Contents
This report is about the tour: Ghost Valley
Before the vacation, we were overcome by a huge number of different kinds of fears and concerns. For example, can a six-year-old son withstand such loads? What if we ourselves don’t enjoy the hike? What if you come across some unkind company? And what should we do if our simple Chinese tent with a hole in the floor starts to leak in the rain? (we later replaced the tent with a more “advanced” version, and it was right! All other doubts turned out to be groundless: there were no “such” loads, the company was excellent, the hike was quite easy for us ourselves).
So, we went hiking in the mountainous Crimea (route “Water and Stones”), taking the child with us - and did not regret it at all.
A real vacation.
Firstly, this is a real vacation, ideal for office workers: active travel and physical activity allow you to completely “reboot”, recharge with positive energy, disconnect from your usual problems - and this is the most important condition for a successful vacation!
Secondly, a hike means making new acquaintances. We have seen from our own experience that statements like “bad people don’t go camping” are absolutely true. The company was chosen very friendly, with a wide geography - Karelia, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Switzerland. Exceptionally nice and pleasant people. We will be happy to meet them again - on a different route or at our place.
Thirdly, a hike is an invaluable life experience for a child (and for his parents too). The hike teaches a lot - responsibility, caring for others, life in a team, and gives confidence in one’s own abilities.
And finally, hiking through the mountainous Crimea is simply very beautiful! No photographs can convey the beauty of nature - the whimsical stones of the Valley of Ghosts, the milky white streams of the Jur-Jur waterfall, beech forests, mysterious caves, mountain passes - there will be enough memories for a whole year, until the next vacation!
I will not describe our route by day, I will only say that we joined the group a day later - if the train schedule does not give you a chance to make it in time for the start of the hike, keep in mind: you have options, the main thing is to discuss everything in advance with the organizers.
Tips for parent tourists.
And a few more tips for those who plan to take a child on a hike.
Firstly, try to prepare your child for the hike - go on a short hike this weekend - for example, to the nearest forest, tell in detail what will happen and how, tell us what food will be on the hike, what the daily routine is, etc. - in a word, forewarned is forearmed :-)
Buy him his own equipment - a small backpack where he can put his toys, a flashlight, a raincoat. For some reason, the most popular toys on our camping trip were felt-tip pens. It’s also worth taking a little more than adults, a change of clothes, warm clothes and wet wipes (I don’t know about anyone, but I can’t imagine a hike without wet wipes).
Those who go camping with children should take a more serious approach to packing a first aid kit (although we never had to open a bag with medicines, but it was calm!): add children's anaferon, smecta, rehydron, children's antipyretic, adhesive plaster, some kind of disinfectant - it is very convenient to take brilliant green in the form of a marker when traveling. A wound-healing drug like Ratovnik would also be useful. For trips along mountain serpentines, it is worth stocking up on a special drug that prevents motion sickness. Sunscreen will be very useful.
In addition, it is worth taking small “snacks” for the child: in our case, it was a mixture of various nuts, dark raisins and dried apricots, which we distributed into five (according to the number of days on the hike) bags. At the rest stop, the child was given another bag, and he happily ate himself and treated those around him.
Is it difficult for the child?
Many people ask us whether it was difficult for the child during the hike? To be honest, it’s funny for me to hear such questions now. It wasn’t that it wasn’t hard for the child - on the most difficult climbs or descents he managed to skip and talk cheerful nonsense, and at rest he managed to climb some hill several times or make several laps around the clearing. But in the evening I fell asleep instantly and ate everything!
By the way, here’s another point in nutrition: my son categorically does not eat canned fish and does not like stew, so every evening we put aside rice, pasta or buckwheat for him before adding canned food. And in my opinion, this was a pretty good option: we didn’t have to change the camping menu, and the child was well-fed.
And a few more words about equipment: everyone understands that the better the equipment, the more comfortable you will feel on a hike. And yet I repeat: do not neglect warm clothes and protection in case of rain! This will save you from a lot of unpleasant moments. Speaking of raincoats: for the child we bought a regular adult “mushroom picker’s raincoat” made of thick polyethylene (reusable), and cut off the sleeves and hem. This raincoat covered him along with his backpack, which turned out to be very convenient. And while walking around Simferopol, we wandered into a travel equipment store (on Lenin Boulevard, not far from the railway station), and bought compression bags for sleeping bags, which allowed us to free up quite a lot of space in our backpacks: the sleeping bags, tightened with special straps, became two times smaller.
Much more.
We could tell a lot more about this hike: about lunch for 13 people, which we served in a three-person tent, and about the unconventional interpretation of Crimean legends presented by our guide, and gatherings around the fire and friendly drying of sneakers after the rain, and about wonderful tea with mountain thyme, and about how we swam in the invigorating bath of youth, and about how briskly we walked to the sea through vineyards, and how we didn’t want to leave at the end of the route - so we pitched tents right by the sea and spent another evening together!
In short, a lot could be said about our little Crimean trip - but it’s better to see it all for yourself and make the romance of a mountain hike part of your personal experience!
Tatyana Ilyukova, Saratov