I came to Russia in 2015 for love: my wife is Russian. I came here with an open mind, knowing nothing about this country. Since then, I have been exploring Russia and I have managed to travel to its most diverse, distant and fabulous corners. I swam in the Arctic, ate the most delicious hychines in a small Caucasian village, caught the northern lights and traveled through the swamps of the tundra on a huge Russian all-terrain vehicle.
It's hard to choose a favorite from such a variety of places and experiences, but I'll try.
The village of Eltyubyu, Kabardino‑Balkaria.
My first trip was to the Caucasus, it lasted six months. There we got a taste for traveling and realized that while the children do not go to school, we are not very attached to our home, which means we can travel.
I got the biggest impression in the mountain village of Eltuby. The people there are the kindest, and hychines with cheese are the most delicious. There are very beautiful bald Caucasian mountains around. The "City of the Dead" is located nearby. This is an ancient necropolis. There is very little land here in the mountains, there is nowhere to bury, and therefore people used to build such stone family crypts. They exist not only in this village, but also in other republics of the North Caucasus (the most famous and largest necropolis is Dargavs in North Ossetia).
To prevent uninvited guests and animals from coming, the houses were closed with stones or wooden doors. But now they are all open. You just don't want to go in at all when you know their history.
Locals don't like to come here. And the guides remind tourists every time what kind of place it is and that you need to respect it and the memory of those who were here.
Perm Region.
One of my last trips took place in the Perm Region. It was a golden autumn. And the endless Permian forests were shrouded in colorful foliage.
The most beautiful place there is the Usva Pillars. Huge rocks that rise more than 100 meters above the Usva River. We were floating on a river as smooth as a mirror, and these Pillars hung over us.
Ahead, the water surface merged with the sky and the Pillars were reflected in this mirror. Therefore, it seemed that they were completely endless.
You can still climb the Pillars and look ahead far beyond the horizon, and this is an incredibly powerful, impressive sight.
I've traveled by trains before, but for a maximum of 40 hours, and here we were talking about a week-long trip. But I decided because I was told that only on the train can you really learn about Russia and the people who live here.
A reserved seat is a separate life. As the train cleaner, who was talked to every time she cleaned, said, the Moscow — Vladivostok train is a village with a thousand inhabitants and one street, where by the end of the trip everyone knows each other.
A week later, you really know all the neighbors in the reserved seat, because there is a lot of time left in the absence of the Internet. You talk with fellow travelers, and everyone has such different stories: someone writes music, someone puts out forest fires. It's a whole encyclopedia of life.
You talk, share food, play (the demob taught me how to play the fool). And then you just say goodbye forever.
The week-long trip turned out to be very eventful, and I even thought that it would be possible to travel for another week.
Primorsky Krai.
Just after a seven-day train trip, you can go to see the capes in Vladivostok. I didn't know they were there, and there are so many more.
Imagine: you are standing on the edge of the cape, behind you are green trees, dense forests, and in front of you is a bright, bright sea. And there is complete silence and tranquility around.
There are not enough words to fully describe it, you need to see it with your own eyes. All the variety of colors and the fusion of the elements in one place.
Yamalo‑Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
In Yamal, we traveled on huge Russian SUVs with inflatable wheels. They drive through tundra, rocks and swamps where nothing else can pass. There are no roads, there is endless tundra and polar Ural Mountains around.
We stopped to swim in the lake, where fresh water is more pleasant than in the pool. And at 00:30 we went to the mountains — it took several hours to go up. It was light enough. It turns out that Yamal has white nights even in August!
At about three o'clock in the morning, the most beautiful dawn in my life began. While the sun is not very bright, you can easily look into the distance, and the sky and rare clouds are painted orange, pink, coral. A glacier is visible nearby, from which the light is reflected. And you can't see the ends of the earth.
There we visited the local residents in the plague. I was interested to see their life in the plague, to find out what they do (they breed deer and use both their meat and fur). There they fed me deer meat, which turned out to be similar to beef. I also tried the deer tongue, it was delicious.
Now my dream is to visit there in winter and live in the plague for a week to see how they live in the harsh north in the cold.
Murmansk region.
Now Teriberka has already become a tourist destination, but before it was just a fishing village. There are many interesting places there (for example, the Dragon's Nest) — they are called and look very fabulous. Waterfalls, rocks are all around, and ahead is the endless ocean, and you understand that next is the Arctic.
The village overlooks the Barents Sea. This is especially interesting for me because Willem Barents was Dutch. Together with the team, he was the first to successfully pass through the Barents Sea to the White Sea. This was an important discovery for the exploration of the Arctic Ocean.
The way to Teriberka from Murmansk is very interesting. First you drive through the forest, and then you see how suddenly the trees disappear and the tundra begins. In winter, it looks like an endless white desert where nothing grows. You get out of the car, and there's silence all around, not even birds, just you and the wind. We managed to return from Teriberka back to Murmansk, and the next day this road was covered with snow and it was closed.
