Russia...All places and fates are unique here. More than fifty drivers I met turned out to be united in one thing – upon seeing a hitchhiking man near a road they did not hurry to put their foot down on the gas pedal. And they all were heading east. It was worthwhile to cover a one-fifth of the Earth's surface to discover my own country in each one of them.
July 2012. It was scorching hot when I embarked on my first hitchhiking journey. I took a bus to get to the beginning of highway E144 that ran to Voronezh. After getting off I occupied a position with a wide view and a flat terrain. Well, what was that hitchhiking gesture...? It's one's thumb up, newbie. And look the driver straight in the eyes. And a bit of patience. The first luck came with an old LADA car. Some 60 kilometres later I and agronomist Sergei were already friends. He invited me to join him to pick up mushrooms in autumn and shook my hand good-bye. I planted myself with my face toward the coming traffic again. Now I knew how it worked.
One day after, I was already in Tambov, visiting my army mate Andrei. Actually, his name is Andranik for he is an Armenian, but everybody called him Andrei for some reason. In army, he used to tell us jokes in great numbers when we stood in line before the canteen. When he had an appearance on TV as a participant of Comedy Battle Show, he gloriously went for a comedian throughout the brigade. By the way, he is a historian. Sometimes Andranik comes to Kursk to participate in KVN, the Club of Cheerful and Witty.
Somewhere on the Industrial Outskirts of Penza
Oleg, a cheerful talker driving new MAZ truck, found ceremonial manners revolting. Therefore he familiarly introduced himself as Olesha and let me feel relaxed all the way (we covered three hundred kilometres together): we talked about small and unimportant things, laughed about profane songs from his car audio and jokes about roadside prostitutes.
We parted not far from Penza, where, according to Olesha, a road sign showing the direction to a beach was once installed. To look for it in the night was inane, so I got further in-between garages and a railway, pitched a tent with some difficulty and zoned out until the morning. I kindled a bonfire at dawn and cooked myself a humble breakfast. I was already ready to set off when a guy popped up on a small hill and asked me not very nicely: "What are you doing here?"
The territory was not private at all and it seemed strange to meet someone else in impassable bushes. While mentally sizing him up, I did my best to explain coolly that I did nothing wrong and was going to visit my army mates.
"Why are you hitching then?"
"Won't work out otherwise. Too expensive."
Unexpectedly, he offered hand:
"Grisha"
It turned out that a young grower had several beds of cannabis plants there. He complained about his complicated life: it was illegal to grow "weed" and difficult to monitor the plants on abandoned lands. Moreover, stealing was not uncommon, which he initially suspected about me. Now he offered a friendly smoke. I refused politely...
Seraphim, Granny Valya and Underground Martyrs
Mordovia, crimson in the rays of the setting sun, sank down in the rear-view mirror and Denis, a furniture-maker from Saratov, headed to the north. It did not seem like my initially planned route, but so much the better. I was thrilled by the driver's story about holy places of Nizhny Novgorod region, namely about Diveyevo Monastery, where relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov were kept. A night in the tent among birches facing a rural church was a favourable setting for contemplation about pilgrimage.
The road that runs through Sarov was temporarily closed, so I had to make a 100-km detour. Sergei, a driver of a foreign car, was the father of an aircraft designer in Moscow. I asked to drop me off when my eye caught a sign that read "Underground Museum". I had to walk three kilometres on foot to the centre of a village. And a disappointment waited for me there! To visit a local Lost World mini-Zoo? No problem, you are welcome to watch two ostriches, donkeys and goats. As for the museum organized at a depth of 70 metres in an operating mine, a prior booking was required for admittance. The museum attendants went like "sorry, we're waiting for some VIP guests of our director, no, you can't go with them." But I got there with them anyway. I was given a hard hat, a miner's jacket and a lantern and I descended underground, trying to keep clear of passing mine cars.
The mine featured a "shungite room" and an eerie, in underground circumstances, display that started with a poster saying "Look in the eye of your fears, don't make your night-mare real". Lucky me, there were church officers nearby who came from Nizhny Novgorod to participate in a Christian music festival. We watched "River of Horrors", a flooded cave exhibiting Dante's circles of hell, where monsters tortured wax sinners. The fires of hell did not scare the Father, who said: "I will take a picture of it to show my people in the temple, so that they would pray harder for forgiveness!"
A Christian minivan took me right up to Arzamas, a city with old churches and narrow streets, every single one of them winding up toward Cathedral Square. Retro-styled buses navigated along those streets. When a nun who performed an evening ritual of carrying an icon around some small monastery spotted me hitch-hike on the road, she came up and invited to have dinner in the monastery canteen. I said I was pressed for time while it was still not dark. Then the woman showed me a point where hitchhiking would be best. Indeed, in five minutes a car stopped. Mikhail, a software specialist, was driving to see his parents.
Diveyevo was full of believers therefore there was a favourable aura. Everybody was helpful and ready to show directions. Two Tatyanas and Galina were not going to settle until they brought me to a camping site, registered as a pilgrim and gave me a blanket. The camp had s shower, hot water and even free meals.
27-year-old Dima, driving a KIA, gave me a ride almost right up to Nizhny Novgorod. In case I wanted to visit his homeland town Sarov, he wrote me his home address and even showed a pass for entry into the secret town of nuclear physicists, fenced with barbed wire. What if I was a foreign spy?
I was already picking a spot to pitch my tent when I saw a church in a distance. In the wake of the Diveyevo experience I decided to go there and ask for an overnight accommodation. The gates were closed but there was an opening in the side wall. To my standard question "Is there anybody in there?" only a white kitten meowed back. Two more dogs and one cat came running. I shared my sleep with such a company.
In the morning, the kitten reluctantly got out of my sleeping bag. Why not take it with me as once writer Steinbeck did who shared his adventures with a poodle? I would have written an entertaining story "Travels with Barsik: In Search of Russia"... I was distracted from this thought by Granny Valya who came to ask if I needed anything. The kind old woman tried to stick a 50 rouble note in my hands. I had to explain that hitchhiking was not due to sheer poverty. Luckily for the cat, it managed to make it away.
Such is Friendship of Peoples
Heraldic deer depicted on a map in Nizhny Novgorod's metro system hinted that we were in the homeland of Volgas, Chaikas and Pobedas. I asked the people around where the car factory proper was? A chorus of passengers answered that I ought to have gotten off at Avtozavodskaya station. The GAZ car factory stretched for several blocks. In one of them, I found a car museum. However, of all sights, the locals mentioned only Nizhny Novgorod's Kremlin, a fortress. No argument, it was also fine. The confluence of two rivers, Volga and Oka, could be seen from the Kremlin's walls.
There are such drivers that when you get in their car you instantly think what a fool you are. It is better to prepare an excuse not to go with for such occasions. That was the case: a taciturn man never uttered even a couple of words during the whole ride. He sped up with precision but in a jerky manner. A shady character, he seemed. A passenger who also travelled with him got off earlier than me and paid to the driver. There was no lack of taxi drivers. Maybe, it was not such a bad idea to give a fifty to the one like this.
I chose not to pay not out of greed, but out of the principle, otherwise hitchhiking would not have been true. In my mind, I tested a self-defence move on the big guy a couple of times, but when he stopped at a turn on the road, offered hand and even tried to smile, I felt pangs of remorse. Quasimodo proved to be a nice guy.
I fled the rest of the way to Cheboksary in a rusty LADA with two merry Uzbeks on board. Young driver Alisher narrated an interesting story from his army service years in Uzbekistan: the soldiers used to sell Kalashnikov rifle cartridges to adjacent Kyrgyzstan. The thing was, the cartridges were pre-boiled and the powder became wet inside. Thus, the normally looking ammunition was useless...
In the meantime, the Uzbeks entered the address of my friend in a navigator and though they had initially headed to another city they diverted to Cheboksary. Alexander, a Chuvash by nationality, almost always had stayed positive in the army, but now, in civvy street, he blossomed altogether. He waved me from the balcony smiling a white-toothed smile – not without reason because he was trained to be a dentist. He took a break from his job for some days and prepared an entertainment program for me. First of all, we visited Chapayev Museum and the house in which this Civil War hero was born. One acquaintance of mine, a history professor asked to gather data about natives of Kursk who fought in Chapayev Division. Having completed this mission, we went to Beer Museum and sampled Chuvashian... kvas, a Russian soft drink, as well as giblets pottage Kagai Shurbi that was a signature dish of the local cuisine.
One more member of the 200th Subarctic Military Brigade where we served, Kolya from Murmansk, was going to join us in two days in Kazan. I wished I had seen a surprised face of our former commander when he heard all three of us, living a thousand of miles apart, on the phone at a time.
Kazan was getting ready for the 2013 Summer Universiade, also known as the World University Games: builders were busy and a clock on Baumana Street showed countdown, loudspeakers installed on buses broadcasted information in Russian, Tatar and English. The place also had Soviet style red drinks dispensers, a monument to young Lenin next to the university from which he had been once expelled, white-stone Kremlin and Qolşärif Mosque , built in commemoration of the thousand-year anniversary of the city. And of course, we visited the Volga River, on the beach of which I had a heat stroke, which turned me into a vegetable for the next two days.
Heading for Ural
A bald-headed Tartar as if landed his Chevrolet from another planet: he seemed to speak Russian, but nothing could be understood. I tried to find out his name and after the first unsuccessful attempt I had another go. Same result. It remained for me just to nod and smile. The "extraterrestrial" did his best to tell me something, he produced a map: "wong vay".
A truck with a huge trailer pulled over. I came running to it. It turned out the truck broke down. Another KAMAZ truck near Voronezh was also an "old horse" but still it made it with asphalt for road workers and with me for 40 extra kilometres. "May I help you?" I asked the driver. "No, but if you don't get a ride while I'm here then get in". I hitched a bit for appearance of it and, when the driver waved me in, I gladly followed.
Sergei, a native of Vladimir, drove with me from Kovrov to Ufa for more than 300 kilometres. On approaches to Naberezhnye Chelny he nodded in the direction of the proving ground where trucks for Paris-Dakar Rally were tested. Then he bought me Tartar pasties in a roadside diner and I, in turn, lent him my fleece jacket when my new acquaintance started feeling cold. We took water from a water spring. Talking about trust in strange people, when I was away taking water from the spring, my backpack could easily be gone with the truck. Influential educational theorist Makarenko once introduced the term "credit of trust". It happened many a time on my travels that a driver would go away to a gas station to refill fuel or to buy a pack of cigarettes while leaving the ignition key in the car.
At the exit from Ufa I met two hitch-hikers from Novgorod, Semen and Yasha, who were bound for Baikal too. It took quite a while to stop a car. There were a couple of times when I hitched for a good hour, but usually it didn't take more than 10-15 minutes. To make it easier for my peers, I walked far ahead but I got a ride first anyway – drivers would pick up a single traveller more willingly.
The Ural mountains rose above the horizon. It seemed from a distance that crossing this natural boundary between Europe and Asia would not take long, however, the first impression proved deceptive. A long-haul truck was parked near an abandoned road police post in preparation for moving up a challenging mountain pass. After having had a cup of tea with 29-year-old long-distance trucker Dinar we did pass over the Urals. In fact, it was 200 km of steep downs and ups which took us a whole night. How they drove there in winter was mind-boggling to imagine.
Afghanistan Vet Taxi Driver
It is not recommended to hitch when dark though this increases one's chances. Many drivers take fellow-passengers just to stay awake. A driver of a white Volga car with long grey hair looking like either a hippy or a hitch-hiker in the past turned out to be a taxi driver. Just in case I warned "No money".
"Well, you will sing then!" Yuri joked. "Or you'll tell me something interesting."
But he did all the talking all way long till the city of Tyumen. Yuri related how he fought in Afghanistan, became crippled and then found his happiness in a family life. He came across as a man who was afraid of nothing. Back then in 1985, when he saw deaths of his friends he was extremely scared. A former biathlonist was one of the best snipers in a special unit of airborne forces. The more "kill notches" he had on the stock of his rifle the more expensive the head of this Siberian guy was getting and finally reached 20 thousand USD. He never took prisoners of war, keeping in mind how inhumanly his friends had been treated. He recollected that once they had found two killed and mutilated army mates whose mouths had been stuffed with watermelon rinds, and also he remembered that once a Grad multiple rocket launcher had buried innocent women and old people together with mujahids under rocks. When he narrated about how he had shot a black contract fighter, the first black man he had ever seen in his life, and that each trait of his face had been carved in his memory for good, he cried. He stopped the car and took out a pack of cigarettes that had not been touched for a long time from the glove box. He lit a cigarette.
Year after year, he had been suffering from same nightmares. In order not to scare his wife and kids with sudden night shouts he started to work nights as a taxi driver. He would go to bed when his family left home. He had been wounded right before demobbing. The bullet penetrated the bullet-proof vest, two ammunition carriers and went out. Yuri was saved by Chechen Ali, who dragged him for three kilometres. He had his right lung removed. After surviving through a coma, the 21-year-old guy returned from Afghanistan as a disabled person and completely sure that he was doomed to be all alone. But once a beautiful girl sat next to him on a park bench and talked to him first. She started to take him to cinema. Two years later they got married. They had four kids the eldest of which was called Alexei in honour of his friend killed at the war.
Yuri gave me tea from a thermos and at last cut a large chunk of salo (pork hard fat). A good Samaritan. A hero.
Road Brotherhood
New yuldash that means "friend" in Chuvashian picked me up near Omsk. Valera, a native of Cheboksary, was driving a long-haul truck with refrigerator equipment right up to Krasnoyarsk with prior stopping at Abakan, so we covered over 2,000 km in a few days. It was possible to live in the truck rather comfortably: There were two berths in the cabin; we could boil water or cook food on a gas stove; fancy watching films? There was even a DVD player. There were some peculiarities in everyday life of long-distance drivers. If there were no parking lots to stay overnight, then we teamed up with other truckers near gas stations. There was an "American" parked nearby whose driver distinguished himself in terms of security – he travelled together with a serious Pit Bull Terrier. The long distance trucker is far from being the safest profession, though, they say, there are five or six women who are the long distance truckers in Russia, but our ways have never crossed.
Valera was a full-blooded Chuvash and when he switched to the native language he was no better than that extraterrestrial Tartar. Sometimes we turned on radio but usually there were no radio coverage, except for the 15th Band – that was the radio of all long distance truckers. For example, a large loaded truck caught up with us and tailgated in a hurry. He would broadcast on the radio:
– Bro, I'm overtaking you.
– Go ahead.
– Thanks, have a safe road!
– Same to you!
The radio was used to ask for a help when broken down, to ask for directions, to warn each other about road police posts and just for a chat to kill time. This very channel was used by the most advanced "ladies of the night". Though one of them approached us in an old fashioned way. Take me. Where to? Somewhere, she replied. By and large, that's one whole brotherhood on the road.
The deeper in Siberia we drove the less frequent towns became. While the truckers could say something good about the roads in the Central Russia, a talk about Highway Baikal always ended up with a deep sigh. Even gravel wasn't present at some places, not to speak of asphalt paving or concrete slabs as near Novosibirsk. Holy cow, one of the main trunk roads of the country, the highway of the federal level, was at patches worse than a rural fire break road.
Birch trees were alternating with pine trees, then otherwise. In Kemerovo, we saw KUZBASS sign shining on a hill similarly to that of Hollywood. The local landscapes could surprise only with their unparalleled drabness. However, the sceneries of Krasnoyarsk Krai and Khakassia would be a perfect match to the best places on the Earth in large part because of the Sayan Mountains.
Valera had a downtime in Abakan during a whole day. So I had an opportunity to quickly visit Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro power plant – it was only 150 away from here. Police warrant officer Constantine gave me a lift to Sayanogorsk, and then two cars took me to the dam. Nothing reminded of the disaster that had happened here three years ago.
I couldn't make it back to Abakan before the night. I had to stay overnight in Sayanogorsk where I set up the tent 100 metres away from high-rise buildings. Everything would have been nice if it had not been for a shower that did not have mercy even on the sleeping bag – it appeared I carried a plastic film and a rain coat in vain. I was soaking wet like a homeless dog but received a fine for jaywalking as an ordinary citizen.
Commodore
About seven years ago Lenkom theatre was on a tour in Kursk Philharmonic Hall. Russian rock opera Juno and Avos and story upon which it was based has hooked me ever since. Now in Krasnoyarsk, when I was in Enlightener Nikolay ship-museum I found out that Rezanov, the real prototype of the show's hero, was buried in the local Trinity churchyard cemetery. Death found the statesman when he returned from the around the world journey, when he had already been engaged with the daughter of the Comandante of San Francisco.
The cemetery was on the way to Paraskeva Pyatnitsa Chapel that is pictured on the 10-rouble note. But to find the exact place of the Rezanov's last refuge was not simple. There was nobody to ask except for a bunch of bum-looking folk standing at the gate. All of a sudden, an about 45-year old red-haired woman with a very romantic appearance emerged near a cabin. She looked as if she were from the pages of a Turgenev's novel: tall and slim, wearing a bonnet, in a long dress, in a well-worn jacket and in old-fashioned black boots.
She asked me a lot of questions looking over her half-frame glasses: who I was and where from, why I was interested in all that. She nearly went ballistic when I called Rezanov "Count" (he was referred to like this in literature), but in reality he had been Commodore! "Are you going to show me where the grave of Commodore is or not?" I was about to turn my back on her and leave. But the mysterious stranger thawed out and took me on a tour around the realms of the dead as a mistress.
Indeed, there was a white-marble tombstone lost among other ancient grave-stones, which was carved: "Commodore N.P. Rezanov". An urn nearby contained soil taken from the cemetery of his American love Conchita and from the cemetery of his legal spouse Anna, who had been, by the way, a daughter of Grigoriy Shelikhov, a famous native of Kursk, also known as the "Russian Columbus".
My escort turned out to be the Director of Krasnoyarsk "Necropolis" and a co-author of the monument erected in 2000. Olga Arzhanykh recollected that the idea to make it in the form of a sail and to engrave the line "I will never see you again, I will never forget you" from a popular track of the opera came to her in her dream. A lawyer by profession and having once worked in MIA and prosecutor's office, now she took care of historically valuable places of the cemetery on her own. She also wrote books and struggled with local authorities to make them endow the Trinity Cemetery with the status of a memorial. The cabin where Olga was heading for was the museum founded by her and her dwelling place at the same time.
Home for All
The transformer house on embankment of the Enisey River was "decorated" with an unauthorized announcement board. One ad inadvertently caught my eye: "Tomorrow, August 15, all are invited for lecture "Hitchhiking around the world" by Russian traveller Anton Krotov. For the sake of meeting with the man about whom I had read so much and whose concept of free travels I had tested in practice I postponed the departure. I spent the night at the house of local staff-reporter of ITAR-TASS Victor Khrebtov and then went toward the address.
More than a hundred people gathered in a library. Many attendees arrived from other cities. Bearded Krotov, as usually clothed slightly nonchalantly, in trousers rolled up to his ankles and wearing trekking boots, sat with a map in front of him, which was marked with his routes in all directions. He was 36 years old and the largest part out of life was spent hitchhiking around the world. Initially, he had been known in the capital where in one of Moscow flats he had hangouts and concerts open for everybody. In 1995, he founded the Academy of Free Travel (AFT), such a club for adventurers. Anton wrote books about his travels and lived off sales of the books. He was an amazing personality who had the courage to refuse from accepted norms of society: he quit the college, but knew many languages; he was not married but had more than enough female followers; he did not watch TV (and encouraged everybody to throw away the "boob tube"), on the other hand, his life was more interesting than any television story. And the main thing – he inspired many people. And the people turned to him.
In the last years, Anton and his friends organized in Russia and in other countries AFT Home for All – they rented an old house on the cheap where a rambling traveller like me could have a meal, an accommodation and meet a good company. Such a house was organized in Krasnoyarsk. In two months it was to be organized in China, then in Mexico. The tents of those for whom there was no room inside the house were pitched in the yard, but since turnaround of tenants was fast (over two hundred travellers stayed there in two months) it wasn't so difficult to spread out on the floor. New guests gradually arrived: a Belgian woman, Frenchmen, an American Jew, and Russians of all sorts, each with their own story of travels.
Olkhon Island
There is a 70-km-long island on Lake Baikal. It is mainly inhabited by fishermen for whom there is a ferry communication with the mainland. An unexpected female travel-mate told me about Olkhon the evening before. Elena from Novosibirsk, one of the adventurers from the Krotov's company, was bound for the island. It was dangerous for a girl to travel there alone so I promised to follow her to the island. It remained to find how to get there...
A truck loaded with 23 tons of bananas, a "hello" from Latin America, flew us to Irkutsk. After Eugene, the owner of the truck, once had been almost coaxed to smuggle a load of contraband caviar for one million roubles, he was mainly inclined to legal fruits. The consumers in the East preferred tropical exotics and European vegetables, and in return their Chinese substitutes were brought to Russia. Once, while on route, Eugene met an old man who walked from one end of the country to another one like some Forrest Gump from the movie. The trucker-tempter offered him a ride but the man refused.
Honest Vladik, a Bury by nationality, said that he had seen many backpackers on the road but had never stopped before. So this time he decided to pick up one. Good, well done. I wished there had been more drivers like this. Moreover, he stopped near the shamanic poles to show how to gain the favour of the road god. Acceptable offerings were coins, cigarettes and vodka. The other gods must have burned with envy.
Now the highway was empty. When darkness fell, all responsible and irresponsible drivers became extinct like dinosaurs. The salvation came in the form of a white spot that turned out to be a Peugeot minivan when close. Yuri was driving to take out Moscow pilgrims from Olkhon Island that happened to be there for some reason. He called the previous driver "pagan" and decided to cure us of shamanism by turning on a CD with Lives of Saints. That was a true battle of gods. We caught the last ferry bound to depart at 00.05. The distance to Khuzhir was about forty kilometres which was covered by the French car not without difficulty. Russian UAZ car was the car of choice for Olkhon's cross-country.
I was awakened by squawks of seagulls. Baikal lay some fifty meters away from me in all its grandeur. I hurried to have a swim but the water was ice-cold! I made up my mind to have a trip to the northern cape through sand dunes and rocky cliffs overgrown by red moss. So many flowers and plants could be seen only in the Alps. Marshes abounded with red bilberry. Cedars, spruces and larches grew nearby. Having settled on a new place, I rented a bicycle from a local boy and rode to find high-elevation Lake Shara-Noor, all yellowish due to algae. The lake was said to be curative but that it was fragrant one wouldn't have said.
...It was around one o'clock in the night but I couldn't fall asleep. That day I returned from a trip to another island. Ogoy was a very small island, two by three kilometres only, but it's there that a Buddhist stupa was installed for some reason. The wavy Baikal calmed down after a slight storm but the boat kept wallowing. Alone in a four-berth crew accommodation, I was engrossed in reading of postcards with Bury fairy tales. I got on the boat by chance. Before, I had had a walk with Carolina, a French woman, who also arrived from the Krasnoyarsk Home for All, along a cemetery of rusted long boats that had been washed ashore. There was a strange beauty in the place. Somebody hailed.
When the navigation period started, Lithuanian Vitas would be a mechanic and a cook on Imperator boat and when Baikal was frozen he would turn into a similar hitch-hiker – he would travel across Russia all winter long. He offered me to stay in the warm crew accommodation. It was timely because it became devilishly cold in the tent at night even with all my clothes on. Apart from Vitas there were two more crew members on-board –
a slightly messy-looking but kind-hearted navigator and 25-year-old man Sergei from Moscow, who had arrived by hitchhiking two weeks ago. He was a cameraman always carrying his camera. Sergei filmed a story about long distance truckers and about everybody he met. His role on boat was a helper to the cook. However, Vitas cooked meals more often on his own. He was especially good at cooking the omul fish.
On the road again. A car emerged in an hour. The driver's name was Roman, a detective, ready to let me into his new investigations. For instance, by an order from Channel One he found the mother of Jessica Long, a well-known Paralympics winner, who had been adopted by Americans 20 years ago. The last driver of my hitchhiking journey was marketing specialist Igor from Angarsk, also an expert in the Chinese language, who had spent half a year in the Celestial Empire. He brought me up to Irkutsk railway station.
Train Blagoveshchensk – Moscow took me back to the West. The sound of the train wheels moved away from where the day was dawning, from still unexplored Kamchatka, Sakhalin... to name a few! For sure, there were own Grannies called Valyas, own Yuris and Valeras. Russia!
