New original types of tourism have appeared in Russia: who is a swamp expert

With the development of domestic tourism, new “authentic” specializations of guides have appeared – a swamp expert, a sussan breeder and others. They are not yet taught at domestic faculties of the hotel business, but in practice, amateur guides of a narrow profile are already popular.

We got to know them better and learned the features of their work.

“The swamp is beautiful and interesting in any weather,” says Olga Galanina, a marsh expert guide, who leads excursions to the Sestroretsk swamps in the nature reserve of the resort area near St. Petersburg. Judging by the guide’s description of the beauties that the sightseers will see, the Sestroretsk swamp expert is a real fan of his narrow profile. She, for example, is convinced that the association “I was sucked in by a dangerous quagmire” in relation to the swamp is fundamentally wrong. It is not for nothing that swamps in neighboring Finland have exceptionally good names – Warm, Khlebnoe, Kvasnoe, and Swamp Day is even celebrated there. Olga recalls that the historic St. Petersburg district of Kolomna stands on the site of the Goat Bog, whose resident Alexander Blok wrote: “Love this eternity of swamps.” Specifically, the Sestroretsk swamp is considered a unique “bog-plateau”, as it is perfectly flat and in this regard is regularly mentioned in the works of Western marsh scientists. According to experts, the Sestroretsk swamp is older than the Egyptian pyramids and has not changed a bit over its long life: today the eternal swamp looks just as calmly at the urban towers visible in the distance, as it once did at the sites of ancient man.

In the homeland of the most famous Russian pensioner – Baba Yaga, who is considered the village of Kukoboy in the Yaroslavl region, there are kikimora guides, goblin and other fairy-tale characters who lead tourists into their fairy-tale world.

“Before, we served mainly children on vacation,” says the guide from the fairy tale, who moonlights as Ivan the Fool during the season. – But now we accept full-fledged adult tours with all-inclusive accommodation.

– In huts on chicken legs?

– Almost. Everything is authentic, with full immersion. We can fly on broomsticks, ride in mortars.

Every schoolboy knows the story of a serf village peasant who, at the cost of his life, led an enemy detachment away from the village where the founder of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich, was hiding. Historians argue to this day about the exact place and details of the feat of Ivan Susanin, who lured the enemy to the disastrous forest swamps, but the sussan guides, without waiting for the ultimate truth, take everyone there. This happens about 75 km from Kostroma in the village of Susanino. A few years ago, independent tourists complained that the village seemed to have died out, no one would show or tell anything. But now the Susan scholars have become more active: on the “last journey of Ivan Susanin” (the so-called excursion) they lead from a huge boulder on a hill (60 tons of black basalt) with the inscription “Ivan Susanin, 1613” through the forest to Isupovskoye swamp. Local grandmothers say “true” that this boulder was uprooted by the swamp itself in memory of Susanin the hero, although according to the papers, the boulder is listed as an individual entrepreneur of the 1988 model, who was going to create a museum of the feat of Ivan Susanin, but never gathered.

– And who is your guide on the Susanin route? I ask the locals.

– Yes, whoever needs the money most of all, that is the guide, – the local old woman answers, in her own words, living in the village “since the time of Susanin.” – We have here how to get to the pine tree, under which Susanin drowned, even small children know. No one will tell you better than the locals, and for the time being, they are not trained to be susan breeders on purpose.

Tourists who have already been on the “last path of Susanin” advise followers not to forget rubber boots and better look under their feet, no matter what your susan leader says.

– The trail goes straight through the swamp, lined with boards, – says a traveler from Moscow, who recently visited Susanin places. The guide said that the route is completely safe. But I’m not sure, especially if it rained the day before. In places, these boards go right from under your feet into what seemed to be moss, but turned out to be a muddy green slurry. She champs and her feet get wet, and then the shoes stink of mud for a long time. If you dare, take rubber boots and a longer snag to poke in front of you into the quagmire.

In Buryatia, Khakassia, Altai and other domestic “corners of power”, where shamans still live and work, the curious are led by shaman-loving guides – that is, amateurs, since there are no professionals in this industry for obvious reasons. Not yet, but if domestic tourism develops as promised, the training of swamp guides, sussan breeders and shaman lovers may well be taken over by the long-standing, and now not very popular faculties of guide-translators.