Proval'ye Travel Guide

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We enjoyed walking along the bank of the River Verkhne Provalye ("the Upper Precipice River").
The picturesque river reminded me of the magnificent Crimea.

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We had lunch at the terrace of the village bar located next to the village shop.
You can sit comfortably there after you have done some shopping in the store.
I would recommend you to buy some local bread that is very tasty like homemade one.

Favorite Dish: We had Ukrainian varenyky with mashed potatoes and some beer. It was great!

You can get to Provalye from the central market of the town of Chervonopartizansk (Red Partisan Town), a satellite town of Sverdlovsk, located to the east of it and near the Russian border.
Another alternative is to hire a cab by hour from Chervonopartizansk.
You can also hire a cab from Sverdlovsk, it's up to you.
The cab fare by hour is $10-$15 plus you might have to pay extra fee for the distance.
We paid the cab driver $25 for our five hours' trip, which was quite reasonable.

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This village has always been famous for its horse farming.
The Russian Don Cossacks' horse farm was founded here in 1842.
Now the former farm building is used for other purposes.
The farm operated for about 150 years and then ceased to exist.
We only saw a horse family at the kids camp: very nice horses, especially the colt!
Some facts about the origin of the name of the rocks.
Now they are called King's Rocks, or Royal Rocks, whereas they should be called Korolyov' Rocks after the former Landlord Korolyov who lived in the village in the 19th century.
The legend says that he committed a suicide by jumping from the rock on his horse. He did that atrocity due to his financial difficulties and unhappy love.
The thing is the Russian letter e with two dots above it is/was often written as e without any dots, which is a different letter and sound.
So the Russian people would read the name written with a simple e as "King's Rocks", "Royal Rocks" and not as "Korolyov's Rocks".
Having no idea about the origin of the name, people would always say the second variant.
Such is the origin of the rocks' name that was explained to us by the locals.

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The state reserve stretches to the state border of Ukraine.
There is a small lake whose opposite shore belongs to Russia.
You can see a pole on the Ukrainian shore with a shield and an inscription in Ukrainian,Attention!
The state border of Ukraine.
No trespassing!
The inscription is the same in Russian on the reverse side of the shield.
Of course there are no frontier troops, only the militia station in the nearest Russian village a dozen of kilometers away.

On the way back we observed a huge cow herd at the pond located on the outskirts of the village opposite the office of the state reserve.
It was funny to observe how the cows relaxed.

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Favorite thing: walking on the top of the cliff towering over the river forest

Fondest memory: There is a kids' camp at the foot of the rock.
The kids of coalminers and other workers spend their summer vacations there.
Our guide Vadim asked the permission of the camp authorities and we entered the camp and walked through it to make a shortcut to the rocks.