Orda Cave is a gypsum crystal cave located underneath the western Ural Mountains in Russia. The cave was formed in gypsum during the Permian period (Perm is the period of the Paleozoic era –and got its name in honor of the Russian city of Perm). The mouth is near the shore of the Kungur River just outside Orda, Perm Krai in Russia.
A local myth tells of the "Lady of the Orda Cave" who is said to live in the caves. In 2013 Natalia Avseenko, a former free diving champion, was featured in a photographic series designed to illustrate the legend.
The length of this cave is 5,150 meters. The limit is not defined yet as exploration is ongoing. It is full of big chambers and rooms, some of which are the size of a football field. It is also a the cave which resembles maze. Many groups spend days inside the cave, gradually exploring more and more of the system.
Victor Lyagushkin, a journalist and underwater photographer, led around 150 expeditions into the caves over a six-month period in 2011.The photographs taken by his team were published in the Orda Cave Awareness Project alongside stories from other divers who had visited the cave system.During the dives Lyagushkin used a funnel system to direct the air bubbles to the mouth of the cave and away from the delicate gypsum, fearing that it might easily be damaged.The diving team were also the first people to produce a spherical panorama of an underwater cave.
Although the water is extremely cold, averaging only 40 F (4 degrees C), the mineral-rich area surrounding the cave filters the water and makes it very clear. Divers have a visibility of over 50 yards (46 m) and it almost doesn’t get blurred when diving.
Dry suits are absolutely necessary and sidemount rigs will allow easier access when penetrating the narrowest sections of the cave. Proper training in drysuit diving, cave diving and sidemount diving are essential.
On the good side - the cave is shallow enough, with average depths of 15 meters with no significant currents. You can penetrate far from the entrance and still not get on the decompression.
On the other hand - the walls and the ceiling (sulfate rocks) are very fragile. The time of the dive is limited to low water temperatures and equipment configuration: from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The side aisles have thick layers of silt which can be stirred up easily.
Diving Orda Cave
Still there are very few people who have seen the beauty of this cave. Low temperatures, complexity of the dive, particular equipment configuration sort out many divers. The cave was only discovered in the middle of the last century, and people started visiting it only recently – about 20 years ago.
Those who have been diving there describe it as "Enomorous Cosmos Under the Ice". My friend, Nazar Karmakov, who has done some of his cave training with Cave Gravity in Yucatan caves: " While diving caves of Yucatan, I felt in love instantly with cenotes, their light play, unreal formations and the beauty of halocline. It is hard to get impressed by any cave after diving Yucan caves. But when I dove Orda, I was mesmorzid by the size of the cave, by the ideal shapes of white gypsum, almost too ideal looking rocks. It would be incorrect to compare Yucatan caves to Orda Cave. While I felt in love with caves in Yucatan from the first dive, Orda Cave is Cosmos, probably the only cosmos in Russia that there is..."
Check out the video below directed by Stratis Kas at www.intothewild.tech who offers guided tours of the Orda Cave as well as full dive and stay packages. The video perfectly shows what a day of diving in the Orda Cave looks like. Just a walk to the cave entrance in the winter times is an adventure itself. Snow extending to the horizon, fresh and crisp Siberian air and getting under the ice crust to see the gypsum cave - captivating.
The water is freezing but nevertheless the cave has tiny living inhabitants such as a blind sand hopper (Amphipod Crangonyx).
You can dive the cave all year around. There is also cave diving training available on the location. Training in these conditions must be tough but it will surely make you a more confident diver.
To get to the Orda Cave, you can fly to the airport of the city of Perm which accepts direct flights from Moscow. You stay overnight at either the village of Orda or the city of Kungur. Both places are a car ride from the airport. The village of Orda is the closest to the cave entrance, which is just a few hundred meters away.
By Marina Kaufman