The Kovalikha River

The main distinguishing feature of the Kovalikha, setting it apart from other tunnels, is its portal — a fairly spacious concrete pit, somewhat more than two average human heights in depth, with no footholds on the walls whatsoever, which makes the process of getting in and out an experience rich in impressions. Mostly unpleasant ones. At the bottom of the concrete pit, two passages open up: one leading toward the Assembly Hall — dry, but silted with sand almost to the ceiling and effectively impassable, at least as far as the beam of a krypton lamp can reach; and the other running beneath Kovalikhinsky Street in the direction of Belinka. This section of the tunnel from the portal to Belinka, and further on all the way to the river's mouth, is also very heavily silted with sand, so that progress is only possible in a half-bent crouch, and in places on all fours. Moreover, even where the clearance is relatively high and there is the modest luxury of walking merely bent over rather than on hands and knees, you are still a few centimetres short of being able to straighten your legs fully — and so you shuffle along permanently half-crouched. After just a few dozen metres this becomes so exhausting and maddening that there is nothing for it but to squat down, dunking the hem of your clothing in the burbling current, and take a breather. All of which would not be quite so bad, were it not for the ceiling render, slapped on carelessly as though by someone who was drunk, from which protrude short, razor-sharp edges of cement that it is simply impossible not to catch on your spine.

The one saving grace is the narrow, not very deep ventilation shafts that emerge at intervals onto the roadway above and collect the stormwater gutters. In them you can straighten up to your full height — since in dry weather there is no water coming down from the gutters — but in some of the cavities there is just enough room for three people standing in a row. In one such cavity, Savay stretched his shoulders, gazed philosophically up at the sky, and delivered his memorable phrase: "…you start to appreciate that man is an upright-walking creature……" That said, even there it is impossible to rest standing fully upright for long, because cars passing above on Kovalikha thump the gratings that cover the shaft with considerable force, and each time an avalanche of earth and mud — shaken loose from the inside of their wheel arches — cascades down the back of your neck, while the noise in the enclosed space is such that you might think a gunfight had broken out.

At present, in the summer heat, the stream carries very little water; yet the thick beards of dried algae — all oriented downstream — that coat every protruding object from floor to ceiling throughout the tunnel (nails, splinters, knotty planks, wires, and every other irregularity) bear witness to the fact that the tunnel is regularly filled with water right up to the very top.

This branch was traversed as far as Belinsky Street (onto the roadway of which it opens via a pair of identical twin manholes, impossible to reach from inside owing to the two-human-height depth of the smooth-walled concrete pit and the absence of footholds), and was inspected a little beyond that point (where the heavy silting combined with a fairly strong current make it virtually impassable without a drysuit), as far as the beam of light would carry; yet the presence along this stretch of a fairly strong flow of clean street air directed downstream (in contrast to the rest of the tunnel's length, where the air is stale and fetid from rotting leaf matter) indicates the proximity of an exit, most likely some pipe opening into the above-ground section of the river that flows through the uninhabited part of the ravine behind the cluster of tyre-fitting kiosks that have gathered beyond Belinka.

The return journey is even more unpleasant, since one must walk against the current — not particularly strong, but brisk and persistent — naturally, in the same duck-waddle the whole way. Fortunately, the water does not rise above mid-boot height. And so it goes, all the way back to the portal. From the outside it looks easy — no matter which way you look at it: from above down, or from below up. In reality everything is faaaar from that. What saved us was the fact that Andryukha, out of his old mountain-hiking habit, had brought along a rope with a carabiner, which he had attached at the entrance on the way in — otherwise we would certainly have had to sit inside waiting for the next full-scale overhaul of the tunnel!… And all three of us, incidentally, had work on Monday morning!…

When at last we emerged into the open air (the stunned reaction of several specimens of the local population of various ages and sexes who happened to be nearby goes without saying and need not be described), all three of us simultaneously, without a moment's hesitation, declared in unison: "No bloody way am I ever going back into that Kovalikha!!!!!!……"

To sum up, the following can be said. First, there is nothing to do in there alone; second, without climbing gear and a drysuit there is also nothing to do in there; third, there is nothing to do in there at all. There is also practically nothing worth photographing. And the little that was shot was largely thanks to the combined efforts of three people, since doing anything on your own in this hellhole is fiendishly difficult.

I do not know whether this underground structure falls under the jurisdiction of "IZG" or some other organisation, but its current technical condition is beyond all criticism. Although the walls and ceiling have been well preserved thanks to the render, despite the considerable waterlogging, the extreme silting with sand and the wild accumulation of debris have entirely deprived the tunnel of its functionality. One gets the distinct impression that the entire passage has never once been cleaned or maintained since the day it was built. And if the tunnel through which the river currently flows becomes completely silted up with sand — which is not far off — then the river, which has to flow somewhere no matter how you look at it, will begin to erode the wide ravine through which Kovalikhinsky Street runs, and that will do absolutely nothing for the structural integrity of the long rows of nine-storey panel-block buildings standing on both sides of the street.