<b>Attention: This post has been written by @karisa</b>

First the idea of looking at the famous ice caves with my own eyes occurred to me several years ago, but only this summer I finally managed to make a journey there. It took me about 3 hours to reach Kungur Ice Cave from Perm and as I set out there in the evening after work, I had to stay in a hotel. I was really glad that I had no problem with housing and that I didn't have to sleep in my car.


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If anyone doesn't know it, now I'd like to tell you about this unique place very briefly. The age of Kungur Ice Cave is more than ten thousand years, however, it became available for visitors only in the 19th century. The cave grottoes consist of special gypsum rock, and to date geologists have been exploring more than 6 km of the carve from which only less than 2 km are open for tourists. Kungur Cave is the seventh-longest karst cave in the world. Though it's the seventh-longest cave but the most beautiful one.

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After I bought the ticket, which costs only $ 10, I decided to find something interesting in the gift shop, but found nothing. And then it was my time. The guides called us and said that in 15 minutes we would begin the descent. By the way, even though it was very hot outside, around + 35C, it was very cold inside the cave, about 0C. So you shouldn’t forget to bring warm clothes.

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Coming in through the main entrance you find yourself in an artificial tunnel which looks very like a large pipeline. As a tour guide says, half a century back tourists could only reach the ice cavern through a small gap, so that the process has become much easier for modern travellers. Two first grottos, named Polar grotto and Diamond grotto, hugely impress visitors with tricky needle-shaped figures made of the myriads of ice crystals which caverns are littered with. Moving on without stopping we managed to pass by all this beauty in a few minutes. The point is that the microclimate is quite sensitive to the change of the temperature there so it can be easily ruined by tourists being near crystals for a long time.


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After passing these exciting natural places, we got into a Grotto that is dedicated to the famous author of «The Divine Comedy» and is called Dante. The red light and the figure of a bat, carved right from ice, create a really unique atmosphere of mystery. After the grotto with a cross, where, according to legend, a monk-hermit once lived, other tourists and me in particular were hugely impressed by the "fabulous" stone, which is located at the fork of routes and alerts that by going to the left you can reach the underground lake, and on the right you can find the ... Atlantis!

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In the hall called «The bottom of the sea» you can see tremendously beautiful «lace» made of gypsum, that were «drawn» by the nature itself due to the impact of water for many thousands of years. In the middle of «Sculptural» hall there is the Princess-frog or rather her stone statue. The backlight in the «Meteor» grotto is organized in such a way that effect of periodically flying meteors is created. Moreover, the most interesting in the «Coral» hall is silhouette of a rhinoceros without a tail, a profile of count Dracula and authentic decoration that is very similar to coral reefs. What is more, the real underground bar works here in the last few decades. 

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Going forward, we see the hall called 'Efirny' (Ethereal), drip is always heard here and interesting furrows in a plaster stone resemble organ pipes. There is a huge and spectacular underground lake in the 'Titanicheskiy' (Titanic) hall, and there is a mysterious entrance to the not explored part of the Kungur Ice Cave in the grotto 'Dlinny' (Long), the length of which is approximately 200 meters. On the whole, we have passed about twenty various halls, each of which is worth special attention. The last grotto called 'Vyshka' (Tower) is covered with magnificent snow crystals and stalagmites.

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And to conclude, what is there to say... I really liked this trip and I don’t regret the time and money spent. This is one of the miracles of Russia, a truly unique place.
So I’ve decided that I’ll return there again many times)
By the way , some photos are not in the correct place.

http://s016.radikal.ru/i337/1608/bd/c03ae8e43f89.jpg
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<b>Attention: This post has been written by @karisa</b>

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