Ингала

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 operator explains the water by the geology: the site sits where two geological plates meet, and the springs of the Altai mix underground with mineral-rich Ural water. The result is a mineral water the sanatorium puts at 18.7 grams per cubic decimetre - about 18,700 mg per litre - which it claims 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 degrees in winter and at 35 to 36 degrees in summer, with hydromassage stations set around the rim and lighting in the evening. It opens daily from 10:00 to 22:00, with the last admission at 20:30; an hour costs 450 roubles for adults and children over 14 and 350 roubles for younger children, and the thermal complex rents standard twin rooms for the same 10:00 to 22:00 window at 6,000 roubles for two.

Indoors the sanatorium keeps a second, smaller pool fitted with hydromassage and aqua-exercise machines, holding up to ten people, with a Finnish sauna and a dimly lit relaxation room beside it; the price list sells it as sauna-with-pool at 3,000 roubles an hour for a group of up to six, and separately as therapeutic swimming in a covered pool with aqua-trainers. 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. Sheets, slippers and herbal teas are provided; an hour costs 1,200 roubles for adults and 650 for children under 14.

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.