Ualikhanov district in the South-East is located on the common border of Pavlodar and Akmola regions. During Virgin lands campaign everything was plowed here, and in the 1990s, according to local residents, the plowed land was abandoned and no longer restored.
Due to the fact that people here are no longer so seriously managed, the landscapes in such places have become wild. Now it is pleasing to the eye of any tourist! It is here that the traveller will see natural vegetation and ... huge areas occupied by marmots.
– We were in early July. They are already in hibernation at the end of July, and we just got there when they were fattening, feeding, - says Sergey Pashkov, candidate of geographical Sciences, associate Professor of the North Kazakhstan state University named after M. Kozybayev, head of the regional representative office of the Republican public Association "QazaqGeography", who has visited these places a lot of times. – There's a wild reo deer in the very tall grass. A lot of eagles!
In this region hares run freely. If you shudder to a halt, you can see how eagles hunt hares.
"There are cranes, too!" They fly freely. We saw a couple of birds, "says Sergey. – We are talking just about birds and mammals, as for the fauna, it is very rich here.
According to our interlocutor, Ualikhanov district is the largest in the North Kazakhstan region, but the most sparsely populated. Therefore, there are a lot of natural feeding grounds.
People pasture out livestock on these fields: calves are born right in the meadows, and then they are fattened up until late autumn. Herds here are large; they keep close to reservoirs to be able to drink.
How to get there? From Petropavlovsk to Ualikhanov district, you can take the a-1 highway, then the A – 13. For example, the district center – the village of Kishkenekol-is a four-and-a-half-hour drive, 340 kilometers. From the city of Kokshetau, however, it is closer-about 100 kilometers, from Nur-Sultan – more than 100.
Anton Sergeev
Photo by Sergey Pashkov and Ilya Yakovlev
