Alagir Gorge attractions. Books. encyclopedias. photo albums. Thermal springs, North Ossetia

Today from the Caucasian mineral waters we are heading to the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania to visit the Tseyskoe gorge, look at the Skazsky glacier, visit mountain waterfalls and swim in thermal springs. This pleasure costs more than others, 1300 rubles each. per person and the journey awaits us for a long time, instead of the usual two hours for all excursions, this one will take us three and a half hours one way. The tourist bus picked us up at eight o'clock in the morning and we set off.

Monument in the rock: Uastirdzhi - St. George

The road to the Tseyskoe gorge passes through the Trans-Caucasian highway - transkam, and at the very beginning of the Alagir gorge we stop. There is a massive monument to Uastirdzhi here. In Ossetian mythology, Uastyrdzhi is the main deity, the patron of warriors and men; under the influence of Christianity, he was transformed into the image of St. George, and the Digor dialect transformed the name of the character from Uastyrdzhi into Wasgergi - Saint (Uas) George (Gergi). 28 tons of metal, built into the rock above the transkam, along which the mountain river Ardon runs and smells strongly of hydrogen sulfide from nearby mineral lakes. For lovers of healthy lifestyle, camp sites are specially equipped on these lakes, treat yourself to your health.

Tseyskoye Gorge, North Ossetia

Near the village of Buron, where the mountain river Tseydon flows into the Ardon, the Tseyskoe gorge begins. Our path runs along a serpentine dirt road, and further along green mountain ranges, where the stormy Tseydon stream flows in a gorge, which takes its origins from the Tsey glacier. Here, as in every mountainous area, many mountain streams originate, which, accelerating and connecting with each other, turn into deep rivers: Ardon, Tseydon, Skazdon. Don is a word of Sarmatian-Scythian origin; in the Ossetian language it is preserved in the meaning of water, so here everything is extremely simple with names.

Having reached the Tsey ski resort, we found ourselves in a fairy tale. The fairy tale had a clearly Soviet connotation and time has not been kind to it.

The happy Soviet pioneer with Yesenin's appearance, having taken a step into the Soviet future, froze in an absurd pose for many years, and time was not kind to him.

Only recently has the Tseysk resort begun to revive.

Skaz glacier in the Tseyskoe gorge

Chairlift cable car for 200 RUR. per person takes us from an altitude of 2000 m, to the very tongue of the Skazsky glacier to an altitude of 2500 m.

On the right rises Mount Monk, whose height is 2990 m.

The climb is not steep and the calmest of those we encountered at the resorts of the North Caucasus. It takes about 12-15 minutes and during the ascent you can admire not only the Samara-made supports, but also the beautiful mountain views.

At the end of the climb we find ourselves on a picturesque green hill, from which a wonderful view of the Skazsky glacier should open. But we were not very lucky with the weather and the sky was hidden from us by gray clouds.

The blue jeep, left on the hill, fit very picturesquely into the rocky green surrounding landscape.

In the lowland there was a cannon for forced release of avalanches. She is like the last frontier between man and the elements, always on guard.

But the most important sight is the Skazsky glacier.

Approaching the Skazsky glacier is very dangerous, it can disappear at any moment, or it can lie there for another hundred years, but in any case, the glacier is a very elastic substance of ice and rock. A glacier is not just a frozen snowball on a mountain slope, but a massive destructive ice mass with rocks frozen into it. As a result of the slow movement of the glacier, grooves and cracks are formed on the rocks; they are also called “ram’s foreheads”. Fragments of rocks sliding along with the glacier form the final moraine, on the basis of which this amazing grotto was formed. As the glacier slides, it melts, leaving behind ground rocks and clay; this natural formation is called a moraine. Moraine often forms ice grottoes.

On the left you can clearly see the Skazdon River, which takes its source under the grotto.

This is where our acquaintance with the Skaz glacier ended, but our excursion did not come to an end.

Literally half a kilometer from the Tseysky resort there is a private tourist center, it is still unfinished.

Having passed through its territory and paid an environmental fee of 150 rubles, we find ourselves in the forest. Our guide, represented by the owner of the camp site, leads us along the already worn path to the waterfall. The owner himself always leads excursion groups; he strictly ensures that tourists do not stray from the path, because brown bears live here.

Finally we emerge from the forest and find ourselves at the rocky shore of a waterfall. Now the stream is weak, it gains strength and moves stones only in the spring.

We make our way up the huge boulders to the steep slope of the rock from which water flows.
















After eating wild raspberries and mountain sorrel, we went back down to the camp site to a roadside cafe for a full lunch. The meal here is very good and does not put a strain on your wallet. Tsei salad, judging by what they brought us, is a summer salad with sunflower oil dressing and the addition of fried eggplants. The lunch in the photo is not ours; we devoured ours even before the idea of ​​photographing it came to mind. This is our neighbors' lunch.

Thermal springs, North Ossetia

The last stop today is the thermal spring. The water temperature in such a source is 50 degrees Celsius. There are many such sources in North Ossetia, and we cannot even say with certainty where we were taken. This is a private territory and it is guarded accordingly: a huge alabai, automatic gates and broad-shouldered bearded men will scare away anyone. However, by the time we visited the source, we were already quite tired and were no longer able to adequately perceive reality. Entrance to the territory is paid 150 rubles. The infrastructure of the tourist complex is also much inferior to Ausheger, although everything is quite well equipped. There is a place to eat and change clothes.

At half past eight we made a short stop at the sanctuary of St. George Uastirdzhi.

The sanctuary is new, built in 1995; before that it was located above a cliff in the narrowest place of the Elkhot Gate. During the construction of the highway, the 14th-century sanctuary was dismantled to be reassembled in a new place, but apparently they forgot to make drawings. It took more than 40 years for a similar complex to appear in these places again.

There must be a watchman here somewhere, but we didn’t see anyone; not one Ossetian would raise his hand to do mischief in a place that is sacred to all Ossetians.

From here you can see a panorama of Dzhimarai-Khokh, one of the highest peaks of the Caucasus.

By 9 am we entered Alagir. This is not a big city of 20 thousand people. Among others, this city is known as the birthplace of Stanislav Cherchesov, at various times a football player and coach of FC Spartak, goalkeeper of the Russian national team and the Soviet Union.

The Komsomolets cinema is unlikely to cause anything other than despondency.

Across the road is a bust of Stalin and Army General Georgy Khetagurov.

Alagir, by the way, does not mean “Saint George” (alla Geor), but “Upper Ossetia”, which for me personally was surprising))

We spent half an hour here. There was enough time to walk around the perimeter of the territory of the Holy Ascension Cathedral, as well as go inside. Here I first came across a commemorative 10-ruble coin measuring 2 cm (without an external disk).

The cathedral was built as a church-fortress and had not only cultural, but also military significance. The height of the fence wall is 2.1 meters. The wall has three massive entrance gates and five defensive round towers.

The height of each tower reaches 8 meters.

An interesting cathedral, built in the Byzantine style in the 50s. XIX century. In its outlines and architecture, it’s a stretch to guess the Russian Orthodox Church.

From here we enter the Alagir Gorge along the Trans-Caucasian Highway. Although no, before that we spent another half hour looking for where to stock up on “liquid bread” at the manufacturer’s price, and we found it. Why does anyone go to the mountains...

A 10-minute drive from Alagir, right behind Tamisk, there is another, perhaps the most famous sanctuary of St. George - Nykhas Uastirdzhi.

Here the glorious hero, breaking out of the depths of the rock, riding a gigantic horse trampling a snake beneath him, hangs over the road as if frozen in a jump.

The sanctuary, like the temple, appeared in the middle of the 19th century, but the statue was installed only in 1995. The weight of the statue is 28 tons, and the height of only one horse’s head is 6 meters. This is the largest equestrian monument in the world.

Uastirdzhi - the patron saint of men, travelers and warriors - is the main character and deity in Ossetian mythology, often mentioned in the Nart Epic. Under the influence of Christianity, Ossetians over time began to associate Uastirdzhi with St. George the Victorious, but is revered by both Christians and Muslims. In general, according to our guide, the difference between Christians and Muslims is only in the first toast, the former drink to Christ, the latter to Allah, the second toast of both is to St. George and then everything is the same.

And this large bowl is just a piggy bank for collecting donations for the maintenance of the sanctuary.

Here we stayed for about 40 minutes to have breakfast with the scraps we had brought with us, and I didn’t have much time left to climb the path to the top along the cliff.

Ardon runs below - "Mad River".

In half of the sources the gorge is referred to as Ardonskoye.

Here through the passes you can get to. In general, a very interesting village, along the road there is a barrier wall 3 floors high, which either protects local residents from the road, or the road from local residents, but the impression is somehow surreal.

Top view of the village of Buron.

There is a quarry behind the village. The feeling is that a small scree at the top of the quarry is capable of burying not at all small excavators and dump trucks swarming below. I wouldn't want to work in such conditions.

By the way, behind Buron there is the Zaramagskaya basin, which is called “Toiletia,” but we don’t need to go there. Then the road goes to the Roki tunnel in South Ossetia, and after crossing the bridge to the left bank of the Ardon, we begin our ascent to the Tseyskoe gorge.

The Tseyskoe gorge is so grandiose and magnificent that it undoubtedly deserves a separate story, so we will skip it here, and to complete the story about the Alagir or another Ardon gorge, we will finish the story the other way.

On the way back, from the right side of our minibus we could see the Zaramagskaya hydroelectric power station under construction. Work on the construction of the hydroelectric power station began in June 1976. According to the plans of the Ministry of Energy, the station should be launched in 2017.

And this is the Tsallagov tower in Nizhny Unal.

The Unal tailings dump is a special complex. structures and equipment for the storage or disposal of mineral processing waste from the Sandon deposit of lead-zinc ores, called tailings.

Here the journey could have been considered over if our guide had not been too lazy to buckle up at the border post between North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, where we had to stand for another half an hour. I returned back closer to 7 pm.

75. Ancient village of Lisri in the Mamison Gorge

Alagir Gorge

The Alagir valley

The Alagir Gorge is a huge fortress with a developed system of defensive structures, castles, and watchtowers. This is the only place that Ossetians and their ancestors never left. It was here that, after the terrible disasters caused by the Tatar-Mongol invasions, almost completely destroyed, the descendants of the legendary Os-Bogatar, from whom almost all Ossetian family families descend, began to be reborn.

A reminder that the highlands were once bustling with life are the countless ruins of villages, for example, in the Zaki and Mamison gorges. Time has left no trace of many of them. In the upper reaches of the Alagirsky gorge there are also the so-called “Three Tears of God” - brother-sanctuaries, especially revered by the Ossetian people, erected in hard-to-reach gorges marked by God: Rekom in Tseyskoye, Sidan-Mykalgabyrta in the Sidan gorge (a small branch of the Kassar gorge) and Tarangelos in Mamison .

The Alagir valley is an enormous fortress with developed system of protective shelters, castles and watchtowers. This is the only place which hasn’t ever been left by Ossetins and this is the place, where the descendants of the legendary Os-Bogatar, the forebear of the majority of Ossetin families, reappeared.

Countless ruins of the villages remind us about life, wich used to see the in highland, for example in Zakka and Mamison valleys.

In the upper parts of the Alagir valley you may fi nd socalled “Three tears of God” - the sanctuaries of three brothers highly respected by the Ossetins. Those three sanctuaries (Rekom in Tsey valley, Sidan-Mykalgabyrta in Sidan valley and Tarangelos in Mamison valley) were erected in valleys which had been marked by God and diffi cult of access.

75, 76. Ancient village of Lisri in the Mamison Gorge
77. Transcam
78, 80. Winter in the Alagir Gorge
81. Village of Kholst. In the background - Tsei glacier and Mount Wilpata
82. Mount Kariukhokh massif
83. Holy Ascension Cathedral in Alagir
84, 87. In the village of Arkhon
85, 86. Arkhon Gorge
88-91. Zakka River Valley
92-93. On the slopes of the Mamison Gorge
94, 105. Ursdon-Dagom medieval fortress
95. Villages of Zgil and Kaliat early in the morning
96. Medieval towers of the village of Zgil against the backdrop of Mount Kozykhokh
97. Sculpture of Uastirdzhi at the entrance to the Alagir Gorge
98, 99. Monuments to Kosta Khetagurov in the poet’s homeland in the village of Nar
100. The grave of Kosta Khetagurov’s mother - Maria Gubaeva
102. Watchtower in the village of Donisar
103. One of the towers of the Ursdon-Dagom fortress
104. Snow-capped mountains of the Main Caucasus Range
106. The only wooden church of the Holy Trinity in North Ossetia near the village of Verkhniy Tsei. Built in 1868
107. In the village of Verkhny Tsey
108. River Tseydon and Mount Monk
109. Winter road in the Tseyskoye Gorge
110. Rekom Sanctuary in the Tsey Gorge
111. Women's sanctuary of Mada Mairam
112-113. Sanctuary of Raga Uastirdzhi
114. Tseysky glacier, view from the Rodina pass

76. Ancient village of Lisri in the Mamison Gorge
The ancient village Lisri in the Mamison valley

77. Transcam
Trans-Caucasian highway

78. Winter in the Alagir Gorge
Winter in the Alagir valley

79. Afsati - patron of wild animals
Afsati is the guardian of wild animals

Monument to Uastirdzhi in the Alagir Gorge (North Ossetia, Russia) - description, history, location, reviews, photos and videos.

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Ossetians are quite a religious people; many Muslims and Christians of various denominations live in the republic, among which there are quite a few Orthodox Christians. However, one cannot help but notice the uniqueness of the local religion. It must be said that Orthodoxy here has gone very far from the canon, and, like many ancient ethnic groups, is intertwined with pagan beliefs.

Among Christians of all denominations, Saint George is especially revered, and he is also revered by Ossetians, and he is especially revered, almost on a par with God. In local tradition, St. George the Victorious bears the name Uastirdzhi. He is considered the patron saint of males, travelers, and most importantly, warriors. His image does not strongly coincide with ideas about the appearance of St. George in other Christian countries, where the Great Martyr is depicted riding a horse, slaying a serpent, as a young man and dressed in armor. Here in Ossetia, images of Uastirdzhi are found everywhere and he looks like a mighty hero with a thick beard, broad shoulders and dressed in traditional attire.

Moreover, Uastirdzhi is often depicted on a winged horse and certainly against the backdrop of mountains. This appearance was formed from pagan beliefs. And after these regions converted to Christianity, he began to be associated with the image of St. George. Perhaps, there are no more common features between Uastirdzhi and St. George the Victorious, except that both were powerful warriors and patronize warriors.

According to the epic, Uastirdzhi was a celestial being who often descended from heaven in order to provide assistance in one matter or another. Often these requests were related to military matters. There are also stories that one day the Narts (mythical heroes from whom, according to legend, the Ossetians originated) rebelled against God, and Ustardzhi took their side.

Among Christians of all denominations, Saint George is especially revered, and he is also revered by Ossetians, and he is especially revered, almost on a par with God. In local tradition, St. George the Victorious bears the name Uastirdzhi.

Uastirdzhi had magical powers, could resurrect the dead and even take on a variety of appearances. According to legends, Uastirdzhi had two wives. Women are forbidden to say his name out loud; they should simply say - the patron of men. Actually, for a monument to such a character there could not have been a better place than the harsh Alagir Gorge.

In addition, this amazing monument, which, by the way, is considered one of the largest equestrian monuments in the world, was erected exactly on the Trans-Caucasian Highway - the road that connects Transcaucasia and Russia. The road either winds through gorges or creeps into tunnels carved out of centuries-old mountain layers. And suddenly, behind one of the bends, a gigantic figure of a horseman is revealed, which literally breaks out of the sheer rock.

Despite its monumental power, the statue seems very dynamic, with a horse stretched out in a jump and Uastirdzhi seated on it. This monument was erected in 1995 according to the design of N.V. Khodov as a gift to North Ossetia. The weight of the sculpture is as much as 28 tons. When this colossus was delivered to the gorge, to the installation site, a helicopter had to be used. After some time, the figure tilted heavily. Threatening to collapse at any moment, the monument was repaired in a timely manner. And one of the main attractions of Alanya pleases the eyes of all tourists and local residents. During the traditional celebration dedicated to Uastyrzhi, which is celebrated throughout the country at the end of November and lasts a whole week, many people traditionally gather at the monument.

Address: Alagir Gorge, Trans-Caucasian Railway.

The Alagir Gorge is a very remarkable and picturesque place. It is located on the territory of North Ossetia. This masterpiece of Nature once served as a fortress in ancient times. On its peaks there are still remains of fortifications:

• towers,
• fortress stone walls,
• protective ditches.

For a long time, mountain ledges were often used as fortresses in North Ossetia. The Alagir Gorge can therefore be called the southern outpost of the Russian Federation, indeed looking very much like a gate. It is from here that the route to the Near and Middle East lies; here lies the famous Trans-Caucasian Railway (Transcam).

Alagir city

Any trip to the Alagir Gorge begins from the small town of Alagir. Further, the path goes through the mountains of the Alagir Gorge, and ends with the Nizhny Zaramag customs house on the border with South Ossetia. Adjacent to the Alagirsky gorge is the Tseyskoye gorge, in which the holy place of the Ossetians, the Rekom sanctuary, is located. It is not so far from the village of Buron, only 9 kilometers along a narrow road, which lies at an altitude of 2000 meters above sea level. The small clearing of the “Recoma of the Phases” itself, where the sanctuary is located, is covered from the north by a ridge, and is limited from the south by the river. “Phase Recommendations” is a landmark of the colorful Tseyskaya Valley, where southern pines grow.

The original history of the ancient Ossetians - Alans is connected with the Alagir Gorge. For a long time it was the starting point around which all local life, both economic and political, was seething. In the Alagir Gorge there are plenty of attractions at every turn. Our travel club “Otkritie” will help you choose unique adventure tours to unique places in the gorge.

The story of Alagir in stone

The memory of those ancient times remains in the form of sanctuaries and monuments that date back to the early Middle Ages. The most famous of them:

Nuzal Chapel (the oldest building in North Ossetia),
. Nuzal and Ursdon fortifications,
. Kassar protective wall,

There are so many attractions in these parts that you definitely need to make a list of priorities. And our tourist club “Otkritie” will help with this. With us you can choose any thematic excursions and unique author’s routes to the most interesting places.

The beauty of the mountain streets of Alagir

You can spend unforgettable hours walking around Alagir itself. It is very picturesque, its ancient streets, unusually shaped buildings - all this fascinates and puts you in a romantic mood. If you want to dine at a local restaurant, there are a great many of them, the tourist infrastructure is well thought out, there are small cafes, benches for relaxation, and souvenir shops everywhere.

The Alagir Gorge, a photo of which is presented on the website of our tourist club, is suitable for recreation at any time of the year. Contact the Otkritie tourist club if you want to spend your vacation in the Caucasus in an exciting and useful way.