This very remote and quietly beautiful part of the Urals is a great place for hiking, climbing the Zyuratkul range, swimming in a lake, going to a banya (hot bath) and sleeping in a log house. If you stay on the lake, you may wake up and feel rather like Henry Thoreau at Walden Pond.
The national park is dominated by several forest-covered ranges and Lake Zyuratkul, which translates from Bashkir as ‘heart lake’. This is best observed from the Zyuratkul range nearby – an easy four-hour hike along a boardwalk through the forest and then along the mostly well-marked mountain path, though the kurum (path of loose rocks) at the top can be challenging in wet weather. Access is through the wooden arch on the main road, 100m before the lake and about a 10-minute walk back from Ecopark Zyuratkul.
