According to official figures, about 300 thousand hectares of land intended for agriculture in Udmurtia are abandoned today.
Once these places were inhabited, people were engaged in farming and animal husbandry here, but due to different circumstances, these areas were abandoned. The villagers had to leave their homes, condemning them to the inevitable destruction of nature and time. It should be noted that many of these villages still have amazing buildings.
Abandoned places
Andreevtsi is a former village that belonged to the Celtinsky district of Udmurtia. According to the results of the 2012 census, it was stated that there were no residents left in this place. True, about 11 abandoned houses and the old church, built in 1910 and transferred in 1941 to warehouses, have survived. Now it has almost collapsed. Neighboring people mow hay in the adjacent fields and set up a pen for cows in the summer.
The village of Ganino, once located on the Moya River, already almost disappeared in 1961, only 20 people lived there, and then it was completely empty. In 1987, it was deregistered as a settlement.
Emelyanovka - the former village of the Glazovsky district - disappeared from topographic maps in the 1960s.
Such abandoned villages of Udmurtia as Kuznerka, Chunya and many others are known. Unfortunately, there are more than enough such ghost villages in the republic today.
Tourist interest
A curious consequence of this desolation and abandonment turned out to be such a phenomenon as increased interest in tourists to these places.
The abandoned villages of Udmurtia have recently attracted lovers of extreme travel, and there are people who are ready to officially accompany them on this journey. Travel agencies are currently intensively developing this direction of travel.
And if there are people who want to look at the abandoned villages or, for example, get to the abandoned territories of former pioneer camps, resorts, personal estates, then you can easily use the services of a guide. The republic really lacks all the forgotten objects: these are not only villages, they are also city buildings of hospitals, schools, hotels, theaters. You can even make an excursion to long-acting and abandoned military bases.
In principle, in places unusual for the eye, such as the abandoned villages of Udmurtia, a tourist can really discover something new, for example, see interesting ethnic and historical objects. Those who were here talk about the feeling that the structures left by people seem to continue to live their own lives.
Of course, this is not a journey in the usual sense, but such a trip can help break out of the bondage of gray everyday life and look at another, almost parallel reality. Just don’t go there without an experienced guide, because if you are careless, you can at least be in the police, and at the very least in the hospital. Since many abandoned objects have long been in disrepair, it is better not to make independent attempts to get into it, but to use the services of specialists who will monitor your safety.
Treasure hunting
To some extent, such a peculiar occupation as treasure hunting is developing in the territories of the abandoned villages of Udmurtia. People with special equipment really come here and try to find something valuable in the abandoned lands.
Treasure hunters (they are also called "diggers") say that here you can really, though not often, find antiques that are valued by antique dealers. But mostly people with metal detectors hunt for old coins.
Of course, Udmurtia is not strewn with treasures - it so happened historically that there were no violent foci of civilization here. Mostly valuables in these parts turned out to be transit, since these lands were a kind of transshipment point on trade routes from Europe to Asia. Nevertheless, quite interesting treasures were actually found several times in these lands. For example, in 2009, a worker during road construction came across a copper chest with several hundred royal silver coins.
