With a history stretching from Classical antiquity through the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, Crimea today is one of the few non-industrialized havens in the European part of what was once the Soviet Union (and before that the Russian Empire, and now Ukraine). Today, this region is a reserve for holidays by the sea and, in the mountains, for hunting and for archeology. The forests, mountains and coast of Crimea are a living textbook of history.
Walking tours of Crimea can open up this Black Sea melting pot even to a casual visitor. They might run along the coast and study places where tradition tells us the action of Euripides’ and Sophocles’ plays about Iphigenia in the land of the Taurians takes place. Near Sevastopol are the ruins of the ancient city of Chersonesus Taurica; in Antiquity, modern-day Feodosiya (then known as Caffa) and Kerch (known as Panticapaeum) were major towns along the Black Sea coast. On the mountain of Ayu-Dag can be found the remains of an ancient temple sacred to Artemis; it is believed to be the terrace of this temple that Iphigenia, as a priestess of Artemis, would throw travelers to their deaths. The Argonauts sailed by these places in search of the Golden Fleece. Today, the shores of Crimea preserve ruins of ancient temples, cities and fortresses from that distant era.
The nomadic peoples of the steppe — Cimmerians, Scythians and Taurians —also left their mark on Crimea. Near Simferopol, archaeologists have for years been excavating the burial mounds of Scythian Naples, the capital of the Scythian lands. In the early Christian era, people fled Byzantium to Crimea to escape persecution during the long years of infighting over iconoclasm. And so, in Crimea there are secret Christian cave-monasteries with frescoes of fishes and crosses, and cross-shaped openings carved into the roofs of the cave so the sun’s rays could illuminate the baptistery with a reminder of the Crucifixion.
As for the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the Golden Horde, at Bakhchisarai and Stary Krym one can find ruined Karaite towns and Genoese forts from the Middle Ages… And then there are the wild deer, caves, waterfalls, pure mountain streams, mountains, the sea, palms, primroses, alpine meadows, mountain plateaus, wild boar, foxes, hares, mushrooms, berries, dolphins…
There are not enough words to describe all of the riches of Crimea. We could add here the Crimean wines, fruit and vegetables that the bounteous Crimean soil gives so generously. It’s easy to see why there are always people who want to go trekking in Crimea.
Our objective, however, was to trek in less distant historical footsteps. We set out for the less popular Southeast of Crimea, from Belogorsk Region to Sudak, on a five-day trip through the Crimean forests, where partisans fought and lived during the Second World War.
Preparations for guerilla warfare in Crimea began long before the Germans occupied the area. In the fall of 1941, civilians and sailors who fled the besieged city of Sevastopol — along with what remained of the Soviet border forces — formed partisan detachments numbering 2,000-2,500 people.
Supplies, clothing and weapons were hidden ahead of time in the mountains and forests of Southeast Crimea, which were to form the main base of the resistance movement. But the fall of Sevastopol and the arrival of the Germans exacerbated problems of ethnicity and religion that the Soviet Union had buried or repressed. The occupiers rather quickly allowed Muslims to gather for Friday prayers, and returned land and vineyards that had been seized by the Soviet authorities. Many Crimean Tatars thus in one way or another accepted the German regime as preferable to the Soviet order, and stopped supporting the partisans, instead giving away arms caches — and the partisans themselves — to the Germans and then joining local civilian defense forces, and even German military units.
But this is only one side of the story. The other side is that, despite all this, many Crimean Tatars continued to support the partisans, worked for them as guides and messengers, and helped them with food and intelligence.
Nevertheless, the fall and winter of 1941-42 were terrible times for the partisans. Many perished in the forests from hunger, cold or disease; still more died in the field or were betrayed by local residents. It is said that just 600 thin and emaciated forest-dwellers survived through to the spring of 1942. German treatment of anyone found to have helped the partisans was cruel. Whole villages were burned and their inhabitants shot.
The partisans also invited the wrath of local inhabitants on themselves. Swift to exact revenge, they would kill anyone suspected of collaborating with the Nazis and seize their produce.
The course of the war turned in 1943. After Stalingrad, people across the Soviet Union began to believe that the Germans could be beaten, and the ranks of the partisans began to swell. In 1944, Crimea was liberated. But then something terrible happened: the entire Crimean Tatar people was accused of treason, and Stalin decreed that the entire nation be deported to Uzbekistan. Partisans, Communist Youth League members, collaborators, children, old men and pregnant women were herded into sealed trucks and shipped off to Central Asia in fearsome heat with no food or water. Fatality rates during this act of near-genocide approached 30 percent, and according to some accounts were as high as 50 percent. Today, the Crimean Tatars have returned en masse to their homeland from Uzbekistan. Our route will take us to places where the partisans fought.
Southeastern Crimea is not as popular as the South or Southwest. There are no cave-cities or hidden Middle Ages monasteries here. This is, in a way, the Crimean backwoods: a lonely region where the wind blows over virgin forests, pure rivers and flowers. It was these features that made these places so attractive to the partisans, who had two or three units based here permanently. Our route will take us to the scenes of bloody battles. Our walking group includes 12 people: three teenagers, actors, journalists, an accountant, an IT expert and even a metalworker. Despite their different backgrounds, all are lovers of nature and adventure holidays. Spring is a particularly pleasant time of year in Crimea. The mountain streams are full of water — in short supply during the broiling summer — while the mountains and forests breathe a freshness that dries up during the sultry summer months. The route had been decided and agreed on in advance. Walking maps of Crimea are sold across Ukraine. Our route did not take us into any nature reserves, and no special permissions were required.
Simferopol, the capital of the Crimean Autonomous Oblast, can be reached by plane or on the trains that run daily from Moscow and arrive early in the morning. From the station, you can take a bus to Belogorsk, and from there another on to the village of Krasnoselovka.
On the way from Simferopol, the steppe ends and the foothills of the mountains begin. Northern Crimea is steppe country; as you travel south, the scenery gradually becomes higher, until the mountains appear. Around Belogorsk, there are numerous orchards, mainly growing apples, in the valleys of the Karasu and Tanasu rivers, tributaries of the Salgir. The apples here are a particular variety that grows only in Crimea; they are thought to be the same variety that the Ancient Greeks grew in Chersonesos and Panticapaeum, and subsequently adopted and improved by the Crimean Tatars. And indeed they are delicious: long and thin, juicy and firm-fleshed.
It is traditional to give two or three of these apples as a gift. This is considered something like giving a bouquet of flowers. The apples will keep beautifully all through winter until spring comes. In 1907, a pud (about 16.3 kilograms) of these apples sold in Crimea for between 5 and 8 rubles; a cow and her offspring at the time would have cost 5 rubles.
We drive through the villages of Krinichnoe and Golovanovka and arrive at Krasnoselovka, which the Nazis burned to the ground on numerous occasions as punishment for helping the forest fighters. Krasnoselovka used to be a small place, with about 10 farms. We count about 50 — Greeks and Tatars alike are returning to Crimea. We travel on, and three or four kilometers past Krasnoselovka on the road to Privetnoye ask the driver to let us off. From here we will be navigating by map and GPS. We leave the road and walk along the path to the pass at Nizhny Kok-Asan. The sun is shining and the mountains rise around us. Roads in these parts, it is said, are like the Georgian military highway, with cliffs on one side as the road twists and weaves its way along.
Frequently we encounter crude homemade monuments, made perhaps in a garage out of a sheet of iron, with words chiseled into them. We have arrived in the region where battles of the Great Patriotic War were fought.
Just after this turn, the monument says, on November 3, 1941, the Ichkino partisan division went into action for the first time, covering the border guards as they retreated from the coast into the forest.
Around us are beeches and hornbeams; patches of sunshine play on the ground of the mixed forest. Twenty people died here in that battle. On the left, a tree stands in a large meadow overgrown with low grass. This is Nizhny Kok-Asan, the pass to the shortest route through the mountains to the sea. We compare map, compass and GPS — as we will do on numerous occasions — to the surprise of those who are on their first walking tour: “Surely you can’t get lost using a map?!” Actually you can, as we have just demonstrated once again. But not by Nizhnaya Polyana. Here we easily pick up the path to the southwest of the meadow. It runs playfully between streams, jumping from bank to bank, and we begin the gradual ascent to the next pass, traversing the climb that leads to Verkhny Kok-Asan. The ascent is very gradual. After an hour of easy walking we reach Verkhnaya Polyana, 820 meters above sea level.
Here there is also a sizeable monument to both the partisans of 1941-1944, and to those who died in the war with the Whites in 1918-20 (the fall of Kerch, Crimea brought the Russian Civil War to an end; the last ship to leave was the steamer Rossiya, carrying White officers to Paris and Istanbul). We are at the very heart of the partisan war. From the clearing, roads lead to the mountain Sakharnaya Golovka; one path heads to the waterfalls of Kuchuk-Karasu, and another path leads to the Berlyuk gorge, where remains of partisan dugouts are preserved to this day. The Berlyuk gorge — hard to pass, invisible among numerous ravines, located far from any roads — remained “the only territory unoccupied by the Nazis” during the war. Here, the books tell us, a crack conceals the entrance to the narrowest part of the gorge, where the Ichkino and Dzhankoy partisan divisions spent the winter of 1941-42. We are on Verkhny Kok-Asan. We stand, trembling, at the monument, collect some primroses and lay them at the obelisk.
A monumnt to the partisans at Verkhnyaya Kok-Asan.
Crimean flowers! Alongside the famous Bieberstein’s chickweed — the Crimean edelweiss — mountain peonies, primulas and primroses, we are lucky enough to see yellow peonies, two- and three-colored mountain tulips, and small wild violet and yellow irises. Everything is in bloom!
Entire mountaintops are covered in flowers.
We look for a path, and find a road to the mountain Sori. The road is marked and quite clear. It is warm, although today is only April 24. Then the road suddenly takes a sharp turn downwards and becomes a path.
We push 100 meters down through the forest (down the slope, with rucksacks, past prickles and thorns) and come out on the steep bank of a little river. Further and further up stretch the steep banks; the river dwindles until it becomes a stream. We turn on the GPS. We are by a nameless tributary of the Kuchuk-Karasu river, some four or five kilometers from the waterfalls and not far from the Berlyuk gorge. It is about 3:30 in the afternoon, and we are next to the river. There’s some level ground, and this is our first stop for the day.
We have walked 13 kilometers.
We are near the most partisan — and most isolated — places in the area. Nearby is a large foxes’ den, while the tracks and hair of wild boars can be seen by the oaks that they rub themselves against. It’s a picturesque location, but one that gets chilly at night, when the temperature drops to 3º Celsius. In the evening, before it gets dark, we do some exploring along an old, overgrown road littered with fallen trees that climbs up and up along the slope. The disintegrating road comes to an end; ahead there is only a roadless ascent to the summit.
As we are having breakfast the following morning, two roebucks gallop past 50 meters from us. These wild deer are common in Crimea. White-spotted tails wagging, they run gracefully past us.
The climb to the top of Sori takes an hour. We have climbed to 980 meters above sea level from 660 meters.
At the top, a wonder awaits us. The sea, mountains above us, flowers, sun, and the aroma of thyme, which we add to our tea. The view is unbelievable. An entire slope studded with edelweiss. Before us is the glorious beauty of Arapatskaya Yaila, with its waterfalls and breathtaking cliffs. The partisans had an observation post on Sori from which they could track Nazi movements.
We move on, walking for a few hours along the ridge, admiring the beautiful views before we reach the pass at Nizhny Shelen.
Nizhny Shelen offers a pretty view of the ridges of the main Crimean range sinking away to the East. Here there are none of the high plateaus or vertical faces so typical of southern Crimea, making the mountains look like needles; rather, the mountains here are low, but their intricate contours make them extremely picturesque.
We make camp for the night at about 3:30 in the afternoon on the saddle of the pass, having come 12 kilometers. At Nizhny Shelen there is a spring that is home to a large colony of frogs, who croak at earsplitting volume. In the morning, we brush our teeth while admiring the view over the awakening mountains. At every marked stopping-point, there is a place to make a fire and pitch tents. There is firewood in Crimea, but fires are allowed only in designated places. The partisans had it much worse. Smoke from their fires could be seen by the enemy. For this reason they burned only beech or juniper branches, which give off much less smoke.
In the morningwe get up early. Dawn in the mountains is beautiful. After breakfast, we reach the pass at Verkhny Shelen. The partisans had their headquarters here, and there are three monuments. One of them is to the children who fought in the divisions. Boys of 13, 14 and 15 died as scouts and fighters. Another monument is to an unknown partisan: “Bring a stone and lay it here in memory of the partisans.” The idea is simple, but this man-made mountain is now more than two meters high. The monument was started by tourists, shepherds, foresters and schoolchildren who brought stones here. Subsequently, blocks were brought from Alminsk, along with an iron pennant symbolizing the eternal flame.
Nearby, in a box that is sealed shut for the winter, is a book in which tourists and foresters can leave comments. The latest are very recent: “I, Gennady Bulenchuk, on 5 May 2010 write these lines at the age of 46 years and one day. Only now do I realize how grateful I am to those who 65 years ago fought to the death for our country and were victorious.”
Or this one: “We, a tourist group from Yekaterinburg (Viktor, Natalya, Zoya) and Kaliningrad (Inna, Tatyana, Olga) bow low and respect the memory of the heroes who died in the name of our bright future. We live now because you lived then. Your names are not known, but your memory is eternal. 6 May 2010.”
Right next to this is the Flame monument, which is visible from the next mountaintop. It was made by students from Simferopol, where the Dzankoy division had its base. It feels like a museum. Today, though, it is hard to imagine that a war once raged through this serene forest.
From here we make the descent to the pass at Voron. An hour and a half later we reach a large clearing and Voronsky Domik, a marvelous place. Flowers, open space and the wonderful Crimean air, with the Black Sea visible in the distance. From here there is a gradual ascent to the pass at Maski.
We stop for the night amid the pines at Ai-Serez. We have come 16 kilometers.
At night, we have extraordinary conversations around the campfire — conversations of the sort that you never have in the city.
We set off at ten in the morning. In an hour we have climbed to the ridge of Orta-Syrt. The ridge is quite narrow, and panoramas open up on both sides.
The narrow path leads straight along the ridge, and we pick our way carefully due to the strong wind. This is the only moment during the trek when we need some mountaineering skills. The rest of the route is easy, and entirely suitable for able hikers of all ages.
We walk on, and gradually come down the slope from the top of the ridge. An hour and a half later we come down to the road, and… walk 13 kilometers to the sea in the village of Morskoe. We spend the night in a meadow by the sea, alongside grazing camels.
The mountains are behind us. Behind us also are our memories and thoughts of the paths trodden by the partisans during the war.
In the morning, we travel on to Sudak and Novy Svet, stroll among the Middle Ages forts and the unusual cave formations in the cliffs by the sea. Only when we turn to face north do we see the summits of the mountains that have not yet quite forgotten that a war once happened here. RL
LADA BAKAL was born in Kishinev, Moldova, but studied and now lives in Moscow. For eight years she worked at The Moscow Times, the capital’s English language daily. She enjoys drawing, writing and traveling, whether it be to the Altai or Carpathians, trekking in the Crimea or the Urals, or floating down mountain rivers. She has been Russian Life’s photo editor since 2009, and contributed an article to our July/August 2010 issue on kayaking in Karelia.
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