In the Kudablin project, we send completely different people on traveling at our expense! Sergei Anashkevich visited Chechnya: he visited the Medieval Chechen Fortress-Nekropol Tsoi-Pede, saw a stunningly beautiful Argun gorge, found out why it was so hard in Grozny on the streets, and for what dishes it was worth going to Chechnya. Read more – in his report!
Read the first part of the report here.
Potablin? To the Chechen city of the dead!
Many sources include this place in the list of the most inaccessible attractions of Russia.
Everywhere they write that in the city of the dead, the crypts of which are filled with the bones of people who came here to die, you can only get with the permission of the FSB. As it turned out, getting here is not at all difficult and from the list of hard-to-reach Tsoi-Pede can be safely ruled out.
But the place, of course, is still …
The medieval Chechen fortress-Nekropol Tsoi-Pede is quite far from civilization, 30 km from the nearest village of Itum-Kali at the confluence of the Argun River with the Mountain River Meshi-Ti. The steep rock, on the crest of which 42 crypts are scattered, folded from stone back in the XIV-XVII century, in fact, is a kind of island surrounded from all sides with ice water. The island, on which man himself came to die.
He climbed the slope, chose a crypt, climbed into a special window and laid down on free stone bunks. If there was someone’s dead body there, he simply dropped him down and occupied the vacant place … until one day someone would throw him down.
The bones of dead people lie in these crypts and in our time …
So, in order to get in Tsoi-Pede, the FSB is not required now. It is enough to buy a tour on the spot and they themselves make all the necessary notifications to the competent authorities. Moreover, I ordered a tour on the eve of the trip, and they managed to do everything by the morning of the next day.
The road in Tsoi-Pede goes along the stunningly picturesque Argun gorge, and walking along it without stopping, is simply impossible. We stopped dozens of times to take pictures of the river, mountains, mountain goats and rocks hanging over the abyss.
The Argun River along the way is now narrow and fast, then wide and boiling, like boiling water in a huge boiler. True, the water in the river is far from boiling water, but rather ice. To the aches in the bones, if you try it with your hand.
River Argun
Immediately behind the Itum-Kali asphalt road ends, a grader begins and a series of border stamps. A border post is located ten kilometers later. All passengers are planted here. You need to register with the border guard, the car is taken separately while you walk along a separate corridor. The border guard focuses on that before the onset of darkness, we are obliged to leave the border zone and return back to Itum Kali.
At the foot of the cliff where Tsoi-Pede is located, there is a border outpost. There is no further road. The border guard stops cars with tourists, asks to leave them on the site in front of the military unit, introduces the data of the arrivals to the magazine and … even escorts the path to the “dead city” to the beginning of the path. Of course, he is unlikely to escape each tourist group, but he spent us – on this day there were no more visors. We asked him how often tourists are here, he replied that recently they come more often, the simplification of the access order is affected.
Our driver Said was born near this place, in Itum Kali, and knows everything here like his five fingers.
The exact date of the founding of the city of the dead is unknown, the earliest crypts are referred to about the 5th century, it is known that in the 17th century, crypts were still used for its intended purpose. By the way, the very name of the city-Tsoi-Pede-translates as “settlement of the deity.”
As I said above, people themselves came to die in this place. Who, feeling the approach of death, and who is due to illness or during epidemics.
The man climbed onto the slope, chose a crypt, climbed into a special window and lay on free stone bunks. If there was someone’s dead body there, he simply dropped him down and occupied the vacant place … until one day someone would throw him down.
Many of the crypts are partially destroyed under the influence of time. Still, the first of them were made of stone 1.5 thousand years ago.
Scraps in the city of the dead
Said complains that many crypts are now plundered and there are almost no bones in them. Who pulled them out of there and where he took them out – a riddle …
But in some, something else has been preserved …
Stone regiments on the sides of the crypt are the same bunches that people went to die on. And the bodies were dropped into a recess in the center of the crypt.
Bones …
… and more bones …
… and again the bones …
A lot of bones
It even becomes scary
And behind the walls of the crypts, spring and beauty ….
Hills
Serenity
Having shrubs
And again the hills
And crypts
The only surviving patrol towers is now at restoration. In fact, it saved her, because in recent years the tower began to rapidly collapse.
You can get to this place either in a hired car from Grozny, or on a minibus that walks from Grozny to the Itum-Kali district center, and then on a way and on foot.
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The author of the text and the photo: Sergey Anashkevich
