Deep at night From August 9 to 10, the motor ship "Rodina" passed along the Irtysh village of Ust-Ishim - the northernmost and most remote regional center Omsk region. There, as the name suggests, the Ishim flows into the Irtysh on the left - quite large river, two and a half thousand kilometers long, originating in Kazakhstan (Astana and Petropavlovsk are located on Ishim). Finally, by morning, after almost two days of travel from Omsk, we reached the border of the Omsk and Tyumen regions. I woke up in the cabin, hearing an announcement on the radio that the ship was passing the village of Malaya Beach A- the last populated area of the Omsk region (at the same time, the first in the Tyumen region - Abaul, is located upstream). True, I didn’t see Malaya Beach itself, although there is interesting object— the remains of the narrow-gauge railway that operated there. And the weather that morning was the same as the day before - cloudy, cool and foggy in the high altitudes.
The map on which I put numbers indicating the number of the photo in the post, in accordance with the place. Two red lines on the right and left approximately mark the boundaries of the section of the river shown in the post. The map is clickable.
2. The Irtysh has really changed somewhat. It became wider (after all, the Ishim, a river larger than the Oka and Don, flowed into it), the water, instead of muddy green, acquired a slightly brownish tint. Nature has also changed - if thick willows still grow on the low bank, then on right side Reddish-colored steep sand pits began to rise.
3. And a picturesque forest. Now there is truly taiga around.
4. Two dense coniferous trees on the right are none other than Siberian cedars:
5. And along the banks - the same picturesque Siberian hinterland. This is the village of Bolshoi Karagay.
So we're in Tyumen region! We move the hands back an hour - here it’s already “plus two” to Moscow time. By the way, we will spend almost the entire rest of our trip in this region. To be more precise, the concept of “Tyumen region” can be viewed in different ways: the “small” Tyumen region is its main part, region number 72, and the “large” region is the entire region, including Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs, which, being separate subjects of the federation, at the same time are part of the Tyumen region. Now we are still in the “small” Tyumen region.
6. By nightfall we will have to reach Tobolsk, and the landscapes steep banks already strongly resemble its surroundings (I had previously been to Tobolsk in July 2014 and looked at the Irtysh only from the shore). Every now and then images of the conquerors of Siberia appear in my head - Cossack detachments Ermak.
I also remember the famous painting by Vasily Surikov:
7. Sometimes, however, low, gentle banks stretch along the river, but beyond the numerous bends of the river, more and more steep holes can be seen.
8. Taiga... In addition to cedars, Siberian firs also appeared here - similar to spruce trees, only with pointed tops.
10. One bend after another. The ship is still meandering along the river—for the third day without stopping.
11. The kilometer shows that there are 840 kilometers left to the mouth. This means that we have to walk almost the same distance to Khanty-Mansiysk. Already more than a half We have passed the way from Omsk.
12. The barge comes towards:
13. And then someone’s boat hid near the bushes. You can always see them in huge numbers on the shores.
14. Meanwhile, the weather is getting better. The morning gray gloom with light rain remained aside, the sun began to shine, and people began to come out onto the deck more and more often. Notice how clear and beautiful the cloud line with the clear sky is here!
15. On the right bank is the village of Kurya.
16. Huts, sheds, vegetable gardens. Somewhere there are potatoes growing, somewhere there are greenhouses with tomatoes... This is how life goes on on the banks of a big river, where from the window of a rural house you can see a white motor ship.
18. Sometimes there are lakes lying at a level above the river:
19. In the middle of the day it even became a little hot. Finally, there is no cold wind, and you can calmly stand on the foredeck.
21. The fishermen seem to be setting their nets. Although you can't really see it from a distance.
22. And here, near the shore, there is a small pier with a self-propelled ferry, which seems to be the only one seen during the entire trip (most of the ferries were barges pushed by a tug).
23. The river still meanders dashingly, but the main direction of the Irtysh flow here is no longer north, but west: the Irtysh gradually deviates towards westward in the north of the Omsk region, and then, merging with the Tobol, sharply turns north again. Moreover, on the map it looks as if the Tobol does not flow into the Irtysh, but vice versa. The situation is very similar with the Ob River.
24. The village of Supra on the right bank. Pay attention to the characteristic turquoise-blue roofs - this color comes across very often here. Maybe it's just a traditional Muslim color.
25. There is also a rural mosque built in the 2000s. In general, in these places it is as commonplace as churches (including newly built ones) in the villages of the Central Russian outback.
IN rural areas Mostly Siberian Tatars live here. There are quite a few of them in Tobolsk (although they speak Russian there, and in the villages you can sometimes hear Tatar speech). By the way, in appearance they differ quite noticeably from the Volga Tatars.
There were a lot Siberian Tatars and among the passengers of our ship. Many of them were returning home to Tobolsk, and one Tatar woman with children was a native of Omsk and, having visited her relatives, was going home to Salekhard.
26. Siberian taiga...
28. And again there are high cliffs above the river. The place where Tobolsk now stands once looked the same.
29. On the sandy shore we suddenly saw sheep merging with the sand. By the way, what’s interesting is that for some reason sheep breeding is more widespread in Siberia (at least by eye and relatively) than in Middle lane Russia.
31. Somewhere on the shore houses flash again:
32. This is the village of Inzhura, the name of which we jokingly tried to translate from English Injuring, agreeing, however, that the word that in translation means "damage, injury"- still not very suitable :) By the way, as I remember, it was to Inzhura that the bus from Tobolsk went, on which I went to Abalak in 2014.
34. Kulmametskaya village on the left side:
35. And here, it seems, is some kind of concrete dam on the left bank. Perhaps protection from coastal erosion.
Here the feeling of wilderness that was felt in the north of the Omsk region is somehow gone. It is noticeable that we are approaching Tobolsk, which, although not very Big city(98 thousand inhabitants), but in these places it is, in fact, the center of civilization. The places along the banks of the river look somehow more lived-in than yesterday.
37. Cows graze on a coastal meadow. Moreover, many of them look with undisguised surprise at the strange white colossus walking along the river.
38. And children are playing on the deck of our ship. There were quite a lot of them here.
39. On the left side, the Vagai River flows into the Irtysh, which gave its name to the village of the same name - district center. The village is located away from the river and cannot be seen from the ship; you can get to Vagai by bus and even with small aviation, — the An-2 “maize plant” flies there from Tobolsk. By the way, the mouth of the river that we see is artificial. It was dug in the 1960s for the convenience of timber rafting and shipping, due to the shallow water in the natural channel. That is why the new mouth received the name “Prorva branch”.
It is believed that it was in this place that the conqueror of Siberia Ermak Timofeevich died in 1585, when he was overtaken by the army of Kuchum, the ruler, during an overnight stay. Khanate of Siberia(whose capital, the city of Isker, was located next to present-day Tobolsk). However, I also heard that this is just a legend, and the exact place of the ataman’s death has not been established, but the place at the mouth of the Vagai has long been called Ermakova Backwater.
40. On the right bank the village of Vtorovagaiskoe appeared - with the same unusual turquoise roofs of houses, a rural wooden mosque and a cedar forest in the background.
41. Left behind the stern is the Vagai Island, formed by two channels of the Irtysh. It is believed that it was on the island that Ermak and his comrades stopped for the night.
42. And on the left is the old mouth of the Vagai River, which was already shallow, and with the digging of a new mouth, it probably became even shallower.
43. But the mouth of Vagai remains astern, and we move on. On the right bank are the villages of Yarkova and Kobyakskaya.
It's half past four in the afternoon. We have been on the road from Omsk for almost 52 hours. And we’ll pause here for now to continue our journey in the next part. The evening of that day promised to be very interesting - Tobolsk was waiting for us!
The Vagay River flows in Western Siberia, is one of the many tributaries of the well-known Irtysh. Vagai has nothing to do with the category of small rivers, we can say this with firm confidence, knowing that its length is 555 km. Therefore, Vagai deserves to be given at least some attention.
On one of the picturesque shores, in the recent past, a small urban-type settlement called Vagai was founded and took root. We, of course, know why the village is Vagai, because it exists near this river, and the relationship is directly visible here.
Adopting a geographical name for a settlement near a river, or vice versa, is a feature that occurs quite often, and there is nothing surprising here for those who are interested in toponyms and have encountered this more than once.
One can only think about where the roots of such a mysterious name for the river come from and what this word contains. There are several versions about this, but all of them are very doubtful, groundless and have no evidence. But there is one beautiful legend, about which it is simply impossible to remain silent. If it had no significance, it would not have survived to this day.
Many years and winters ago, one young guy named Vagai experienced love feelings to the girl. And as proof, he decided to swim across the river along the banks of which they were walking together. Unable to cross the river, Vagai drowned. And the girl cried for a long time, sitting on the shore and replenishing the water with her tears. And not only the guy drowned in this river, her pride also drowned here.
Since then, the river has been called by the name of the lover.
The name of the river comes from the Turkmen (according to other sources, Kazakh) tribal unit (community) Vagai of the Gerkez clan, which once owned pastures in the valley.
The river originates from the lake. Ryamovskoye, flows into the Irtysh 55 km below the mouth of the Tobol. The length of the river is 555 km, the basin area is 23 thousand km2 - the 6th largest Russian tributary of the Irtysh in terms of basin area and the 7th longest in length. The river basin is located within the forest-steppe undulating Ishim Plain, Bottom part basin - in the subzone of small-leaved, mainly birch forests. Average height the basin is 110 m, the elevations gradually decrease from south to north, determining the meridional direction of the valley. The total forest cover of the basin is 35%, swampiness is 15%; lowland reed and sedge bogs predominate in the former lake basins. The surface of the basin is composed of sandy-clayey lacustrine-alluvial deposits, overlain by loess-like loams. In the southern part of the basin, solonetzes and solonchaks are often found.
The river valley is wide (2–3 km), with gentle slopes turning into a weakly dissected interfluve plain. The floodplain is two-sided, lacustrine-oxbow and segmental-ridged, high (6–8, in the lower reaches up to 10 m), width in the middle and lower reaches 0.5–2 km, meadow, in places overgrown with willow, poplar and aspen-birch forests. It is completely flooded in high-water years for up to 1 week, low-lying areas - almost every year. During high water, numerous low-span bridges used for transport communication Boat crossings are organized in villages along rural dirt and grader roads and for access to pastures and hayfields. The main tributaries of the Vagai: Balakhley, Agitka (right), Ashlyk (left).
The channel is freely meandering and moderately sinuous. The width is from 10 to 50 m, in the lower reaches - 80 m. The banks are intensively eroded during floods. Slopes gradually decrease from 0.55–0.62‰ in the upper reaches to 0.12–0.19% in the lower reaches. The depths on the rifts are 0.3–0.8 m, on the reaches – 3–5 m. Along the banks, the river is overgrown with aquatic vegetation. The current speed in high water is 0.9–1.5 m/s, in low water – 0.05 m/s. The sediments are silt-fine sand. In the village Omutinsky Vagai is blocked by a low-pressure earthen dam 320 m long; Water flows through pipes. A channel reservoir 5 km long and 70–150 m wide was created above. In 1978, in the estuary area below the village. Vagai a canal (“breakthrough”) was dug to improve conditions for timber rafting; A 5-km section of the old channel is preserved on the Irtysh floodplain as a winding oxbow depression.
The river has a West Siberian type of water regime. They are fed by snow and, to a lesser extent, by rain. The flood is high (8–12 m), with a sharp rise at the end of April – beginning of May and a slow decline in levels until the end of July – beginning of August. The low water is low, the river becomes very shallow. The average long-term water flow is 21.5 m 3 /s (0.679 km 3 /year), the maximum is 750 m 3 /s, during low water flows decrease to 0.8–1.5 m 3 /s. The river freezes in November and opens in April. The ice thickness is 30–50 cm, and ice dams form in places. The turbidity of water and the flow of suspended sediment are subject to significant fluctuations: in a high-water year, the sediment flow reaches 60–80 thousand tons, in a low-water year it does not exceed 4 thousand tons; the maximum flow rate of suspended sediment is 1500 kg/s. Average annual values Water turbidity ranges from 18 to 35 g/m3. Maximum water turbidity is observed at the peak of the flood.
The valley is densely populated; On the river there are the villages of Vagai (population 4.2 thousand people), Omutinskoye (9.2 thousand people), Aromashevo (5.4 thousand people), numerous villages and hamlets. The Vagai Valley is a large agricultural region of the Tyumen region; Grain farming, potato growing, vegetable growing, and meat and dairy cattle breeding are developed here. IN populated areas– enterprises for processing agricultural products, production of bakery products, dairy farms, creameries, textile, clothing enterprises, agro-industrial firms, supply and marketing cooperatives. The floodplain is used for pastures and hayfields. In the upper reaches of the river, the Tyumen-Omsk railway line (part of the Trans-Siberian Railway) runs through the valley. There is no navigation, although during high water the movement of small-tonnage vessels and boats is possible (270 km from the mouth, to the village of Omutinskoye). Fish stocks are small, local population catches perch, pike perch, bream, roach, and pike for consumption. The river is used for tourist fishing.
Subsequently, many legends were created about the origin of the name; according to one of them, she bears the name of a young guy who failed to swim across the river to prove his love for a girl. At the mouth of Vagai (Ermakova Zavod tract), Ermak Timofeevich died in 1585; here in the village Old Churchyard installed Orthodox cross and a memorial stone. Surroundings of the village Vagai and the mouth area of the valley (63 km 2) have the status of a natural monument of regional significance.