Day-1 – Hitchhiking to the Black Sea
Day – 1
Hitchhiking to the Black Sea
The floor and walls were shaking heavily. Huddling into a relatively safe place, I tried to wait for the earthquake to end. This time the tremors were prolonged, and when everything was over, I was already about to run outside, but something grabbed my leg.
I came to in a sleeper carriage of a train that was taking me home to Altai. All the adventures were behind me — it turned out to be just a dream.
Customs officers became interested in my things, and I thought they didn’t like the easel for Sunday school. But they pointed to the largest bag and started asking whose it was and what was inside.
Probably, if I had said there was food for the road, they wouldn’t have believed me, so I simply tried to remember and list the contents:
— Children’s toys, clothes, books, videotapes…
— And why didn’t you mention the tent? — asked my neighbor Lyoshka.
— There’s a lot of stuff there, you can’t remember it all. There’s also a VCR and a bunch of small things.
Remembering how modest my gear was and how little money I had when I set off on foot from my hometown Novoaltaisk, I smiled and went back to sleep.
Novоaltaisk → Sibirsk → Ob → Kochenevo → Omsk → Fadino → Pavlogradka → Yalutorovsk → Tyumen → Kurgan → Shumikha → Chelyabinsk → Ufa → Buzdyak → Alekseevka → Chapayevsk → Balakovo → Saratov → Volgograd → Rostov-on-Don → Taganrog → Markyne → Mariupol → Berdyansk → Primorsk → Botievo → Melitopol → Kirpichnaya → Akimovka → Simferopol → Sudak → Morskoye → Zelenogorye → Morskoye → Vesyoloye → Feodosia → Lugovoye → Kerch → Anapa → Natukhaevskaya → Verkhnebakansky → Krasnodar → Pavlovskaya → Aksay → Voronezh → Moscow.
(108 transport units used)
First day of the journey
July 6, Tuesday
The backpack was already packed. I didn’t take extra things: warm clothes, a cooking pot, some food for the first days, a little more than a thousand rubles for the road, documents, and various light but essential items for the journey.
I didn’t take a tent or sleeping bag to reduce weight. I only took a foam sleeping mat, 180×80 cm. The weight was small — about seven kilograms. I didn’t have any empty plastic bottles at home, so I decided to buy water along the way.
We were supposed to travel together, but Dima, unfortunately, couldn’t join me due to lack of equipment.
After a good sleep before the trip, I went with my backpack to my grandmother to give her the apartment keys. I had my last meal there before the journey and, after saying goodbye, set off.
Novоaltaisk is located not far from the highway, so in forty minutes I reached it. It was eleven in the morning, and it was impossible to predict how long I would have to stand hitchhiking, let alone how long it would take to reach Moscow after making a detour through the Black Sea coast.
The start of the journey was successful: after only twenty minutes I was riding in a green Lada Zhiguli towards Novosibirsk. The driver was not very talkative, so we spent most of the time listening to the radio. He dropped me off not far — in Sibirsk — but I was still very happy.
Before I even managed to find a proper hitchhiking spot, I stopped a Land Cruiser jeep. When I got inside, I was breathless — not every day you ride in such cars.
The driver was a strong-looking but friendly man. He became interested in my trip to the Black Sea, although he seriously doubted that it was possible to get there with such equipment and little money. I, however, assured him that I had enough money and would even have some left.
Nevertheless, Sergey told me a lot about the Black Sea and advised me to definitely visit Sochi. He even gave me his home phone number and asked me to tell him about prices at the seaside resorts after I returned. However, I never managed to reach him later using that number.
The car was moving fast — around one hundred kilometers per hour. Once we were even stopped by traffic police. Sergey clearly didn’t want to waste time: he said he was on duty, carrying an important load, and even had a weapon with him. But they didn’t let him go without checking, so we had to sort things out on the spot.
When we were entering Novosibirsk and passing an Orthodox church, Sergey crossed himself and was surprised that I didn’t do the same.
— You said you work in a church. Why don’t you cross yourself then?
I explained that I was a Baptist and tried to obey God more than follow traditions. This topic interested the driver even more than hitchhiking itself, and we talked about it until the end of the ride.
Sergey drove me across the whole Novosibirsk and a bit further — he himself was heading to the airport and dropped me off near the village of Ob.
After a small snack of crackers and sweets, I continued on. I still had no water, and that could make things difficult. I tried to find a café near a water pump, but seeing how many dogs were there, I decided to avoid the gas station area.
So I walked along the road, looking for a better hitchhiking spot, and soon I stopped a UAZ van that was collecting road workers cleaning the highway. The driver said he had already noticed me earlier when I was walking past the gas station. I was glad I hadn’t wasted my energy and had walked part of the way.
Less than an hour later, we arrived at workers who were picking up trash along the road and cutting tall grass on the shoulder. Two of them came up to me and started asking about my journey. Thinking they would only scare away cars by standing next to me, I stopped hitchhiking and began telling them about my previous trips and plans for this one.
The guys understood they were interfering and went back to work, kicking bottles and other trash away from the road.
After walking a bit further, I reached a bus stop. The sky was already covered with clouds, and the best option was to wait out the rain there. The shelter also allowed me not only to hide but also to continue hitchhiking during the downpour.
The rain soon began. By then I was already wearing a jacket, and my backpack was placed in a relatively dry spot where it could still be seen from the road. If the rain had started earlier or the car hadn’t picked me up in time, I would have gotten soaked on the highway.
The UAZ with the workers, which I had slightly passed on foot, was still moving slowly along the road. Seeing me like that, the workers were talking sympathetically, saying that no one was picking me up.
Once a KamAZ truck stopped. I immediately ran to the driver, but he said he was turning off the road, dropped off a woman with a little girl, and drove away.
The rain gradually turned into a real downpour. The roof of the bus stop turned out to be not very reliable, and I had to keep moving to places where less water was dripping. Meanwhile, I kept hitchhiking to passing cars.
Soon a small open truck stopped, and all of us — the people at the stop — ran to the cab together. The driver, looking at me, asked:
— Where are you going?
— To the Black Sea.
Hearing this, he agreed to take me. He himself was heading to Omsk.
It was a pity to leave the woman with the child, but the driver chose me. Besides, women are usually picked up more willingly, so I hoped they wouldn’t stay there long.
However, we didn’t part for long. After some time, while we were already driving and talking, we saw them again on the road. At first, the driver thought they were locals, but seeing them again suggested otherwise. After stopping and finding out they were heading to Volgograd, he decided to take them along.
There were only three seats in the cab. I was about to step out and give up my place, but the driver insisted that I stay and said we would somehow fit together. My backpack was thrown into the open cargo bed.
We actually managed to fit. A girl about ten years old sat on her mother’s lap, and nobody felt much discomfort due to the tight space. However, traffic police would definitely not have approved of such crowding in the cab, so the driver decided to take the women only to the nearest checkpoint.
When asked why she was traveling, why with a child, and what had happened at all, the woman either stayed silent or answered rudely. We only managed to understand that she had left Barnaul with her daughter, at night and in a hurry. She gave a heavy impression, and the driver was just waiting for a reason to get rid of these passengers. He also could hardly tolerate the strong smell of perfume coming from her.
After the women were dropped off, the atmosphere in the cab became normal again, and only then did we properly get acquainted.
On the road we met some Roma people. They were hitchhiking near their car and complaining that they had run out of diesel fuel. They had no money in rubles, so they offered to buy fuel with some of their own currency and even tried to give a gold ring from their finger.
At first the driver stopped to help, but as soon as they started pushing money and the ring, he drove away. This kind of scam had been known for a long time, although I heard about it only in 2000 when I started hitchhiking.
Slava really liked talking, and it wasn’t easy for me — especially when he reminded me that the duty of a hitchhiker is to tell different stories. This driver was very familiar with hitchhikers, so it was difficult to surprise him with anything new. Besides, it was only the beginning of the journey: I hadn’t yet gotten used to long conversations without a specific topic, and all the usual talks I normally had with drivers were already exhausted.
Luckily, soon two more hitchhikers appeared on the road. It was a guy and a girl — Dima and Zoya. They didn’t try to stop cars, seeing there was no space in the cab, but Slava still slowed down.
At first they didn’t understand why the truck had stopped and how we were all going to fit. But in the end, we somehow managed to sit together. I kept getting in the way of the gear levers, and Zoya hit her head on the roof a few times. Later she placed a pillow between her head and the ceiling.
With new companions, it became easier and more fun. While they were talking to the driver, I managed to come up with new topics and joined the conversation whenever there was a pause.
The girl sang a couple of songs, which noticeably lightened the mood. At first, nobody wanted to listen to calm songs — everyone was already sleepy, and Slava even jokingly leaned on the steering wheel while driving. But in the end, both songs were listened to.
I was especially pleased that the guys were from Barnaul — almost my fellow townsmen. We exchanged addresses and stories about our travels. They were also heading to the sea, but first they needed to get to some seminar on “second logic.” My own problems with logic in general were already enough, so I didn’t ask for details.
Ahead of us was another traffic police checkpoint. The driver had already lost his license for crossing a solid line, and he was driving on temporary documents, so unnecessary trouble was the last thing he needed.
At first, we considered dropping someone off so that we could pass the checkpoint as three people, and then one person would cross the road and get back into the truck after it. We discussed for a long time who should do it — Dima or the driver himself. But then we came up with another plan.
Zoya was made to crouch down, and her back was disguised under a backpack. In this form, we successfully passed the checkpoint.
The day was coming to an end, and everyone was already thinking about where to spend the night. The guy and the girl got off near a forest. Unlike me, they had a tent and sleeping bags. They considered my way of traveling too extreme, although I insisted that the real extreme for me was not on the road, but at the university during exams.
Traveling in a large group had been fun, and now that we were again left just the two of us, it became harder to find topics to talk about. But in such moments it was especially important to keep the conversation going so that the driver wouldn’t fall asleep.
It was already dark, and Slava even drove a short stretch of road with the headlights turned off to make the experience more intense.
Soon we stopped for the night at a parking area. There was almost no space in the cab, so I went to settle in the truck bed. The vehicle was parked right in the middle of the lot, and the open cargo area was lit by floodlights like a circus arena.
Although Slava assured me that nobody could see me, it still felt awkward to change clothes in such conditions. In the end, I squeezed into a corner and put on warm thermal trousers under my jeans, several pairs of socks, a few sweaters, and a jacket.
I laid my mat directly on the metal floor of the truck bed and covered myself with a duvet. That is how the first day of my journey to the Black Sea ended.