Old fortresses, a convent and the history of Maryanivka

After breakfast, stop by any supermarket in Isilkul to stock up on food and drinks for your lakeside picnic.

Look for the next redoubt 60 km from Nikolaevka. Do not miss the turn to Piketnoe from the highway, then go in the direction of Pomurino. The small octagonal fortress is also deserted for the last two centuries. Today only historians, treasure hunters and local history bloggers know about it. And now you too!

After exploring the ancient fortification you can have a picnic on the shore of Pokrovsky lake. By the way, you can bathe in it: the water in the lake is clean and pleasant.

The Seraphim Nunnery (or Varvara's Hermitage) was founded by Abbess Varvara, who withdrew from worldly life more than 35 years ago. She dug a dugout in the woods and then built the first wooden chapel with her own hands. Years later another 10 wooden chapels and a temple grew around the lonely building. A wonderful place for a walk and a curious example of church-monastery architecture.

The trip can be rounded off with a visit to the Maryanovsk museum. It was opened in the building next to the railway, which in the 1930s housed a pumping station and later a railwaymen's club. In the museum you will learn the history of development and settlement of the Omsk Pre-Irtysh region, construction of Trans-Siberian railway, life during the wars. And behind the museum, on the open-air site, you can see an old steam engine, semaphore and a water tower of 1896 - a symbol of Maryanivka.

Cheers! Congratulations on passing the route!