The Borzhava meadow - a flight over alpine pastures

The high-mountain Borzhava meadows - are a place to which ancient shepherds climbed every year and to which modern man is worth climbing at least once in a lifetime. To a height of a kilometre and a half you will not manage to take three things with you: noise, haste and tension. The living silence on the crest of a green ocean - is the finest accompaniment to the grand picture unfolding before the tranquil traveller. It fills the soul with a bliss that drives out all the fears and doubts of the world. For the locals, this astonishing view opened up after a full day of a gruelling climb. Today the tourist has the chance to take in the Borzhava meadows in flight aboard a chairlift. The captivating journey above the velvety pastures (more than a thousand metres in the air!) is offered by the Synevyr excursion  with a visit to the Borzhava meadow.

The complex of astonishing nature of the Borzhava meadows

The Borzhava meadow stretches for 50 km along the inner mountain chain of the Carpathians. The subalpine flora of these lush meadows is rooted in marine sedimentary rock. Long ago an ancient ocean surged here, and today the clean air rings with ozone. It can be savoured like a healing drink - with every breath filling you with the energy of mighty nature. A gaze across the slopes, where the little white sheep can be mistaken for clouds, sharpens all the senses. Sight becomes an instrument of the soul, and it longs to take in as large a piece as possible of the endless firmament of the Borzhava meadow.

But first it is worth turning your gaze to the most down-to-earth thing of all - to what lies beneath your feet. A bilberry carpet of the most organic varieties can treat you to a berry here even in a warm November. The cowberry - is large and glows with juice from within. The steep northern slopes and the gentle - southern ones, are crowned with beech forests. Amid the gloss of the fluted leaves there also stretches the fringe of firs, and the spruce aroma spreads about. The sources of great rivers (the Rika, the Latorytsia, the Borzhava of the same name) cut through the sandstone in silvery streams. Do not be surprised to meet here the spotted salamander and its relatives from the Red Book.

The journey with the wind beneath your feet begins in the village of Pylypets - the chairlift smoothly gains height from Mount Hymba. The picturesque landscapes are made up of meadows entirely covered with grass and shrub. In winter - this is a flawless expanse of snow; in autumn - a bonfire blazing with gold. From the upper station of the lift to the mountain summit is no more than an hour’s walk. It is worth it, to see far off the astonishing shapes of the rivers  Stiy, Velykyi Verkh and Temnatyk. The atmospheric colours give the mountains a fairy-tale look in any weather. Thunderstorms are frequent here, and by midday the forests «breathe» - rising upward as mist.

Having left the summit, the traveller will carry away with them forever the impression of nature’s grandeur. The mountain panorama of the Borzhava meadow will return in happy dreams and remind you of the joy you lived through in photographs. Do not grow sad as you bid farewell to the alpine pastures and the bilberry. For further along the route of the Synevyr excursion «Pearls of Mizhhirya» lie other treasures of the glacial landscape. So in one of the high-mountain valleys the trout’s rainbow shines in the mirror of the sky, the «Sea Eye» of the Carpathians - Lake Synevyr.

The Borzhava meadow is visited as part of the Synevyr excursion every Saturday - do join us!