For the first time rafted down the Usva River in July 2020. I tell you what surprised me.

I never understood rave reviews about this type of vacation as alloy. Well, you swim on the river for several days, sleep in a tent, cope with various everyday difficulties and feed mosquitoes.

Therefore, I was not particularly delighted with the offer of friends to raft down the river.

But still they persuaded me and so I went for the first time on the rafting.

They decided to raft along the Usva River, which flows in the Perm Territory.

The name of the river, translated from the Permian Komi, sounds like "Water falling with noise".

As it turned out, the river got this name for a reason. There are a lot of rifts along the entire river, and there are also rapids.

We decided to rafting on boats, and even captured the motor just in case (as it turned out, not in vain).

The first thing that surprised me after we got to the starting point of the rafting- this is the number of people.

It turns out that rafting on the Usva River is a fairly popular form of recreation.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to find myself on a busy waterway with a bunch of people after leaving the city.

But as soon as we started our journey and the beauty of these places opened up before us, the presence of a large number of tourists has ceased to bother.

The nature in these places is amazing.

The main attraction of this route is Usvinskie Pillars.

They are 120 meters high rocky cliffs that stretch along the river for 15 kilometers.

Of particular interest is the location located slightly away from the main rocky massif rock 70 m high, which has the name "Devil's finger".

By the way, it was on "Usvinskie pillars" that one of the episodes of the film "Time of the First" was filmed, where our cosmonauts landed in the hard-to-reach taiga.

The second thing that surprised me was the depth of the river itself.

The river is quite shallow, and a rocky bottom was visible throughout the entire route.

And there are a lot of rifts, where the depth of the water was sometimes ankle-deep. I often had to go down into the water and drag the boats by hand.

On one of these rifts we broke an oar. Therefore, the motor turned out to be very useful.

Well, the last thing that surprised me is the amazing nature, which completely changed my idea of ​​water recreation.

Now this beautiful Ural river is pulling me like a magnet and I want to return there again and again.