I moved two miles further across the Jolma Bridge. Close to the left of it you can see ruins, quite well preserved. Seid told me that they are called Eski-Saray. The Tatars say that this is the Khan's palace, begun and unfinished; and Mr. Pallas believed that there was a Genoese fortress here. After another three miles we passed the large village of Sultan-Mahmud. The mosque and good gardens around the house of Murza, the landowner of this village, give it an appearance of prosperity and abundance, which is not noticeable in other villages. When leaving here he meets Salgir again. You need to follow its bed until 7 versts, where it connects with another river, the Angara, near a mill and several Tatar huts located on a hillock. Further on the left hand is the village of Shumkhai; here the road leads directly to the sources of Salgir. Before reaching Bolshaya Chavka, at the height you see the village of Malaya Chavka, from which you come straight to Kizil-Koba. Throughout the entire area I have traveled, the lands are fertile and well cultivated; everywhere there are gardens and fields sown with tobacco and watered from canals running from Salgir itself.
In Maly Chavki I stayed with an old Russian clerk, Mrs. Ofren. He seemed to me a simple and kind man. His hut is quite neat, and Seid and I ate well and rested here. About two hours later we mounted our horses again and along a steep descent reached the village of Kuchuk-Yankoy. From here it’s already a short walk to the caves. It was necessary to drive along the bank of a stream overgrown with hazel trees, and, having reached the mound, leave the horses. Having climbed a rather steep mountain of three hundred steps, we found there a natural terrace surrounded by a semicircle of stone, high and formidable cliffs. From here there is a lovely view of Chatyrdag and the Yeni-Sala and Kuchuk-Yankoy estates. A small waterfall glistens in the distance. On the same terrace there is a kind of depression with a vault, where small hewn niches are noticeable and many tiled fragments are scattered. It is obvious that they once lived in this place, but probably a very long time ago, because the Tatars did not preserve any tradition about it.
There are two cave openings in the Kizil-Koba (Red Caves) rocks, but I did not notice any communication between the caves themselves. To reach the top hole, you have to climb a hundred steps over sharp and crumbling stones, which, I admit, was quite painful. The hole is so low that I had to crawl there on my belly; however, he could soon get back on his feet. Here our guide lit wax candles, which I had specially stocked up in Simferopol. About forty paces towards the north there is a large void with a vault; then the gallery continues another 30 steps to the northwest; there is a second chamber and emptiness; 40 steps further the third; then a hundred paces away the fourth; There are 50 steps left until the high and narrow exit from the cave, where it is difficult to pass. It must be said that from all these galleries there are exits to other, narrow ones; but will special curiosity force one to go deeper into them? The main gallery is about a fathom wide and the same height; the floor in it is very uneven, but there are no holes or abysses into which one could fall; therefore, whoever walks carefully does not expose himself to any danger. The width of the chambers is three fathoms, the height is two fathoms. The ceiling in the third represents a mixture of colors - the view is amazing! Along its walls, stalactites took on unusual and strange shapes.
The lower cave is not far from the waterfall I mentioned. Its hole is three fathoms wide, but it narrows as it goes deeper into the rock. It also has multiple cameras; they say that some traveler walked along them all day and did not find the end. After about sixty steps there is a kind of lake in it, where it must inevitably stop: probably this is an accumulation of water that penetrated here from the external spring. The water is clean and tasty. Here the walls seem to be coated with black clay, very capable of making smoking pipes: the Tatars often stock up on it for this purpose. Not finding anything particularly interesting or worthy of note here, I returned to the Russian clerk in Malye Chavki to spend the night.
Having drunk tea and lit a pipe, I asked Seid what he thought about the Kizil-Kob caves: