Ingala

Ingala is a sanatorium and spa hotel in the Ingal Valley in the south of Tyumen Region, on the grounds of the former Niva prophylactorium at Zavodoukovsk, roughly 100 kilometres from Tyumen. The sanatorium puts its mineral water at 18.7 grams per cubic decimetre - about 18,700 mg per litre - and claims it is the most highly mineralised of the many groundwater deposits around Tyumen. Boron, bromine, iodine, magnesium, calcium and sodium are named among its constituents.

The centrepiece is the open-air thermal pool. Mineral water is drawn from a borehole going down more than 1,400 metres and fed directly into the basin, which lies under the open sky. The pool is 27 metres long and built at two depths, 1.4 and 1.6 metres, so that adults and children can both use it. It is worked all year: the water is held at 39 to 40 °C in winter and at 35 to 36 °C in summer, with hydromassage stations set around the rim and lighting in the evening.

The banya and spa complex is booked in advance and takes parties of up to sixteen: a sauna, an aroma sauna where essential oils are diffused, a Russian steam room with a cold-water dousing, an infrared cabin, a wood-fired tub and an 'impressions shower' with tropical-rain and Mediterranean programmes.

The medical side is that of a working sanatorium rather than a leisure bath. Treatment is aimed above all at the musculoskeletal system - arthritis, osteochondrosis, spinal and vascular complaints - and the operator also lists nervous, endocrine, urogenital and skin conditions. The procedure list runs to mineral baths, mud and paraffin, therapeutic showers and hydrotherapy, physiotherapy and exercise therapy, massage in several forms, speleotherapy in a salt cave, floating, cedar phyto-barrels, ozone therapy, acupuncture, ultrasound diagnostics and a day hospital, with packaged programmes for joints and for the spine. Guests stay in hotel rooms or cottages, and the grounds add a gym, a restaurant, a supervised children's room, a chum for eating outdoors and the Sosnovy Bor winter sports centre.