Taking the Cure : Cows, Cockroaches Are Part of the Experience at Russian Spa

KULDUR, Russia — Step carefully around the cow droppings as you head down the rutted dirt path, towel in hand, for your 10-minute curative bath in the “miraculous” mineral waters of the Kuldur Spa.

A flimsy-looking statue of V. I. Lenin, painted a tinny shade of silver, points you toward the crumbling pink building that houses several dozen baths. Under the dim yellow light inside, you strip off your clothes in a frosted-glass cubicle and turn the rusty taps. A cockroach scurries along the wall. The water smells faintly of rotten eggs.

Stepping into the tub--slightly gritty from the dirt of earlier bathers--you immerse yourself in the water, which feels at once silky, filmy and slightly bubbly. It’s like taking a bath in soapy club soda.

Except that this water, piped directly from an underground hot spring in a remote valley of southern Siberia, is said to cure afflictions ranging from skin rashes to infertility, from arthritis to nervous disorders.

“It’s miraculous water,” Aleksei Khrabrov, 70, raves as he strolls about the grounds in a black fedora and matching suit decorated with a World War II veteran’s badge.

More than 16,000 Russians came to the Kuldur Spa last year to take the waters--and, according to the head doctor, 97% went away cured after a 24-day regimen of baths, underwater massages and stretching exercises.

Still, it’s not the kind of spa experience that Americans have come to expect from Calistoga to Saratoga Springs: the pampering, the manicured grounds, the low-calorie meals--not to mention the steep price tag. At Kuldur, the service is grudging, the grounds are a mess and the clientele is mostly blue-collar.

Indeed, despite its renown among Russians living in this mountainous region just a few hours’ drive from China, the Kuldur Spa has steadily lost money since the government withdrew subsidies last year. To stay financially afloat, spa directors hope to attract foreigners willing to spend hard currency for the chance to bathe in genuine, fresh-from-the-source mineral water.

First, however, they have to get rid of the cockroaches. Not to mention the cow manure.

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Ever since 1326, when medieval travelers stumbled across a soothing underground spring in the Belgian town of Spa, Europeans have flocked to take the cure. Medicinal baths became fashionable during the 18th Century, and spas--many of which still operate today--sprang up across the continent, from Vichy to Baden-Baden.

Lagging about a hundred years behind the European trend, Russian doctors began promoting spas (called sanatori) in 1890. Within a few decades, mineral-water cures had become wildly popular--especially after the 1917 Revolution, when Russians discovered that their trade unions would pay for monthlong vacations if they could come down with mild illnesses suitable for spa treatment.

“I kind of enjoy sitting here in this water,” Ruslan Safronov, an apparently healthy 17-year-old, says a few weeks into his first trip to the Kuldur Spa.

Perched on a wooden chair, his legs immersed in knee-high tubs of hot water and his forearms resting in small ceramic basins, Safronov smiles dreamily. Droplets of sweat pour down his flushed face.

“It’s completely relaxing, and you feel your whole body getting lighter,” he says, explaining that his union of cafeteria workers would pick up 90% of the tab for a “preventive” stay at Kuldur.

His 24-day sojourn, including baths, medical checkups, lodging and meals, costs about 9,000 rubles--only $45 at current exchange rates but a good month’s salary for most Russians.

As a vacation resort, the 68-year-old Kuldur Spa doesn’t quite measure up to world standards. But the general grunginess appears not to bother most Russians, who seem to take for granted cows wandering through a health resort, stains in the cracked porcelain bathtubs and half-finished buildings that block the picturesque mountains. Nor do they object to the diet: heavy on grease, salt and fat.

Fervent believers in all sorts of home remedies, from mustard plasters on the chest to garlic cloves in the nose, many Russians accept the value of mineral water as medicine.

“An extrasensory hypnotist on TV once cured my skin rash,” says Valentina Belakopitiva, a chunky 40-year-old who hoped Kuldur’s waters would ease her arthritis. “So I think there is something to these non-traditional cures after all.”

Another believer, Natalia Smirnova, adds, “If you don’t have faith in anything, you’ll never be cured.”

The mother of an 11-year old, Smirnova, 32, for years has been trying to conceive again. Repeated visits to a hospital only make her nervous (“All those needles and tests and sick people,” she recalls with a shudder), and she regards the spa as her best chance to regain fertility.

So she diligently follows a custom-tailored daily program that includes sitting on a chair while mineral water squirts her from below; soaking her lower back and thighs in a tub that shoots out a gentle spray; immersing her body in a bath; performing 30 minutes of special calisthenics and submitting to a “gynecological massage” of her ovaries.

Smirnova’s doctors are optimistic. “This is serious water,” says Dr. Tatyana Paulishina, 36, a 10-year veteran of Kuldur.

The spa’s deputy director, Dr. Vladimir Vyerbitsky, boasts that Kuldur’s mineral water, which gurgles out of the underground spring at 154 degrees Fahrenheit, “contains all the elements of the (periodic) table.”

But--fortunately for those who might feel uncomfortable bathing in uranium or arsenic--chemical analysis detects only 10 elements, most prominently silicon, sodium, potassium and chlorine.

“The water acts on the nerve endings in the skin” to stimulate a cure, Vyerbitsky says. “In the bath, your organism sweats out what you don’t need and takes in what you do.”

American doctors tend to scoff at the idea that sitting in a tub can cure internal diseases. But they readily admit that a month’s vacation can be therapeutic.

“You’ve got to remember that 50% of every cure is wanting it to work,” says Dr. Myles Druckman, a physician at the American Medical Center in Moscow. “Also, any time you get special attention, you feel a difference. And if you feel better, your immune system works better and you fight illnesses better.”

Although he remains skeptical that Kuldur’s water can, as advertised, stimulate hair growth and reverse “erosion of the cervix,” Druckman notes, “if the patients say something works, you can’t knock it.”

Repeat visitors to Kuldur swear that the daily baths have held arthritis at bay, eliminated chronic rashes and even cured the mysterious Russian ailment known as “radiculite,” which seems to be a cross between a sore back, stiff joints and a bad cold.

“The water is a gift from nature,” says Ludmilla Karnitskaya, 60, a factory worker who came to Kuldur with her husband seeking to ease her lower-back pain. “It’s definitely the water that’s the key to making us feel good again.”

But as much as they look forward to taking the waters, patients must find something else to occupy them for the 23 hours and 50 minutes between cures. So Kuldur offers its patients a one-feature movie theater, a muddy volleyball court and a tiny disco/cafe decorated with elaborate wood carvings. Still, some visitors get restless.

“It does get a little boring here sometimes,” says a 54-year-old man suffering from radiculite, adding delicately, “The young can find things to do in the way of love, but as for me, I’m trying to get well, so I can’t put any strain on my body.”