Shyshkovi Horby

Twelve million years ago the rock you can put your hand on here was alive. The Sarmatian sea covered Podillia then, warm and shallow, and along its shore corals, molluscs, bryozoans and algae piled up a barrier reef in the way the Great Barrier Reef is being built now. The sea withdrew, the Carpathians rose behind it, and the reef was left in the open air for weather and groundwater to work on. Almost every ridge you can name was thrown up by tectonics; this one was built by organisms, and it runs diagonally across Podillia from Lviv oblast down to the Dnister.

What survives above the village of Nahoriany is the tail end of it — a chain of cone-shaped limestone stacks standing 15 to 20m over a bend in the river, ranked in several ragged rows. The cones gave them their name, Shyshkovi Horby, Pine-Cone Hills; the older name for the tract is Hovdy. Fossil shells are still legible in the stone.

Grandfather, Grandmother, Granddaughter

Three of the stacks stand out enough to have been named, and they were named as a family: Did, Baba and Vnuchka — Grandfather, Grandmother, Granddaughter. A girl from Nahoriany loved a poor lad; a wealthy neighbour who wanted her sent the lad off to raft timber down the Dnister, and he never came back. She climbed the highest rock and went into the river after him. Her parents died of grief soon afterwards, and the three hills are said to have risen where the family was buried.

One summit carries a small chapel to St George. On another, ramparts of an old hillfort are still visible; archaeologists here have turned up pottery of the 9th to 12th centuries. Believe as much of the family legend as you like — the names have stuck, and everyone here uses them.

Protected, and by which park

The tract has been a geological natural monument of local significance since 1979, covering 12 hectares under the Hrushivtsi rural council. Rare lithophytes — plants that live on bare rock — hold on to the outcrops, and they are a large part of why the status exists.

One correction, because it appears in a lot of Ukrainian write-ups: these hills are not in Podilski Tovtry National Nature Park, which is across the oblast line in Khmelnytskyi. Nahoriany falls inside Khotyn National Nature Park, established in 2011 over 9,432 hectares of the Chernivtsi bank. That matters practically — Khotyn is the administration that maintains the trail.

The 3.5km walk

The park runs a waymarked ecological trail from the stacks, 3.5km and an hour and a half to two hours at a normal pace; the trailhead is at roughly 48.5520, 26.7938. It threads between the cones and along the rim, which is the only sensible way to see them — from one vantage point they overlap into a single lump, and every fifty metres of walking pulls them apart again.

This is otherwise unmanaged ground: no fence, no railing, no kiosk, no shop in the village worth the name. Closed shoes with grip, because the limestone is slick when damp; water and food for the day; sun cover in summer, since there is no shade on top.

Why come here rather than Bakota

Bakota, an hour west, has the better-known panorama, a ticket office, a car park and a crowd. Shyshkovi Horby has none of those, and that is the argument for it. You can pitch a tent among the rocks and wake up over the river, which you cannot do at Bakota's viewpoint. The Dnister runs calm here, so a kayak gets you the view from below, where the cones stand at full height. And the nearest town lights are far enough off that the Milky Way comes out properly — one of the better dark-sky spots in the region, and the reason some people come at all. Sunset is the hour photographers aim for; sunrise gets the same light with nobody else on the ridge.

Getting there, and the paperwork

Nahoriany lies in Dnistrovskyi district (formerly Kelmenetskyi) of Chernivtsi oblast, about 100km from Chernivtsi. A car is the practical answer: roughly 340km from Lviv via Kamianets-Podilskyi and Khotyn, about 470km from Kyiv through Vinnytsia. The last stretch from the village to the rocks is in poor repair, though passable in an ordinary car taken slowly. By bus it is over three hours each way: services towards Novodnistrovsk or Mohyliv-Podilskyi do not usually enter Nahoriany but set you down on the main road, leaving a few kilometres to walk or hitch. This is close to the border zone, so document checks happen — carry your passport, and, for men, current military-registration papers.

Give the village half an hour before you leave. Nahoriany was a centre of Bukovinian carpet-weaving, and its weaving museum is the only one of its kind in the oblast — patterns, looms and the technique still being taught. Khotyn fortress, Kamianets-Podilskyi and Bakota bay are all within a day's drive.