Iron Belt

"Iron Belt" is the entire Ural region in sixty-five days. Powerful cliffs, mystical stone pillars, mysterious ice and underwater caves, dense fir forests, sunny steppes, transparent lakes, cold waterfalls, and mighty rivers; gemstone mines, salt mines, gold placers, and diamond... dredges; secret hermitages, shamanic shrines, Zoroastrian power sites, and fortresses of old monasteries; gloomy wooden deities, terrifying idols, magical animal-style plaques, and miraculous icons; post-apocalyptic iron monsters of mountain factories, Martian remnants of blast furnaces, palatial architecture of ancient workshops, giant factory ponds and dams, warm wooden salt factories and whimsical water towers; giant buckets of mining excavators, toy pipes of the first Cherepan locomotives, filigree pattern of Zlatoust blades, purple scatter of amethyst geodes, and green-eyed pattern of malachite mosaics; chilling spells of pagans, quiet prayers of Ural saints, mysterious plots of Bazhov's tales, and insightful texts by Alexei Ivanov, explaining the hidden meanings of this amazing territory - the most industrialized area on the planet.
Fourteen car routes, precise logistics, vibrant images of cities and towns in texts and author's illustrations - this is your navigator through Ural civilization. And the stalker - Alexei Ivanov, who in the essay "Ural Matrix" outlined the main strategies for those who, setting off in search of adventure, consider meanings to be the most valuable trophy.