Volga River Cruises

Many people like to take cruises on the Volga River they may want to cruise by their own boat or river cruising liner. Some may want to see the culture and history of the river. They may want to stop off a towns and cities to study the area or they may just want to see the river and landscapes around the river. Some may want to have a cheap cruise or expensive cruise.

A River cruise is a voyage along inland waterways, often stopping at multiple ports along the way. Since cities and towns often grew up around rivers, river cruise ships frequently dock in the center of cities and towns. Cruises on many rivers often have a variety of onboard and onshore activities. The latter include guided tours to historic and cultural sites, visiting local attractions, museums and galleries, and other points of interest. Guides give a running commentary while sailing.

Accommodation, meals onboard, entertainment and special events (holidays, festivals, contests, concerts, etc.) are usually included in the cruise price, while bar expenses, sauna, massage, laundry and cleaning, and phone calls are not.

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through the western part of Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. In fact, eleven out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including its capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga basin. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga.

lThe Volga is the longest river in Europe. It belongs to the closed basin of the Caspian Sea. Rising in the Valdai Hills 225 meters (738 ft) above sea level north-west of Moscow and about 320 kilometers (199 mi) south-east of Saint Petersburg, the Volga heads east past Lake Sterzh, Tver, Dubna, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan. From there it turns south, flows past Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd, and discharges into the Caspian Sea below Astrakhan at 28 meters (92 ft) below sea level. At its most strategic point, it bends toward the Don ("the big bend"). Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is located there.

The Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the Kama, the Oka, the Vetluga, and the Sura rivers. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which drains an area of about 1.35 million square kilometres in the most heavily populated part of Russia. The Volga Delta has a length of about 160 kilometres and includes as many as 500 channels and smaller rivers. The largest estuary in Europe, it is the only place in Russia where pelicans, flamingoes, and lotuses may be found. The Volga freezes for most of its length for three months each year.

The Volga drains most of Western Russia. Its many large reservoirs provide irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Moscow Canal, the Volga-Don Canal, and the Volga-Baltic Waterway form navigable waterways connecting Moscow to the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. High levels of chemical pollution currently give cause for environmental concern.

The fertile river valley provides large quantities of wheat, and also has many mineral riches. A substantial petroleum industry centres on the Volga valley. Other minerals include natural gas, salt, and potash. The Volga Delta and the nearby Caspian Sea offer superb fishing grounds. Astrakhan, at the delta, is the centre of the caviar industry.

Confluents (downstream to upstream)

Akhtuba (near Volzhsky), a distributary
Samara (in Samara)
Kama (south of Kazan)
Kazanka (in Kazan)
Sviyaga (west of Kazan)
Vetluga (near Kozmodemyansk)
Sura (in Vasilsursk)
Kerzhenets (near Lyskovo)
Oka (in Nizhny Novgorod)
Uzola (near Balakhna)
Unzha (near Yuryevets)
Kostroma (in Kostroma)
Kotorosl (in Yaroslavl)
Sheksna (in Cherepovets)
Mologa (near Vesyegonsk)
Kashinka (near Kalyazin)
Nerl (near Kalyazin)
Medveditsa (near Kimry)
Dubna (in Dubna)
Shosha (near Konakovo)
Tvertsa (in Tver)
Vazuza (in Zubtsov)
Selizharovka (in Selizharovo)

The downstream of the Volga, widely believed to have been a cradle of the Proto-Indo-European civilization, was settled by Huns and other Turkic peoples in the first millennium AD, replacing Scythians. The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia). He calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains.

Subsequently the river basin played an important role in the movements of peoples from Asia to Europe. A powerful polity of Volga Bulgaria once flourished where the Kama river joins the Volga, while Khazaria controlled the lower stretches of the river. Such Volga cities as Atil, Saqsin, or Sarai were among the largest in the medieval world. The river served as an important trade route connecting Scandinavia, Rus', and Volga Bulgaria with Khazaria and Persia.

Khazars were replaced by Kipchaks, Kimeks and Mongols, who founded the Golden Horde in the lower reaches of the Volga. Later their empire broke into the Khanate of Kazan and Khanate of Astrakhan both of which were conquered by the Russians in the course of the 16th century Russo-Kazan Wars. The Russian people's deep feeling for the Volga finds echoes in their culture and literature, starting from the 12th-century Lay of Igor's Campaign. The Volga Boatmen's Song is one of many songs devoted to the national river of Russia.

Construction of Soviet dams often involved enforced resettlement of huge numbers of people, as well as destruction of their historical heritage. For instance, the town of Mologa was flooded for the purpose of constructing the Rybinsk Reservoir (then the largest artificial lake in the world), and the construction of the Uglich Reservoir entailed the flooding of several monasteries with buildings dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. In such cases the ecological and cultural damage often outbalanced any economical advantage

The first people along the upper Volga are Mari and their west ethnic group named Merya that came hear around 1-3rd century. In the 8th and 9th centuries Slavic colonization began from Kievan_Rus'. They brought Christianity, and a part of local people took Christianity and gradualy became East Slavs, other part went to the west far Mari inland. In the course of several centuries they assimilated the indigenous Finnic population which included Merya and Meshchera peoples. The surviving peoples of Volga Finnic ethnicity include the Maris and Mordvins of the middle Volga.

Apart from the Huns, the earliest Turkic tribes arrived in the 7th century and assimilated some Finnic and Indo-European population on the middle and lower Volga. The Christian Chuvash and Muslim Tatars are descendants of the population of medieval Volga Bulgaria. Another Turkic group, the Nogais, formerly inhabited the lower Volga steppes.

The Volga, widened for navigation purposes with construction of huge dams during the years of Stalin's industrialization, is of great importance to inland shipping and transport in Russia: all the dams in the river have been equipped with large (double) ship locks, so that vessels of considerable dimensions can actually travel from the Caspian Sea almost to the upstream end of the river.

Connections with the Don River and the Black Sea are possible through the Volga-Don Canal. Connections with the lakes of the north (Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega), Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea are possible through the Volga-Baltic Waterway; and a liaison with Moscow has been realised by the Moscow Canal connecting the Volga and the Moskva rivers.

Settlements on the Volga River ; Astrakhan, Atil, Balakhna, Balakovo, Bolgar (town), Bolghar, Bor, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Cheboksary, Cherepovets, Chkalovsk, Russia, Dubna, Dubovka, Volgograd Oblast, Engels (city), Gorodets, Kalyazin, Kamyshin, Kazan, Khvalynsk, Kimry, Kineshma, Konakovo, Kostroma, Kozmodemyansk, Kstovo, Lyskovo, Mariinsky Posad, Myshkin, Navoloki, Nikolayevsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novocheboksarsk, Novoulyanovsk, Plyos, Rybinsk, Rzhev, Samara, Russia, Sarai (city), Saratov, Sengiley, Staritsa, Syzran, Tolyatti, Tutayev, Tver, Uglich, Ukek, Ulyanovsk, Ulyanovsk State University, Volgograd, Volgorechensk, Volsk, Volzhsky, Volgograd Oblast, Xacitarxan, Yaroslavl, Zavolzhsk, Zubtsov, Zvenigovo

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