To the origins of Barguzin: where the sun wakes up

Do you know that Barguzin used to flow in the opposite direction, from Lake Baikal? And about dragons and fortresses at its three sources? About those who lived here thousands of years ago?

Today is the source of the Barguzin River, the waterway of the Bargujin-Tokum country, where Genghis Khan's mother is from.

There are many barguzins on Lake Baikal. This is the well-known Barguzin wind that moves the shaft, and the third largest river, carrying its waters to the great lake, and two villages, and the Barguzinsky reserve, and the sable, and the Barguzin operational group, famous for the entire reserve system.

All interesting things are usually confused; in the Barguzinsky Reserve, Barguzin does not flow, but a river flows and originates in the territory of the Dzherginsky Reserve, at the spurs of the South Mui Range, where the sun rises and sets off.

Somewhere beneath these sheer cliffs, a great river originates. There she collects her victims. In just four months of 2016 there were four cases of avalanches and five dead climbers.

But we are interested in the origins, and you won’t have to climb the rocks behind them. From Balan-Tamur to the source - twenty-five kilometers. Barguzin has three sources, one is located directly under these rocks, and the other two diverge to the right and left of them.

The mountains here are severe, but in gleams along the river and on lakes in summer and golden autumn it will be fine. Lingonberries, blueberries and even cloudberries on the banks of Churikto.

Do you know that Barguzin used to flow the other way? Here is a story recorded in 1937. In those years they didn’t lie.

“Previously, very long ago it was, the Barguzin river flowed not from Lake Baikal, but from Lake Baikal to the Arctic Ocean, and then she turned back and started to run to where she went. It was not done by God, the will of the earth was. It happened like this: Baikal stood, stood, there were high mountains around it, nowhere else on the Earth above them, and between these mountains did the water accumulate and accumulate. In the mountains did the ice and snow melt, the rains fell, all this flowed down to Lake Baikal. , she covered half the mountains, and then she had nowhere to go, and the mountain rivers all merged and merged their water in the sea. And one day one mountain could not stand it, burst. Water broke through and flowed through it to Lake Baikal. It washed away the whole taiga, made a level place from mountain to mountain and reached the Arctic Ocean. Then there was a lot of water in Lake Baikal , the river flowed wide and deep, and when it became smaller, it began to gather in a narrow channel, flowed, water flowed along the river and flooded the entire coast by the ocean, there were large cold spells, and ice mountains began to grow from that water. At first, the water broke through them, because there were a lot of them in Lake Baikal, and having lost it, the water lost power. After many years, the icy mountains did not allow water from Baikal to go directly to the ocean. The frozen ice began to come closer and closer to Lake Baikal. The river became shorter every year and washed out its peak. In the end, she had so far washed up her valley, along which she flowed in the early years, that the valley rose above Baikal. Water stopped running from Baikal to it, and other rivers from mountains and char started to run into the old channel at that time. That water had nowhere to go, the river turned back and went to Lake Baikal. When the water went to the ocean, a lot of silt was put into the valley, the whole forest at the bottom of the river rotted. The river became narrow, the banks became wide. Now, where the Barguzin river goes, the whole place is called a valley, and there is no richer region than this valley. When the Tungus with the Barguts came to the valley, the river was already running to Lake Baikal, instead of the former wide river, the narrow one flowed, along which the hunters went down to the sea. The valley managed to overgrow with the taiga, animals and birds bred, and it became more beautiful than before the appearance of the river. Therefore, then the Buryats and Russians came to these places, and my grandfather settled here. "

For some reason, I’m sure that dragons lived in these places. Whose claws could leave such furrows on the mountain?

And here, on the ridge, there were fortresses. What kind of people lived here, kept the defense from dragons? Even before the Buryats, Evenks, Tungus ...