One of the most beau­ti­ful caves in the Urals is called Shul­­gan-Tash in Bashkir and is locat­ed on the ter­ri­to­ry of a sim­i­lar reserve. The three-lev­­el karst cav­i­ty with pas­sages more than 3.3 km long has pic­turesque drip­stone for­ma­tions, halls and under­ground lakes. Kapo­va Cave became famous thanks to folk leg­ends and rock paint­ings that were cre­at­ed in the Pale­olith­ic era, that is, 14–14.5 thou­sand years ago. At the entrance, tourists are greet­ed by a huge grot­to arch mea­sur­ing 48 by 18 m. On the left is the Blue Lake, from which the trib­u­tary of the Belaya Riv­er, the Shul­gan Riv­er, orig­i­nates. On the stone walls, more than three-lev­­el images made with red ocher or coal are well pre­served — mam­moths, rhi­noc­er­os­es, hors­es, bison, camels, com­plex for icon­ic signs and fig­ures sim­i­lar to a per­son.

The cave appeared due to the fact that the under­ground Shul­gan Riv­er washed away rocks in the rock mas­sif. The cave is mul­ti-storey, that is, the cor­ri­dors are locat­ed under­ground in sev­er­al tiers. Sci­en­tists believe that the cave was named “Kapo­va” because there was a tem­ple, that is, a rit­u­al place of ancient peo­ple. And Shul­gan in the Bashkir epic is the keep­er of the under­ground king­dom.

On the walls of the ancient cave (it is more than a mil­lion years old) you can see unique rock paint­ings that date back to the Pale­olith­ic era, that is, they are more than 14 thou­sand years old. Thus, these are some of the most ancient under­ground images in Rus­sia. They are cre­at­ed with red ocher and coal. The draw­ings depict mam­moths, hors­es and bison. In some places there are sil­hou­ettes sim­i­lar to humans, and signs, the mean­ing of which researchers are still study­ing.

Nature reserve. Area: 225.31 sq.m.