Contents
This report is about the tour: Orient Express
Reflections caused by the "Eastern Express" tour August 3-8, 2008.
What's there to love about hiking? This question is asked by many people who do not understand at all how it is possible to happily walk all day with a backpack, not take a shower every day, cook food over a fire and cook tea with water from a puddle. But how nice it is, after a hard monotonous climb, to reach the top and feel the breeze of a light breeze on your face. How easy it becomes immediately! And it seems that you can walk tens of kilometers more without stopping for a rest. Or when, dirty and tired, you crawl out of the cave and pounce on the half-eaten jar of pate. What happiness! And how nice it is, after a whole day of travel across the waterless steppe, to finally come to a source, even if it is an almost dry well.
How despair sometimes sets in.
Here you are going to a new parking lot, hoping that you will now see an equipped well with inexhaustible supplies of clean and cold water, but you come closer and see a hole covered with plastic, in which there is enough water for one flask. You try to draw water and accidentally touch the bottom, and you have to wait a long time until it settles. How offensive it is! And you camp for the night next to this well and there is no hope that you will taste cold fresh water before tomorrow. And everyone around is overcome by despair. Or you climb a mountain, it seems that it is about to end, you reach the intended place and see that there is still as much or even more to climb.
Moments of delight.
How amazing it is to climb into a cave and, after catching your breath after a risky descent, turn on a flashlight and look around. You will see the vaulted ceiling of the cave, hanging stalactites and run in complete delight through all sorts of cave corners in search of passage to new halls. And having found a narrow gap into which you can hardly squeeze, you call your comrades to look at your discovery, and you crawl further and see a new mesmerizing landscape. What a delight!
Mountain peaks.
The mountain peaks are beautiful at any time of the day. In the morning, standing on a high hill, you can’t help but admire the valleys illuminated by the morning sun. You look around and exclaim: “how great it is to stand at the top and look at the endless expanses spreading under your feet.”
And during the day, on the top of the cliff, resting on the next pass, you look down at the sheer cliff and seem like a small grain of sand among this formidable splendor. In the evening, the sun turns the forested mountains orange, it seems that the forests are on fire, but it is just the sun saying goodbye to the mountains. How beautiful it is!
Light day
After four days of difficulties, how pleasant it is to walk along a smooth path along the murmuring water. Swim in a small cool waterfall. And then, by lunchtime, walk to a normal, inhabited village and eat your fill of pies with cabbage. The only thing that upsets me is that I can feel the end of the hike approaching. You are no longer so happy with food and rest, you no longer feel as alive as in moments of well-deserved rest after the hardest stages of such a short journey.
And then, in the evening, the road leads our company to a green clearing near a swamp, and we end the day by cooking baked potatoes over a fire and gorging ourselves on pickled mushrooms stored in the village. And a very appropriate word pops into my head – “picnic”.
Afterwards, we get up, pack our things, put out the fire after breakfast and hit the road, making simple pretzels around the last mountain. But all good things must come to an end. The mountains, and hills, and rivers, and forests are over... we are left with only memories, which we will definitely make up next year, because once you dive into a life full of dangers and adventures, you will not be able to perceive life as before.
Anna Mark, St. Petersburg 2008