Episode list

The first part of the elaborately produced three-part nature documentary about Europe's most powerful river leads from the source plateau to the large tributaries of the Urals. Although located on the edge of densely populated Europe, the Volga river kingdom still offers a surprising amount of space for untamed nature. There are dozens of nature reserves and reserves in the catchment area. Nowhere else in Europe can you find such intact river landscapes and wetlands. Riparian forests, bogs, meadows and flood plains accompany the lowlands of Oka, Sura, Kama, Wetluga or Samara. They are only tributaries of the huge main stream, but mostly larger than the Rhine, Main or Elbe. As a result of the Second World War, the forests of Central Russia have shrunk considerably. Settlement, dams and agriculture also take their toll. In the huge catchment area of the Volga, however, there is still room for wild animals. European bison, elk and wild boar live in the forested north of the Volga river valley in addition to beaver, mink and otters. The river landscapes are habitats for species that are rarely found in Western Europe.

The second part of the elaborate nature documentation on Europe's most powerful river leads from the forest border of Central Russia through the southern Russian steppes to the Caspian semi-deserts. The huge Volga dominates the dry Russian lowlands as a large blue band. It grazes the edge of the Asian continent along the Kazakh border. The river majestically measures the feather grass steppes and the area where the Volga Germans once settled. The Volga has hardly any inflows here. It has collected its water in the forested north and now flows broadly and lazily into the interior of the continent. Smaller rivers branch off from it to return to the main stream a few hundred kilometers further on. The Volga has become the "mother of the rivers", source and mouth at the same time. In their up to 20 kilometers wide stream valley, river forests press forward into the dry south. With them the strange Russian Desmans that only occur in the Volga Basin. The strange water moles hunt for insects and fish in poorly flowing old arms. Along the middle course of the Volga, steppe marmots colonize the dry slopes and great bustards display on the fields. Steppe foxes, young cranes and saiga antelopes are messengers of the Central Asian steppes, which extend far from the Volga to Eastern Mongolia.

The third part of the great nature documentation on the most powerful river in Europe begins in the salt pans and semi-deserts of Kalmykia. In the river bed of the Urvolga, which fell dry thousands of years ago, sea sediments and sand are a plaything of wind and sun. This created landscapes full of magic and the only sandy deserts in Europe in which strange lizards go hunting. The steppes on the southern Volga riverbanks are sparsely populated, but rich in wildlife. In abandoned farms, nature temporarily takes control: rose starlings, buzzards, ground squirrels and hoopoes find shelter and breeding grounds here. On its last kilometers, the Volga splits up into countless single arms and creates a spectacular landscape: The legendary Volga Delta is the largest inland delta on earth, which flows into the largest inland lake on earth, the Caspian Sea. Where the river and the sea meet and millions of tons of sediments carried change the appearance of the landscape every year, you will find a diverse wildlife. White-tailed eagles, pelicans and one of the largest known collections of mute swans and whooper swans, as well as wild boars roaming through the bottomless reed wilderness.