"The trip became a challenge for me": Where and how to go on an expedition
For many, traveling is comfortable hotels, good weather and tourist places. However, the most interesting things are usually outside the usual routes. To expand the horizons, our heroes go on expeditions, where they often have to go ten hours a day with backpacks or suffer from mountain sickness a week at an altitude of five thousand meters. On such trips it is important to see all the beauty of the world and not to miss anything. Therefore, together with the Acuvue contact lens brand, we talked to three people and recorded their stories and advice.
Christina Boyko
I went to Kamchatka volcanoes and collided there with bears.
On the expedition I have been going for the last two or three years - I want peace, pacification, to put my thoughts in order. The brightest thing I've seen lately is Kamchatka. For two weeks we walked in the wild through volcanoes. It all began with Iceland, where I once saw volcanic black sand with lava.
Somehow I get up in the morning, collect a tent and see something big in the bushes. At first I thought that a dog, and then I understood: a bear
What you need to take on an expedition? Comfortable and worn boots. Thermal underwear, raincoat, rain pants, gloves, hat, waterproof jacket, powerful powerbank, water. It hurts all very much - the backpack weighs 12-20 kilograms. I still take the lenses and in conditions when bears are walking next to your tent, changing them in the dark, without a mirror, lying in a sleeping bag.
Expedition is a discomfort: there is not always food, the ability to wash and wash things. You can’t take a lot of things with you either - backpacks with equipment are very heavy. It’s not easy to walk eight hours a day, especially if you are not used to it, no matter how hard you train. And age is not so important, with us was a 60-year-old woman who often managed better than us. It is still scary - in two weeks we were met by eight bears. Somehow I get up in the morning, collect a tent and see something big in the bushes. At first I thought that a dog, and then I understood: a bear. Two bear cubs immediately ran after her.
On the second or third day of the expedition, you already stop paying attention to the problems, get involved and just go.
Before any serious expedition you need to practice in the gym with weights, run, walk more often. It is possible and necessary to train shoulders, but this does not guarantee that they will not be tired - they will. It is also important to find a good guide - we found ours in one of the tourist clubs. They know all the bear tracks, they have the right set of electronics, including navigators. Conductor makes life easier, but you drag a backpack, get up and cook food anyway. On the second or third day, you already stop paying attention to problems, get involved and just walk.
What you need to do to start doing this? The easiest option is to contact the tourist club, everything is organized there. And you can just go somewhere with a tent for the weekend - say, on Seliger. In two or three days it will be clear if this is yours or not. Well, another plus of expeditions - as a rule, it is inexpensive. You take your tent, you cook your own food. But spending in any case is: tickets, conductor, equipment. In the case of Kamchatka and Altai, the tent must be strong to withstand wind and rain. But I tell everyone: you shouldn't be afraid, you have to try. If you don't try, you won't know.
Moscow → Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky → Yelizovo → Mutnovsky Volcano → Gorely Volcano → Field of Mars → Tolbachinsky Pass → Tolud Pass → Clesna → Dead Forest → Cone Zvezda → Esso Village → Elizovo → Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky → Moscow
Nikolay Belikov
As part of the expedition "Sunrise" went from Moscow to Bali on the Soviet "Volga" and got into the most extreme conditions
Three years ago I was invited to the project "Sunrise" and offered to go from Moscow to Bali on the "Volga". We bought machines of the 1970s in a collapsed state and invested money in repairs. They broke often - constantly had to twist something. But Asians admired our cars, they thought it was a spaceship.
I have always traveled a lot, but a trip of this magnitude still became a challenge. There were a lot of problems: first, we gave a terrible amount to come to China. How the border guards were not carping at us! Turned over all things, did not miss. As a result, the Chinese guide helped solve all the issues. Even at some point we had a mountain sickness, especially when we were going five thousand meters for ten days. Dizzy, bleeding from the nose. And at the very end we did not have the necessary documents to travel from Malaysia to Indonesia. Of course, we knew that they were needed, but we could not make them in Moscow - documents for two cars cost a million rubles.
We went to Bali with six of us, to the second expedition, across Europe, already in all of us. Anyone can travel with us, but this is an active expedition, each team member has tasks to perform. This is both the most difficult project of my life, and the most interesting - in addition to the everyday difficulties of the expedition, I had to simultaneously solve a number of issues: for example, where to earn money for a further journey. Often it was not clear where you will sleep next night. In Tibet - at an altitude of 4,700 meters in a night shelter with a stove in minus 15 degrees, and in Thailand - free of charge in a five-star hotel.
We are not doing anything supernatural - and this is the beauty of these trips. Just took and realized the dream of many - got into the car and drove
Now we are mounting a documentary about the expedition, it will be released at the end of the year. Do I regret getting involved in this adventure? Even before the start, I had doubts - which Volga, which Bali, why? There were several moments when it could have ended halfway through. Will our cars pass the border or not, will they be able to drive through the mountains? And so with dozens of questions. But the beauty that I saw and the experience I experienced on expeditions were worth it.
We are not standing still - the next expedition will be through South America, from the top down. And I am sure it will be amazing again. But at the same time, we are not doing anything supernatural - and this is the beauty of these trips. We just took and realized the dream of many - got into the car and drove off.
Veronika Kuznetsova
I was on an expedition to the Karmadon gorge, where Sergei Bodrov had once died, in the wild cold and with a summer tent.
My coolest expeditions always come to the mountains. I work at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, so almost all of them are of a scientific nature: either we storm the lake, then we go to explore the plains. A few years ago, we went to North Ossetia, to the Karmadon Gorge, where Bodrov had once disappeared. At the same Colca glacier, which descended in 2002. We went there for five days to measure the temperature of the melting ice and assess how much it changes.
It was in October, already cold and snowy. We flew to Vladikavkaz, and then the adventures began - from there we drove about six hours to the Karmadon gorge on an old gazelle filled with people, with huge backpacks. One woman allowed to spend the night at her - we were delighted, because it was already cold. Then that woman also fed us, gave us apples and some other fruit. For these moments, and I want to go on dangerous expeditions. From this point of view, such trips are not forgotten.
Only natural radon baths saved from frost. But no one told us that if you spend more than 20 minutes in them, you will feel dizzy
The next morning we set off - we had to walk eight hours along a mountain path with backpacks. The trail was very narrow, it was very blurred, one leg barely got up there. During the day the temperature is around zero, and at night it is minus five, so our main mistake is that we took the summer tent with us. Tents she does not reach the base, it does not completely close, so there snow fell asleep. Only natural radon baths saved us, they were very close - when we were cold, warming up there. But no one told us that if you spend more than 20 minutes in them, you will feel dizzy. We also had one bottle of Dagestan cognac for three - they warmed them.
If this is an autonomous expedition, far from civilization, you need to take everything with you: food, gas, tents, sleeping bags. Warm and waterproof clothing is required. If a trip to the mountains, the ropes, special mountain boots. Of course, there was no comfort with the amenities - not only was it cold, sometimes we had to wash in an icy lake, the temperature in which was hardly more than five plus. But the point, of course, is not in comfort and not in temperatures - first of all it was an adventure that is impossible to forget. Absolutely unforgettable, during which I saw much more than during the usual tourist holiday.
Moscow → Vladikavkaz → Alagir → Karmadon → Alagir → Vladikavkaz → Moscow
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