One of our plans for today were to visit some ice caves. I saw a biker with some luggage, and longed even more to make my own trip by motorbike. Some day!

At the Kungur Ice Caves, we first went through the hassle of buying tickets. The cashier did not really speak english, but they had an english speaking woman who would come and help us, and also be our guide in the ice caves.

After a small kind-of-lunch, and some ice cream, we started the tour. First, we went through some ice parts, with sculptures and snow.

It was a couple kilometres to walk in total, but it was left chilly than expected. That, or we took too much clothing with us…

We got to see a pretty trippy laser show movie, with a really creepy voiced bat as the speaker. We didn’t understand much, but think it was about history.

In the end, there were lakes instead. Some of them making illusions of being endless deep, but mostly beautiful. In February, they have some sort of religious tradition of taking a bath in the water.

After the trip we continued driving to a monastery we were going to visit. We saw an old Russian-looking woman on the way!

While driving up a hill, suddenly a big building started appearing through the mist. It was a really spectacular look.

The monastery were not really open at this time but they were having church service in the cellar. A priest were chanting, while everyone else sometimes made the cross-sign. While walking around some of us met a guy who tried to explain something for us, and after using some translation application, we understood he wanted us to stay there overnight. We got to speak with another guy, who spoke to a priest, and we were allowed to. They offered us to sleep inside, but we wanted to live in the cars as usual, and after some explaining we could do that. For a small amount of money, we also got to eat delicious dinner in their canteen!

He then showed us the “sauna”, which they call something else, as they don’t seem to use regular showers. Instead they have one steaming hot room, and this room on the picture, where you “bath”.