uralsky, known as the bell capital of Russia, and the Kamensky urban district with its Iset, under the shore of which, according to legend, an ancient volcano sleeps. Future guests will be provided with motorcycle trails, nature reserves, museums, and campsites.

All tourist areas are united into one global route - the “Silver Ring of the Urals”. This mega-project, designed to upend the usual way of life in the Ural outback, is considered extremely ambitious and already has an army of conservative opponents who believe that no one will ever come from abroad to have a quality holiday in the Urals.

Nevertheless, the Sverdlovsk authorities do not deviate from their plans, approve regional target programs with billions of dollars in investment and are already starting construction. Already now, at the first stages of tourism development in the Sverdlovsk region, the regional leadership is gradually revealing its actions to the public.

On June 11-12, about 50 journalists from all over the Ural Federal District went on a press tour along the “Simeon’s Trail” route, which is one of the centers in the “Spiritual Center of the Urals” tourist zone. For two days, representatives of the press were taken around cities and villages, showing what is available today and what will be done in the near future.

During the trip, it was obvious that the regional authorities began to implement plans for the development of tourism from the branch most prepared for this - the Ural cities and villages with a rich spiritual history: Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Rezh, Mironovo, Aramashevo, Koptelovo, Alapaevsk, Verkhnyaya and Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha, Nevyansk, Mugai, Baltym, Mostovskoye, Verkhoturka, Cheremisskoye, Shaitanskoye, Lipovskoye, Pokrovskoye, Rychkovo, Komarovo, Tagilskaya Sloboda, Makhnevo, Merkushino, Verkhoturye.

Municipalities where ancient and recently rebuilt churches stand, as well as roads and paths well-trodden by travelers who were later elevated to the rank of saints by the church, lie on the “Silver Ring of the Urals” route. It is there that the first money from the regional budget and private investors has already begun to flow.

Those cities that are just in line for the reconstruction and construction of tourist facilities are quite lucky, since the authorities have a chance to predict problems and prevent them based on the bumps and problems in the development of the first tourist and recreational zones.

The wealth of the region is in the people

For two days, traveling by bus through populated areas, Ural journalists in each village were the first to see not picturesque places and historical monuments, but, perhaps, the most important thing - Ural hospitality.

At each station in a small village, guests with cameras were most often mistaken for ordinary pilgrims and were greeted with a loaf of bread, songs were sung, and they were treated to homemade kvass and pies.

At most points along the route, it turned out that it was thanks to them - ordinary residents - that the fading cultural monuments were held together. So, in the poor village of Aramashevo several years ago, local residents began literally bit by bit to restore the destroyed temple. Using the collected public money, they patched the roof, and then began writing appeals to various spiritual associations asking for help.

Philanthropists heard them and money began to flow into the village, but local residents did not stop there, but began to think about how else, in addition to the ancient temple, to attract tourists to their area. Thus, the first museum of huts with ancient Russian paintings appeared in Aramashevo. There, in addition to the main exhibits - painted pieces of furniture and walls, antique items made of wood, cast iron, and clay were collected from the area.

As it turned out, most of the historical sites in the Ural outback are supported by enthusiasts like those in Aramashevo. The same village of Koptelovo has its own unique object - the Museum of Education. The inconspicuous wooden building contains a lot of valuables that are difficult to find in large Ural cities - the first wooden desks with inkwells, ancient gramophones, wooden carts on which children used to get to school, miraculously surviving documents from past centuries that tell how teachers made money back then.

Small villages and hamlets have another common feature. Their residents still trust the authorities and expect that thanks to tourism development projects, people will actually flock to their region. Judging by the friendliness and cordiality of the villagers, it is clear that they are ready to tirelessly cook loaves of bread and welcome travelers, if only their small homeland would cease to be a backwater.

There is no service in the outback

In addition to the positive aspects of life in the Ural villages, the participants of the press tour also discovered obvious gaps in the realities of future tourist areas. All of them come down to everyday problems of urban management and service facilities.

The same visit of fifty correspondents to Verkhoturye showed the complete unpreparedness of the Ural hinterland to receive large groups of tourists. Now all visitors are accommodated in existing hotels, parishes and places of pilgrimage, where there are no communal services as such.

Catering points in the Ural spiritual capital are also not ready for a new clientele, so city guests wait a long time for food and are forced to put up with the obvious hostility of the service staff. Museum workers and tour guides are not yet oriented towards large groups, they review the city and historical places in a low voice, and do not know how to properly coordinate tourists, so city guests from time to time find themselves “thrown” in the middle of the street and do not know in which direction to move next.

This is roughly the picture so far in any Ural city where the government of the Sverdlovsk region intends to develop tourism. But the important thing is that the authorities will develop the territories gradually over the next five years, so municipal administrations still have time to solve utility problems, train staff and expand existing hotel service facilities.

Video: Ural Federal District journalists walked along the “Simeon’s Trail”

From the author: Dear residents of Kachkanar, do you think our city is ready for the influx of large groups of tourists? Will there be any residents who want to work in the service sector? Are residents ready to welcome city guests? Your opinion is important.

I devoted Sunday afternoon to studying not only the museums of Nizhny Tagil and Verkhnyaya Pyshma of the Sverdlovsk region, but also the tourism service that is offered within the framework of public-private partnership (although it does not fall under the PPP legislation, it is not framed in accordance with the Federal Law of July 13, 2015 N 224-FZ "On public-private partnership, municipal-private partnership in the Russian Federation and amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation") of the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region and the Vista Group of Companies.

I will not go into the intricacies of co-financing the project, what anyone promised and to whom, I will simply share my impressions and questions about organizing a tour along the route “Ural Technology”, “History of Urals Technology”. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact name, since it is different in different sources from the tour operator. As a result, we will call its tourist route “Something about technology.”

1. Purchase of a tour and departure.
It was not difficult to find the website of the “Gem Ring of the Urals” in the browser search engine; by the way, it is registered in a domain name similar to the name of the Vista Group of Companies (http://vistarussia.com/), however, on the site itself there is no such legal entity, except logo, tour operator - Booking Center LLC, registered in Moscow.

On the website you can select a route for a specific date, see which objects and at what time on that day you should visit, and also find out the cost of the tour. The tour I was targeting cost 1,899 rubles. Since the site is actually an online store, payment can be made by credit card...

After payment, no documents (Trip, Agreement) were sent to me, but I received a phone call the day before... The girl, introducing herself as the “Gem Ring,” reminded me of my tour. The gem ring informed me that the tour started not at 8-00, but at 7-30. Hearing my surprise, Ring hung up without bothering to apologize...

My indignation at the change in departure time was justified; when paying on the website, the time was different, and I, like other possible participants, could presumably use public transport to get to the meeting point. From Berezovsky, where I live, I would not have been able to get to the Botanicheskaya metro stop by the time indicated by the Ring. It’s good that I’m not connected to public transport and use personal transport.

Upon arrival at the appointed time - collection at 7:00, departure at 7:30 - I was surprised to not find a branded bus. I decided to call the phone number listed on the website - +7 343 385-84-85. The phone conspiratorially did not answer me. I had to figure it out, relying on intuition and searching for other owners of happy tours. It turned out that a minibus was available for the tour. I must admit, the quality of the bus corresponded to the trip, speakerphone, TV that didn’t work, heat from the stove, comfortable seats...

When I asked for one at the end of the tour, the accompanying people refused to receive a permit, citing the fact that they receive permits at the office, and they do not know where I purchased the tour. By the way, during the entire trip I was never asked for documents, payment receipts, or even my last name. I doubt that I am such a famous person that I don’t need an introduction...

2. Travel (transfers).
I don’t consider myself an expert in the tourism service sector, as well as the history of the region, so I will rely on the ideas that I have.
Guide. He talked a lot in the direction of Nizhny Tagil about the Demidov family, after Nizhny Tagil - about the Great Patriotic War. From his stories, thanks to the Tagil residents who responded to my previous posts, I can say that the fate of Miron Cherepanov, who could not drink himself to death because he was an Old Believer, was interpreted incorrectly, and it also sounded quite strange that the Museum-factory of the Nizhny Tagil Museum-Reserve "Gornozavodskoy Ural does not have the necessary permission to conduct excursions around the plant, but regularly violates this ban. But what about visiting this museum on the “From Demidov to T-90” tour, which is offered by the “Gem Ring”? This was left behind the scenes...
A few words about the bus. Bus rented from IP Takhonov A.A. rental prices are available on the website (http://arenda-mikroavtobusa66.ru/), I don’t understand where the branded bus is, which was advertised as the property of Vista Group of Companies. Even if out of 15 passengers 3 are tour operator employees and a tour guide, wouldn’t it be cheaper than renting from a third-party carrier?
During the trip, 2 lunch boxes were offered, as well as lunch in a Tagil cafe. It’s not at all clear why they collected us 30 minutes earlier, if in fact we left at 7:50; in museums, excursions were not time-regulated?

3. Museums.
I have already said in posts that this route included visiting 3 museums:
- Museum of the History of Technology "House of Cherepanovs" - ,
- Museum of armored vehicles UVZ - ,
- Museum of Military Equipment "Military Glory of the Urals" UMMC - .
The set of museums to visit, in general, fits into the stated name “Technology of the Urals”, but the emphasis was not set, for this reason a holistic picture of the technical achievements of the region was not achieved. The gramophones of the “House of Cherepanovs” and the vintage cars of the UMMC Museum are not connected with the Urals, except perhaps by the place of their museum storage.
Payment for visiting museums was included in the price of the tour, therefore, apparently, the accompanying person paid for tickets everywhere in cash (with Yandex-Money, it is not difficult to cash out the amounts received). At the UVZ Museum, the check for tickets received by a representative of Booking Center LLC included additional payments made by a number of tourists for taking photographs at the Museum. It seems like nothing, but, in fact, a violation of accounting discipline and reporting...

4. General questions.
I recorded that 12 tourists set out on the route along the “Gem Ring of the Urals” on November 8, 2015. The total cash collection, according to my calculations, should have been 22,788 rubles.
We calculate the costs:
- tickets to museums - from 500 to 600 rubles per group (3 museums * 550 rubles = 1650 rubles)
- lunch boxes - about 150 rubles/piece (12 people * 2 pieces * 150 rubles = 3600 rubles)

Guide payment - 150 rubles/hour (12 hours * 150 rubles = 1800 rubles)
- minibus (waiting - 1300 rubles/hour, intercity 25 rubles/km) - according to my calculations, about 10,000 rubles,

Meals in a cafe - 15 people for 250 rubles = 3750 rubles.

Total: 20800 rubles

Income - about 2000 rubles. Some kind of business is being done in Russian... Well, what’s not a minus?

It doesn’t matter at all how accurately I made the calculations, but even the minimum profit from the tour will not affect the income of the Sverdlovsk region in any way, since Booking Center LLC, probably pays taxes, but in Moscow.

A few words about the region’s tourism income. Museums received 1,650 rubles, cafes - 3,750 rubles. In fact, tourists left 5,400 rubles in the region, 450 rubles per person - approximately 24% of the cost of the trip. This is the development of tourism and tourism infrastructure! I have not yet begun to analyze the budget costs of the Sverdlovsk region for the promotion and advertising products of the “Gem Ring”. Good business for a private partner of our state!

I would like to remind you that the Minister of Investment and Development of the Sverdlovsk Region Alexey Orlov, in one of the interviews