The Urals are a geographical region located around the Ural Mountains, between the East European and West Siberian plains. It extends approximately from north to south, from the Arctic Ocean to the bend of Ural River near Orsk city. The boundary between Europe and Asia runs along the eastern side of the Ural Mountains. Ural mostly lies within Russia but also includes a part of northwestern Kazakhstan. This is an historical, not an official entity, with the boundaries overlapping its western Volga and eastern Siberia neighbor regions. At points in time, parts of the Urals were considered a gateway to Siberia, if not Siberia itself, or were combined with the Volga administrative divisions.
The historical center of the Urals is Cherdyn, nowadays it is the small town in Perm Krai. Perm was an administrative center of the gubernia with the same name by 1797. The most territory of historical and modern Ural was included in Perm gubernia. The administrative center of Urals was moved to Sverdlovsk (nowadays Yekaterinburg) after Revolution and Civil war. Nowadays Ural economic region does not have an administrative and informal capital, whereas Yekaterinburg is administrative center of the Ural Federal District.
In local dialects the Ural has long been called as the Stone Belt or just the Stone. Indeed, the Ural Mountains as if encircle the country stretching from the Arctic to the Kazakh steppes. In the history of Russian Urals has always been the residence of powerful people, travelers, explorers, industrialists. Severe nature required them special qualities. The Ural was also a place of mixture of many nationalities, as outsiders and locals. The land was known as a place of exile and prisons. It is here one of the infamous Gulag camps, today it operates as a museum. Prisoners also have done their share to the establishment of a local character, adding a love of freedom and independence… For centuries, this region was a major mining and industrial center of Russia, a large area of the defense industry.
We are ready to help you discover this unusual land, from the simple booking of hotels, hostels, to the organization of buses and minibuses, to white water rafting, hunting, fishing, climbing the Ural mountains, visits to caves, рarticipation in traditional festivals and rituals, and so on…
