A travelling scientist is not a bum

Life support means keeping your body in such condition that it is suitable for further life. Even while travelling you can eat properly (regardless of the amount of money you have), sleep properly, wash when needed, and not just maintain but even increase the physical capacity of your body. How can that be done? Read on.

EQUIPMENT

What equipment is indispensable? How much does it weigh? How much space does it occupy?

Nothing is indispensable. For example, you can set out from Moscow to Vladivostok with no backpack, no matches, no money, no ID… But there’s one object that you must always carry with yourself. This object weighs about 1,500 grammes, it can be fitted inside a human skull, and it is known as the brain.

If the inside of your head is in order, you can reach any city – under any external circumstances. But if you are unfamiliar with the process known as thinking, then not even a large amount of food, or cash, or IDs, or clothes, or tooth brushes, or other objects, will bring you success.

Of course, even experienced people pack some stuff before setting out – and I would say they do it for comfort. I pack: a backpack; my passport (better carried on yourself, as close to the body as possible, and not in a handbag or a backpack); a sleeping bag; a sleeping mat; a one-litre metal cup; a plastic bottle for water; a spoon; immersion heater (hopefully available in your country, certainly available in ours); spare clothes, socks, and other stuff; a compass… It isn’t bad to pack things like a tent, a knife, pages torn out of a road atlas, a camera, a tooth brush, pen and paper, a head lamp, matches, this book… The more tourist gear you carry, the longer you will be able to maintain self-sufficiency and the sooner you will be fed up with dragging that sack around!

So don’t pack more than you can carry all along. Pack your bag a couple of days in advance and walk around with it – see if something can be left behind. Remember, these things will be your company while you walk and ride in cities and on roads for days, weeks, or months!

Things that can get wet must be plastic-bagged carefully. Pack some spare bags.

Only pack what you won’t regret losing. Remember, your backpack will fall on the ground from cargo cabins; you and other heavyweight people will sit on it; rain and traffic will shower water all over it… Frail, fragile objects shouldn’t be in there!

EATING

It’s important to have access to warm food daily, especially in the cold season.

Food is not a problem, generally. The world is full of food. Use any of the three methods, depending on your situation money-wise.

Method one (applies when money is ample) – eat in the stolovaya (stah-law-vare, cheap canteen-like eateries), they are now everywhere.

Method two (applies when money is limited) – buy grains and cook as described below. It’s not a bad idea to always carry a small amount of buckwheat, pearl-barley, or rice (essentially a selection of the cheapest grains available from grocery stores anywhere in Russia) in a plastic bottle. But don’t carry too much: if you have money, you can always buy a kilo of the cheapest grain in any town or village; if you don’t have money, you can ask for some grain by just knocking on any flat door. Grains will make an excellent centrepiece for any meal. Or use potatoes.

Peel your potatoes, or wash your grains, and go with your own saucepan to any restaurant, canteen, traffic control centre, flat, or anywhere else you hypothesise there could be a food-heating stove – and ask to cook your food. They cook it for you, and while they’re at it, you tell them about your travels, making their attitude to you better yet, and if it’s evening time, they might invite you over for the night.

Ordinary boiling water might be of use as well. Interestingly, potatoes (in thin slices), buckwheat, and some other foodstuffs can become edible with just boiling water. Pour it all over whatever you desire to eat and wait for ten minutes, wrapping it in clothes, or newspaper, or any other heat insulator. Then pour out the water and add more boiling water. After the second iteration, the food is ready. If it isn’t, throw it away: it can’t be cooked that way.

Method three. If you have no money, don’t worry: someone will go get something to eat soon, and invite you too. Everybody eats. You will be given a lift or invited to a home by someone who will also offer food. You don’t even have to be asking: on the contrary, you will need to grow a ‘rubber stomach’ (because you will be fed more often, and get more food at a time, than you are used to), or learn to refuse. But there is the other side: when you are back home, happily supplied with food, warmth, internet, and other blessings, share them with those who don’t have them on this day. The more people you feed, the more confident you will be that the favour will be returned.

LIFE-STYLE

Sometimes I meet travellers whose life-style is different from healthy. Highways, cigarettes, torn clothes all add up to form a certain stereotypical image.

If someone abandoned his home, his square job, his expensive clothes, etc., and made homelessness, inactivity, torn clothes, etc., into his principle – then he got rid of some of his attachments and happily obtained some other ones.

The sage will happily have no attachments at all. Wear good clothes, or wear as bad clothes as can be, but don’t intentionally look for the best or the worst clothes. Or, for example, you can live on watermelons or shashlyk (shush-lick, meat grilled on skewers, the common fare of the bazaars) obtained free of charge, but you shouldn’t really concentrate on eating watermelons only, or skewered meat only, or free of charge only.

You will find life simpler if you don’t smoke or drink any alcohol. Don’t be attached to things in your backpack: if you feel you couldn’t go on without some object, you shouldn’t have crammed it in you backpack in the first place. If you lose property or money, rejoice for whoever finds it.

If you are in a difficult situation and don’t know what to do, don’t do anything. Pitch your tent, or find another kind of place to sleep, or just wait a minute, or an hour, or a day. We’re not on a race.

If you are running out of money or food – destroy the remnants, don’t leave any reserve stocks, and go wherever you want, like home, for example. Don’t eat food waste. One can go about hungry for forty days, but you won’t have to. The world is kind to you and full of help – it won’t let you starve to death.

Well, what’s the minimum amount of money I should have?

Many people, while hitch-hiking in ex-USSR and elsewhere in the world, spend a gross total of exactly as much as at home. If you tend to spend modestly, your travelling expenses, too, will be low; if you’re used to bourgeois life-style, then high. If you’re broke, you still can go travelling, for the world is full of help and there is no such thing as ‘minimum necessary sum.’ There isn’t such thing as the maximum possible sum you could spend on the road, either. Big money makes you relaxed, and a poor traveller and a rich traveller will probably come home equally happy and equally broke.

Don’t try to be frugal. Whatever money you have, spend freely. Trying to use less money is like trying to use less air. You won’t need any reserves.

Don’t worry about anything. If you think that some nonsense is going on, wait until it ends. Remember, every sequence of events is correct. If something seems to be wrong, then the current sequence is not over yet.

Don’t create problems by contemplating them. Don’t go about thinking: What shall we eat tomorrow? And where shall we sleep tomorrow? And the day after tomorrow? You’ll sort it out in due time.

If you caught a cold or became ill in some other manner, starve for a while, eat nothing but pre-boiled water. Let the road heal you. By the way, fasting for one, or two, or three, or four days improves the health of your body and increases its physical capacity, and you can test it out in practice.

Time is money – by all means. If you have little money but lots of free time, you can hitch-hike, undertake incredible travels, and get a lot more impressions than the tourists who fly over all continents in jet planes. If you have no money at all but lots and lots of free time, you can travel all across Russia and even the whole world – and you will regularly eat nutritious food, sleep in interesting places, walk around all countries without a penny in your pocket, and, when needed, find some money to pay for the visa and move on to another country. The more time you have, the less money you spend and the faster you can move. Have as much of both resources (time and money) as possible and spend the one of which you have plenty.

SLEEPING IN UNFAMILIAR CITIES

One of the problems arising when you travel is the problem of free pads, or the vpiska (fpees-kuh, originally hippie slang for ‘place to sleep at for free’). Of course you can get yourself prepared by making friends in every city on your way and stay at their homes – moreover, you can take care to visit only those cities where you already have somewhere to crash. However, that will make you a lot less free and too dependent on the availability of people you know and their will (and ability) to let you in to sleep over. So it isn’t such a bad idea to familiarise yourself with the experience of sages who know how to find shelter in various regions of Russia and the world.

You could certainly acquire a tent and get yourself rid of many sleeping problems. You travel faster with a tent for the lack of necessity of visiting cities and searching for beds. But a tent cannot always serve as a replacement for a real house where you can eat, wash, dry, and have some rest amid a long journey. Camping pre-arrangements and sleeping itself can involve difficulties, especially after it has been raining cold water for a whole day, you are soaked, freezing, and not too clear as to where you should go. Conversely, spending nights according to the below-described methods will win you a lot of new acquaintances, friends, information, and impressions.

First, the advent of the internet made finding beds and buddies a whole lot simpler a process than it was in the 1990s. There are several web-sites offering friends and/or free lodging in any major city of the world. At www.couchsurfing.org and www.hospitalityclub.org, databases are available with information on all the world countries (including all the regional centres and major cities in Russia and the rest of ex-USSR). Sign up for those, learn to use them, and gain unlimited possibilities. When you are at home, try to invite as many guests as you can yourself.

Tourist clubs are your second option. Use the internet to find the contact phone number, or ask at the municipal enquiry office (that’s like tourist information centre, only not meant for tourists and of course – Russian only), or at one of those municipal committees for tourism, family, youth, or whatnot. More cities still have ‘centres for children and young adult tourism’ (relics of the Soviet era, popularly known in the abbreviated form ЦДЮТур, pron. tseh-deh-you-tour)); there are about five hundred of them in Russia, and addresses can be found in the enquiry offices. In a place like that, you’ll meet people who are into tourism, make friends with them, and Bob’s your uncle. There are also serious tourist clubs (for adults), mountaineering clubs, cycling clubs, ski centres… Why not give them all a try? Do it early in the day, though, well before it’s six or seven in the evening, or everybody will be off, leaving just a custodian behind, or nobody at all.

When you’re trying to negotiate a sleeping place, always make it clear how many of you there are, where you are coming from, and how long you want to stay. Bigger assemblies of, say, twenty people will find it harder to find one place to stay at. Groups of more than four or five will usually break up, agreeing to meet on the next day at a rendez-vous point. A vpiska for one night is almost always easy to find, whereas long-term sticking in one place (for a week, for a month, forever) incites hostility.

Remember, nobody is obliged to give you a vpiska (or a lift in their car!), so don’t be pushy. Don’t humiliate yourself, don’t be nagging, don’t go on about your suffering so, and this being the last untried phone number on your vpiska list, and you having nothing to eat, and you being cold, and dirty, and away from home for a fortnight, and broke, and so on – NO ONE CARES FOR UNHAPPY PEOPLE. If you’re so unhappy, stay at home! While on the phone, think this: I will find a bed in this city anyway. Will this person want to be my company? Oh, he won’t regret it!

(Same applies to hitch-hiking: no one cares if you’re unhappy! ‘Oh please help me get to Chita on time, I’m cold and miserable and starving and, and, oh, bastard! You didn’t stop!!’ This is all wrong. You won’t succeed with such things in your head. ‘I’m going to Chita and you can be my company!’ That’s the kind of thoughts that will make your waving routine much more efficient.)

Better start looking for a bed early in the day and agree on when you show up – and that should be about nine or ten in the evening, so you will neither start bothering people with your presence too early nor wake up any sleepers. Once again: don’t make your hosts ‘happy’ by a visit in one or two o’clock in the morning! And don’t try any excuses like your KamAZ was too slow and only reached the city at three in the morning, or you didn’t have a phone card, or a tent, or brains!

Method four. If you arrived in the night time, every office with lights still on is at your service, and that means bus lots, construction sites, collective farms (yes, they’re not only in history textbooks), where custodians, bored and unaccompanied, keep watch over their rusty equipment and machinery. Dispel their lonesomeness – but don’t drink with them! Drinking with unfamiliar people is dangerous and harmful behaviour!

Method five, monasteries. If you’re in need, you can eat, sleep, and even live for a couple of days in a Christian monastery (or a convent), and not just in Russia but anywhere in the world, except Ethiopia.

Anyone with a passport and belief in God can sleep in a monastery if he can follow some basic rules of behaviour. Check the internet, ask the locals, check the churches, ask around.

So you are in a monastery. After vespers are over (and that’s usually eight in the evening), ask any priest or any monk (or nun) if you can sleep in the place. They will explain whom to talk to (every monastery has a specially trained man to deal with the pilgrims who want a vpiska).

‘Good evening! We came here from Moscow, please, can we stay here for one night?’

It is important how you look. For the male gender: long hair, beard, normal-sized trousers appreciated; ‘Mohican’ haircuts, single earrings, shorts not recommended. For the female gender: headscarf and long garments appreciated; trousers, erotic clothing, tattoos not recommended.

As the Russian saying goes, в чужой монастырь со своим уставом не лезут (‘one doesn’t come to other people’s monastery with his own rule’). So watch your appearance (clothes and behaviour!), look at others, and do as they do. Ask permission to work if you want to stay longer than overnight. What kind of work can it be? Sawing firewood, splitting firewood, digging field, planting or digging out potatoes, washing floors or dishes, kitchen chars, etc. Do whatever work there is. Don’t just work with everyone, but pray with everyone as well – it’s a monastery, not a camping area.

People can stay in monasteries regardless of their gender.

Some cities don’t have a monastery but do have a church. Then you can talk to the batyushka (archaic and affectionate for ‘father,’ used to address the priest; appr. pron. bah-toosh- kuh or bah -choosh-kuh) and find shelter in his church. Same requirements for passport, appearance, and behaviour apply as for the monasteries.

Holy abodes and places of worship can be useful in countries other than Russia, too. Coptic and Orthodox churches can host hitch-hikers in the Middle East and in African countries. Shelter can be offered not only by Orthodox Christians but also by Catholics (remarkably, Catholic missions are common in a plethora of countries), Anglicans, Lutherans, Protestants, and various sectarians. If you talked to the pastor (the priest) and didn’t succeed, talk to the flock as they leave church after vespertine service, describing your aspirations; they will probably help. In South East Asia, Buddhist monasteries offer shelter to travellers.

In a Muslim country you can go to a mosque, in India or East Africa – to a Sikh temple… However, detailed reasonings on religious communities common in various regions, and on their shelter-offering capacity, will turn this book into a treatise ‘On Using Religions,’ which is less than desirable.

Free travellers frequently find themselves spending nights in students’ halls of residence. Find out if such exist in the city you’re in, go there in the evening, and you will see students coming to roost for the night. Some will go out to smoke and chat – join them and talk. If the students are shy and cite the authorities’ meanness – go straight to the custodian, or warden, or a teacher, or any other official.

When we sought shelter in the halls, it often led us to success not only in Russia, but also elsewhere in the ex-USSR as well as in Asia and Africa.

Many regions such as the Caucasus, where hospitality is well-developed, offer yet another way of spending the night. Those after a place to sleep at should hit the road just before sunset and hitch-hike in any direction. The last driver to give you a lift on that day will invite you for the night – just accept the offer. If there’s no offer, you can easily invite yourself to any house in a rural area, which we describe in further detail below.

In Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, and other countries where hospitality is even better developed, it is even easier to get meal and shelter. Just sit down near any road, in any inhabited locality, and wait. The local residents, intrigued to see a foreigner, will try to talk to you, offer tea and food, and invite you to spend time in their homes and stay for the night. However, detailed reasoning on this subject will take us far off the topic of this chapter which deals primarily with finding shelter in our Fatherland.

SLEEPING IN RURAL AREAS

Quite often, especially when you’re hitch-hiking, night falls on you in a rural area, where the above-described methods don’t work – but you still want to sleep (and possess no tent, also a possibility). Here, you can walk down the road, find an inhabited locality, and knock on every door, asking for lodging. This method must be used while it’s still daylight time (a man waking up everyone in the village at three in the morning will incite bitterness, not the desire to let him in to sleep till morning). The inhabited locality should be provincial: when in a city, better use the six methods described above.

The further away from megalopolises you are; the more provincial the town, and the more out-of-the-way the village – the easier can the rambler find free lodging. Provincial people are simplier, friendlier, and more disposed to trust, tending to keep open tables and houses since older times; in a word, you won’t be left to die.

COMMUNICATING WITH PEOPLE

Free travellers can’t do without communicating with people. The success, or failure, of your trip depends heavily on how you behave and on your attitude toward people and life. Communication with the locals, police, officials, and your parents are of vital importance to you as a traveller. It will be dealt with in this chapter.

THE LOCALS

I often hear that smaller remote towns are populated by the so-called gopniks (youngsters inclined to committing petty violent crime), whose primary objective is to give you a beating and take your money and valuables. The sound response to such messages goes: supposing the gopniks do exist in reality – don’t be a bait! Things like unusual haircuts, beggar-like rags, exceedingly gaudy outfits, badges and pictures of singers or musicians, political symbols – all this can cause you lots of trouble as you travel. Only pack stuff you won’t regret losing, and better yet, don’t regret losing any things.

Avoid provocative behaviour. Don’t sing or cry loudly, don’t get yourself intoxicated.

If you walk down the street in the evening and notice strange-looking people ready to express noxious curiosity about your person – be faster and talk to them first.

‘Please, where is the road to Chelyabinsk?’ – or:

‘Hello, where can I spend the night here?’ – or:

‘Where do you get internet access here?’

Thus, you push the gopniks out of their behaviour pattern and come in control of the situation. You’ll make them wonder:

‘Where did you come from?’

The locals are bored! The sole reason why they want to beat you is that they think there’s no other pastime in sight. Arouse their curiosity and take your time ‘loading’ their minds with words.

If they were faster and are harassing you – keep calm, don’t swear, don’t be afraid, don’t fight; calmly find out what they want. Material claims can be wisely satisfied by carrying a small sum in your outside pocket and letting it be taken away; the rest of your cash (if you have some) should be hidden better. If the gopniks are trying to take some of your possessions, just offer them as presents.

Here’s an old piece of wisdom: you can get in any kind of situation and it may even seem unpleasant, but there’s always the correct behaviour and the correct attitude. If the correct behaviour didn’t help – the correct attitude will certainly do the trick. Now for an example:

Once I was riding a suburban train from Luga to Pskov. I took off my shoes, left them on the floor, climbed to the upper bunk and fell asleep. The train arrived in Pskov. I woke up – the shoes were gone. I went barefooted (it was summer), found a second-hand shop and bought another pair of shoes. ‘Well then, what if you couldn’t afford it?’ – a slower-witted reader could ask. Well, then I would have finished my business in Pskov and went back to Moscow barefooted. By the way, there are people who always go about barefooted, such as the great traveller and Citizen of the World Vladimir Nesin.

If you are a girl, think about how you look. The things you use to attract males, such as cosmetics, perfumes, or short-sized clothes letting all your beauty stick out, are of no use when you travel.

For the most part, locals are positive in their interactions with travellers. Local residents usually know train and bus schedules and can reveal the location of local sights, cheap canteens, highways, monasteries, etc. Denizens of smaller towns and villages use hitch-hiking or other methods for travelling (short distances) and can give handy clues. Some clues or advice, though, can be strange or false; take it critically.

THE LAW AND OTHER OFFICIALS

Whether travelling or just living in Russia, you will meet patrolling officers, traffic cops, ticket inspectors, and riot police. If you are doing something bad during contact (like stealing foodstuffs from a shop or trafficking drugs), then you got yourself in a mess and I’m not giving you any advice. But ordinary, law-abiding travellers get detained for ordinary, harmless actions.

Jaywalking; soliciting entrance into a train or locomotive; being unregistered; sleeping in a tent or on a roof; speaking in a loud voice; carrying a backpack in public; looking like a native of the Caucasus (or not looking like one, when you’re in the Caucasus); asking for directions to Omsk… ah, so many ways to touch the nerve of the enforcer of our post-Soviet law and order!

The first thing any of them will do is ask for your documents. It is very recommendable to carry a passport while travelling! So do show it.

Usually, you will be left alone after a couple of questions. Be honest! If you’re from Moscow (or St. Pete, or Severomuysk), say so. If you’re going to Magadan (or Singapore, or New Delhi), say so. If you are hitch-hiking, don’t try to hide this fact! Remember, your journey is outstanding and worthy of at least a session of questions and answers, and a feeding.

In some places they still may bother you with the ‘Where’s your registration?’ thing. Explain that you are a hitch-hiker, here for transit, and will leave today, or tomorrow. Registration, even when done officially, is only required for stays longer than ninety days (for Russian and Ukrainian nationals), or three to five days in some ex-Soviet republics.

A long tongue is your traveller’s walking-stick – remember that. And may your tongue, when necessary, grow as long as the journey you are undertaking.

The truth is the engine of the sage. Never lie, even in small matters – it is harmful behaviour.

Do not try to dodge contact with people. The more interesting, surprising stuff they learn from you, the better. For every word you hear, say two. Remember that your Traveller’s Credentials is a good thing – its official looks, especially if it is stamped, will show that you are an important expedition and represent someone else, not just yourself – we have discussed that before. Such papers will ease the officials’ urge to detain you for a long time. Even a travelling warrant issued by any entity can help; but it’s entirely possible to do without such things, too.

You may be searched – don’t get offended. The search is just another pretext for conversation.

So, key elements of correct behaviour include: 1) your calm; 2) your ID; 3) your wordiness. Don’t run away from the police; don’t resist them. Don’t be drunk and don’t carry drugs – that goes without saying. Before hitting the road, study the civil and criminal codes, so the police can’t intimidate you by referring to non-existent, illegal punishments.

As Andrey Vinokurov and I were going back from Magadan to Moscow, we were detained by station guards in Chara (Baikal-Amur Railway) for attempted negotiations with a locomotive driver. We readily obeyed and told them the story of our travel, whereupon they gave us bread, lard, onions, tea, sugar, and other foodstuffs. Then we were handed over to local police. It happened so that they, too, became our friends; we had supper, washed, and spent the night in the chief policeman’s home. Next day, they gave us a special escort which accompanied us 300km towards Moscow in a sleeping carriage. At Taksimo station the escort got off, but we stayed in the train and advanced further.

Traffic cops are usually so preoccupied with exacting fines from the drivers that they are more sympathetic to our foot-existence. If the traffic is light and the cop has nothing to do, he can check your ID. There’s the occasional attempt to fine you for jaywalking (road rules say pedestrians must walk on the left side of the road, facing the traffic). Don’t give away any cash but let him write out a fine.

Sometimes, at your request, traffic cops can stop a car for you, but it isn’t recommended since the drivers tend to view the cops (and everyone coming along with them) negatively. Remember: seeking aid from the Forces of Darkness won’t lead you to success!

In the more backward places, it is possible to sleep in a traffic police booth.

FREE INFORMATION TRANSMISSION

Telecommunications are crucial for information exchange. As you travel, you’ll probably want to inform your parents and friends back home about your progress, or ask them questions.

The previous editions of this book (1995 to 2002) suggested exploiting glitches in public pay phones such as one-way conversations (when you make a call and don’t pay, you can hear them but they can’t hear you); another known exploitable glitch involved shouting to the other end of the receiver (and, of course, not pressing the TALK button, avoiding payment). Fortunately, by the 2000s, higher technology progressed enough to be present almost everywhere. Text messages can be sent from your own cell phone, or the driver’s, or your fellow traveller’s, or friend’s. Calls can be made from any organisation or any flat where they have a telephone, or Skype access.

Internet literacy can be even more useful. Teach your parents to use e-mail. As you travel, enter any rich firm, or a public office, or a library, or even an internet café, reveal your free traveller’s nature, and ask permission to send e-mail – for free if you don’t have enough money. If they refuse, try another place. In Russia, the CIS, and the entire civilised world, internet access can be found not only in offices, but also in many flats. When you stay at a vpiska, ask permission to use the host’s computer to check e-mail. But don’t spend all night staring at the screen – don’t be a computer addict!

Strong attachment to computers is unwholesome.

YOUR PARENTS

Many people, regardless of their age, will find that their parents are the first problem they hit when preparing for a long journey. Unfortunately, there is no universally applicable technique to accustom the parents to the idea that their children are free travellers. Below are just a few tips:

1) Truthfulness. Don’t wear a mask! If I conceal my travelling plans, saying I’m going to a girl’s summer house to prepare for exams, and really I’m going to Murmansk – I subconsciously acknowledge that travelling is ‘bad’ (since it must be concealed) and the girl, the summer house, and the exams are ‘good.’ When your lies are exposed, you’ll have big problems. Better tell the truth, and well in advance: say where you are going, how, and how long it is taking. Keep everyone updated on your progress: call, text, use the internet – make them happy.

Tell your parents there are other free travellers; invite them over to prove they exist. Give your parents hitch-hiking books; show them our web page (http://www.avp.travel.ru) or some other travelling site.

2) Healthy life-style! When you return home, your outward appearance ought not to be worse than when you were leaving, otherwise your parents may think you’re ruining your health by doing something unwholesome. Avoid vodka, ‘weed,’ and other recreational activities. If, on your way home, you notice you’re tired and smell like a bum, then stop one day short of your destination, eat a sound meal, wash yourself clean, and present yourself in front of your parents a decent citizen. Then, use some of your leisure time to re-read the chapter of this book called Life Support.

3) Safety. Many parents think travelling is very dangerous (usually they add, ‘nowadays’). They theorise, it seems, that Moscow, St. Petersburg, the village of Dyrkino, or anywhere else in Russia may be relatively safe – but anyone visiting these points consecutively is in serious jeopardy. Further, the theory goes that being in a car for a short time may be safe, but hitch-hiking to Krasnoyarsk will be a risky undertaking indeed. In fact, the principal dangers can be easily avoided – unless you’re inclined to do foolish things like starting fights, losing your ID, sleeping in a car doing 140kph, etc. Remember: your safety is function of your correct behaviour.

Dangers reside in the brain of a scared individual and nowhere else. I have been a traveller for more than twenty years, and thousands of respected people have warned me of all kinds of dangerous things ostensibly lurking in Moscow and the Caucasus, in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Angola, and even in Latvia and the Ukraine!

However, none of these fictitious dangers, despite most generous publicity through media and respected people, have materialised in my life. So have your own, unscared world-view; and don't be afraid of the surrounding world! And use your brains!

The last tip at last: don’t rush. ‘Shock therapy’ (‘What are you packing for?’ – ‘Well, I'm going to Khabarovsk tonight’) doesn’t always bring positive result. Mind your pace when you develop your traveller’s nature, and your parents will mature along with you.

LONG TRAVELS

The world is a big place, but, with some persistence, all its nooks and crannies are open and accessible to you, dear reader.

If you want to travel, don’t wait. Don’t wait until you earn big time; or get a solemn job; or retire and have lots of spare time. In ten years you won’t have the time you have today; in twenty years, you’ll have less still. Maybe you’ll have more money – but you’ll think your time costs a lot more and it’ll seem you can ill afford a six-month vacation (based on how much you could earn per hour). And you may find yourself having children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, all demaning your attention and care.

So if you want to have your Big Journey, do it this year, or daily routines and attachments you acquire as you age will take away what’s left of your aspirations.

The Big Journey is a whole life that you can live over months – or years, depending on its duration. Usually it happens only once, because most people don’t at all intend to be a traveller forever. And when it’s over, you will find your own thing to do in life, and your journey on the Roads of the World will become a stretch of your Path in Life.

It became easier to travel now than in the 1990s. More and more countries welcome holders of Russian passports and don’t require a visa; any information concerning your itinerary can be mined from the internet; other sages, other travellers will gladly consult you if you ask your questions correctly. Anyone aged between 18 and 80, complete with a passport, two legs, and a head, can go to any place in the world.

Lengthy overland journeys may well become a thing of the past for you. In ten years, perhaps, you will board a jet and go on business, or holiday-making, exactly where it once took you three or four months to get overland. But your experience as a free overland traveller is by no means comparable with that as a jet passenger.

Logistics tailored to your needs; servants; lodging; sight-seeing in places fitted with amenities for your convenience – all this will result in completely different (and a lot fewer) impressions compared to what we free travellers enjoy. We ride in the same cars as the locals and help them pull trucks out of mud and sand patches; we sleep in the same houses as them, we eat food prepared in such a way as is common in their country; one day, a poor man invites us home, next day, a millionaire businessman does; our dialogues are in the local language (even if we can use but a few words) and we try to understand people who speak their native language to us; we taste natural food, not restaurant fare, and smell the scents of bazaars, temples, and streets; we live almost the same life as the ordinary people in the country, learning much more about them than the customers of tour agencies whizzing by in luxurious jeeps.

Freshly harvested pineapples and freshly picked dates; roads of Angola and expressways of Turkey; a thousand real sunsets and mornings on all kinds of sea-coasts; real polar mosquitoes in summer and real northern lights in winter; bums in Magadan and Sikhs in India; enormous open spaces of the North and endless rainfall of the tropics… The fragrance of real life, the feeling of worldwide brotherhood with all mankind – no tourist agency will sell you that, not for all the gold in the world. That’s the fragrance of real life!

Of course, a trip to Congo or Indonesia must be well-prepared. You shouldn’t go spontaneously – you should think well about the many finer points of what lies ahead of you. Meet other free travellers, read books, gather information, fix your departure date, know all you have to know about the visas and jurisdictions; find a reliable fellow traveller if you want. Your travelling expenses shouldn’t be your first consideration – actually, this can well be put at or near the end of the list. Take all the time and money you have and spend both resources freely. Remember: you may get a lot of money in future years, but money won’t buy you time. You will never have time.

As we travel – every one of us! – it can be seen with all lucidity that the world is kind to you, that people are responsive and helpful in every corner of our country and the whole world; the world is open to everybody and belongs to everybody who has seriously thought about it once. Life is a miracle indeed; and as we come home after a long journey, we see the people we always see around us, but in a different way, and try to treat them in a better way and be worthy brothers in the family that is humanity.

ALL OVER THE WORLD

The free traveller is different from both the outdoor-sports-loving, tent-dwelling types and the hostel-dwelling, backpack-carrying types. The free traveller will spend most (for example, more than fifteen days per month) of his or her travelling time with people who don’t get paid for that, i.e. for spending time with you.

This is what makes the free traveller principally different: it is the mode of communication.

As a general rule, such trips cost a lot less than package tours. But we do not aim to save as much as possible. The thing is, time and money are interchangeable; you run a time shortage and you spend more money travelling, and vice versa.

When in faraway cities and countries, we try to avoid using overprotected ‘hothouses’ created by tourist industry. We act differently, sleeping in the locals’ dwellings, eating local food, boarding the vehicles and trains that the ordinary people use, communicating with them without interpreters or commentators, and so get to know life as it is, not as the easy-to-scare newsmen (or glossy pamphlet writers) try to present it.

For travelling abroad you ought to possess a passport; you will fill it with visas of countries you want to go to. Visas normally cost between $20 and $50USD per country and are processed in the respective countries’ embassies, or less commonly at border crossings. These are your unavoidable expenses. Minus that, your trip in Eurasia or Africa taking, for example, six months, will cost you approximately the same sum as your living in your home country for the same period.

International borders can only be crossed at specially designated international border crossings. Illegal border crossing is not among our goals. Sneaking into a foreign country without a passport or visa is harmful and dangerous behaviour! Do not create yourself problems and do not discredit your honourable title of a Free Traveller!

In foreign countries, just like in Russia, you can hitch-hike; almost everywhere you can sleep in churches and monasteries, in a tent and in the locals’ homes; or you can find friends through the famous hospitality web-sites such as www.hospitalityclub.org or www.couchsurfing.com. Almost all cities and towns of the world have internet access, and you can always send e-mail or text home to inform your parents that you are safe and sound. In many countries it is useful to have Traveller’s Credentials in English, Russian, or the local language, so you can inform anyone you’re a scientific traveller; this thing will make fruit and vegetables from the bazaars cheap and boiled water from the canteens free.

Countries of Eurasia and Africa will display some difference from the Russian order of things: you will find no zimniks (winter roads), almost no snow or ice, and hitch-hiking in winter won’t be much different from hitch-hiking in summer. Locomotive-hopping will likely be obstructed, and even railways might not be present. Cargo ships carrying supplies for far northern localities will be irrelevant. There will be more individual quirks – each country has some. Learn more from experienced travellers, search the internet (visit our web-sites), or get some of our guide-books.

Almost all countries of Eurasia and Africa can be reached overland (except the occasional ferry hop), but Australia, the Americas, and the various islands will be much harder to get into for a free traveller. International passenger services crossing oceans are almost extinct, and getting a lift from a cargo ship is a rare and unpredictable piece of luck. There are neither ferry lines nor roads across the Bering Strait, and only six people managed (in different years) to cross it by air-hitching (all of them are from St. Petersburg; Aleksey Vorov did that in 1992, and the last person to succeed, as of now, was Vladimir Sharlayev). Just a handful of Russian travellers managed to get a free flight from East Timor to Australia, including Valery Shanin from Moscow and Grigory Kubat’yan from St. Petersburg.

Mind you, this book is only a beginner’s manual – it isn’t a clue-book suitable for all life situations. You can’t fit all routes and methods in one book – and the world is changing itself here and there all the time. Continents drift, governments change, politicians make tiffs, new kinds of transport and communication emerge, – and all that changes the world. Everything is changeable.

So – use your brains! Read this book, read other books on hitch-hiking and travelling, but don’t stop thinking! Mine the internet; interview drivers, locals, and fellow travellers, whom you will meet on the road, at border crossings, and in queues outside embassies. Host people from other countries and get yourself informed about the outside world. When listening to people, do not believe every word they say – check their knowledgeability by interviewing others as well.

Have patience. Do not be anxious. Experiment. Smile. Drink no alcohol. Keep your promises. Remember that every sequence of events is correct.

WESTERNERS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

26-Year-Old Travels the World for Free

by Kevin O'Flynn

Moscow Times. Dec. 5, 2002

What do you do if you want to get from Moscow to Damascus but have very little money? ‘Lonely Planet’ doesn't advise on how to get on a bus for free or make a long-distance phone call for nothing. ‘Rough Guide’ isn't much help either.

Perhaps the only guidebooks to turn to are those penned by Anton Krotov, a 26-year-old who has hitch-hiked hundreds of thousands of kilometres on a budget that would last most travellers only a day.

Like a modern day Jack Kerouac, Krotov and his Academy of Free Travelling, which he runs out of his apartment in northern Moscow, have made an art out of avtostop, or hitch-hiking — whether it is on trains, elektrichki (suburban trains), buses or boats.

In his guidebooks, he tells how to travel up to 1,000 kilometres a day in Russia and abroad with little or no money. Moscow to Irkutsk can be done in four to five days; Moscow to Vladivostok or Moscow to Alaska is only slightly more difficult.

‘You will see and know what you would never know and feel – the aroma of the road,’ Krotov writes in his book Avtostopom Po Rossii, or ‘Hitch-hiking Around Russia.’

Giving a talk on his travels at the Mayakovsky Museum this week, Krotov, a tall, angular man with a long, dark beard, rattles off sentences like a man eager to get things done and start travelling again.

He tells with enthusiasm the tale of his last journey, a monthlong hitch-hike around the wilds of Afghanistan.

"Journalists are always taking about war, mines, drugs and hunger in Afghanistan," Krotov said. "But Afghanistan is a great country."

He said that with his black beard he was mistaken for a member of al-Qaida and detained a number of times. But he and his travelling companions were very well treated and once ate dinner with the head of the security services in Herat.

‘When we were in the desert in Kandahar, we thought, “Blin, we could be having dinner in jail now”,’ he said.

Krotov insists there were few problems hitch-hiking in Afghanistan. Explaining that exchanging $20 had given him a rucksack of Afghan money, Krotov said, ‘We only had two drivers who asked us for money. The first we gave one centimetre of money, the second two.’

Krotov, who says he has hitch-hiked 400,000 kilometres in the former Soviet Union, Africa and Asia, hit the road when he was 14. He wandered off to his local elektrichka station, hopped onto a train and realised that at the end of the elektrichka line he could catch another one for free. Within a year, he had used this method, which is called yezda na sobakakh, to go from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Kharkov, Minsk and many other cities.

‘Travelling on the dogs’ is still easy in Russia and much of the CIS, and Krotov’s Academy of Free Travelling prints a book of elektrichka stations so people can plan their trips.

The academy, which is called Akademia Volnykh Puteshestvy in Russian, is not only about cheap travel but is also a philosophy that believes in the goodness of strangers. In return, the traveller must be prepared to help out others.

‘The longer you travel, the more good you receive,’ said one of Krotov's travelling companions, Sergei Lekay.

In each of his more than a dozen books, Krotov publishes his address and says anyone is welcome to come and visit.

His books offer numerous ideas on how to travel inexpensively. For example, for travelling on buses, Krotov suggests cadging a free lift by offering a torn-up note, which will be refused.

He writes that 80 percent of the buses in regions such as Arkhangelsk, Bashkortostan and Sakha allowed him to ride for free, while in the Caucasus region the percentage neared 100 percent. He put the percentage at 50 percent in the Moscow region.

His book ‘Free Encyclopedia’ gives the names of freight train stations all over the country where travellers can catch free rides. He writes that train engineers don’t mind if they’re asked politely first.

One tip Krotov gives is, when preparing to hop off the train, ‘ask the engineer to slow down to 10 to 20 kilometres per hour. If you have gloves, wear them so you don't graze yourself when you fall.’

Apart from Afghanistan, Krotov has travelled Africa, including Sudan and Angola. ‘Afghanistan is on the blacklist of countries by the Foreign Ministry, but for us that’s like a recommendation,’ he said.

Perhaps one of Krotov's biggest fans is Tamara Kopeiko, a pensioner who did not know what to do when she stopped working. Since she met Krotov three years ago, she has hitch-hiked thousands of kilometres.

Kopeiko, a short, bubbly woman who refused to give her age, said that on her first trip, she and a friend spent a total of $8 on a 47-day journey through Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Georgia. Kopeiko used one of Krotov’s tips — to print up an official-looking document — and took with her a paper stating she and her friend were part of an experimental survival group of Russian pensioners. The document got her free visas and free entry to museums.

Now, she considers herself something of an expert. Asked whether BMWs or Mercedes ever stop for her, she said, ‘I only stop those cars. They go quicker and are more comfortable. The drivers are usually more interesting.’

TRAVELLING THE SCIENTIFIC WAY

by Simon Richmond
featured in Lonely Planet. Russia (2003)

Four floors up in identikit Soviet apartment block in the north of Moscow I find the Academy of Free Travels (www.avp.travel.ru, ([phone]), the home of Russian hitch-hiker extraordinaire Anton Krotov. Plastered in maps outlining his travels and full of photographs and small souvenirs, with a bed in one corner, a heavily laden desk in another and stockpiles of the 27 books he has written and published, Krotov’s world is a fascinating one.

Over ice-cream cornets and tea, the bushy-bearded 26-year-old, who began hitching at age 14, tells me about his travels. These have taken him from one end of Russia to the other on less than an old Soviet 10-kopeck coin, not to mention to India, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa on little more. In his idiosyncratic English, he declaims his travelling philosophy: ‘The world is good and belongs to everyone. There are many cars, many empty seats, many empty houses, food for all to eat, many possibilities! We try to use it!’

Krotov’s ‘scientific’ method of travelling assumes that most people are kind and happy to give bed and board to a traveller – you only need to find the key to their heart. How to do that is the subject of his books, containing frequently hilarious accounts of his travels in which you’ll discover that the Russian approach to hitch-hiking includes scrounging lifts not only in cars, but also cargo trains, ships, military planes – basically anything that moves.

Although there’s plenty of the tang of the late 1960s and ‘70s about all this, Krotov is more than a throwback hippie. It actually takes some organisation, and not a little guts, to undertake the type of expeditions Krotov and his followers do: to the geographical centre of Russia, for example, 1200km north of Krasnoyarsk and only accessible in winter because there are no permanent roads, just tracks in the snow; or through some of most war-torn, poverty-ridden and disease-stricken parts of Africa and Central Asia. So impressed is Krotov by the hospitality of tre people in Islamic countries he has passed through that he has become a Muslim himself – the prelude, one feels, for his desire to try hitching through Saudi Arabia to Mecca.

Krotov disdains travelling in the comfortable parts of the world (because he realises that in Europe and the USA people might not be so willing to put him every step of the way?), but he’s certainly not above practicing what he preaches. Any traveller who calls in advance and sincerely wants to tap into his and his followers’ principles of ‘free’ travel is welcome to turn up in his flat, buy one of his books (all in Russian), have a cup of tea, even crash for the night. Assuming that he’s not on the road, of course.

HITCHHIKING AROUND THE WORLD

Russian Radio, 29 July 2013

Many, if not most, people like to travel. Especially to distant lands, where you can see something that you will not find at home. But very few people who make travelling their lifestyle. Why? Because this is not the "age of great geographical discoveries." All the rivers, islands, and roads have already been mapped.

37-year-old Muscovite Anton Krotov sees the world differently. He opens the road to the outside world all by himself. Unlike other people who use the services of travel agencies, he prefers to go hitchhiking. "If you turn out to be at the right time on the right road and just raise your hand, sooner or later you will be picked by some car," says Anton:

“There are 182 regions in Russia and the CIS. I have been in 178 of them, have not seen only 4. And then I can also boast to have been in 70 countries around the world” – said Anton to our correspondent. – “I began to travel in 1991. At that time, I was 15 years old. I have been traveling ever since.”

Anton started discovering the roads abroad with Iran.

“Travel by hitchhiking is quite normal in Iran. Iranians willingly give you a ride, the roads are good, says Anton. People are hospitable. Iran is one of the most friendly countries in the world. Very nice for travel. Besides, this was my first trip abroad. I've been there 4 times and still hope to go there again somehow.”

The result of Anton’s travel in Iran was a book "Through seven boundaries" that was published in 1997. It describes everything in detail – how to go to Iran, how to move around the country, whom to meet, and how to haggle in the markets.

In all, Anton Krotov has written about 40 books. One of them is devoted to travel through Sudan. The three-month trip to Sudan and back cost Anton $350. People are wrong to think that traveling around the world costs a lot of money. After all, the basic costs of travel are the flight charges. For example, a seven-month hitchhiking across Africa cost the "free traveler” only 800 dollars. Anton travels on the money raised from the sale of his books about travel.

Last year, Anton Krotov spent only 58 days in Moscow. All the rest of the time he was on the road, traveling.

“I have a lot of different plans: this year – East Africa and Madagascar, – says Anton. – In 2015, Insha Allah, will be back in Indonesia. I have a project – "Home for All". I rent a house in a city for about two months, and there anybody from anywhere in the world can come and live. There were such houses in Cairo and Istanbul. There will be a house in Indonesia, on the island of Java.”

He has also visited the countries of South Asia. “There are no bad countries”, says Anton. “And a good country is one in which people are hospitable, kind, honest and responsive. The main thing is to be human.”

In addition to travelling, Anton Krotov finds time to entertain dozens of guests, deliver lectures and participate in meetings with readers in different cities of Russia, to write books, to arrange meetings in the "Academy of free travels” founded by him. The next meeting takes place in September.

The main principle on which the "free wanderer" lives is “do not waste time on something you do not really need.” A wise principle, indeed. The problem is only to realize what you actually need. For some it takes a lifetime. Anton realized this sooner.

Read more: http://indian.ruvr.ru/news /2013_07_29/ Hitchhiking-around-the-world/

KROTOV'S NOMAD BASES

by Christopher Culver

http://www.christopherculver.com

The Russian hitchhiking guru and travel guide writer Anton Krotov has been implementing short-term nomad bases in various places for some time now. Over the years he has developed a systematic way of planning and maintaining these bases, which he recently announced on his LiveJournal (http://a-krotov.livejournal.com). In order to bring these developments in the Russian-language nomadic community to the wider world, I've translated Krotov's long post.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28