Bicycle trips to Belarus
I've already written about Switzerland and Hungary, that leaves Belarus.
We went there on 🚲 twice, once spontaneously, and the other time more consciously. Cyclists pass the border without queueing, which is great, but the process is still far from perfect. Which booth to go to, and how to do it without waiting in line - not a damn thing is clear. The passport at 🛂 must be handed over without inserts and a cover, so you don't give bribes. By the way, interesting question. Do people in Latvia still give bribes to the traffic 👮♀️👮♂️? If you know, write in the comments.
The first ride to Mount Mayak and around the lakes
The first ride was almost without hardcore stuff, to Mount Mayak, and around lakes Strusta and Snudy.
⛰ Mayak is a little 45-meter hill, which seems like a trifle after my travels this year. Nevertheless, every place is beautiful in its own way, and the human 🧠 always compares everything relatively. That's why it's quite cool to ride even to nearby places. Especially since the view from ⛰ is wonderful: lakes and fields all around, and from the 🗼 you can see it all far, far away. True, we had to buy a ticket to the tower for a whole euro. Which, of course, after Italy, where we paid at least five, brings a ☺️.
On the first day, there were no special MTB obstacles on our way, except for a foray into the thicket right at the start. There we quickly rolled into such a swamp and dense undergrowth that we had to turn back. Towards the end, we pushed through a piece of an interesting little forest with pits, but nothing genuinely difficult.
Near lakes Strusta and Snudy there are a ton of camping spots with names. They are named very officially and in Cyrillic "Tourist Campsite", and their names are very diverse: "Vyselki", "Pesnyary", "Mezhozernaya", "Talaka", "Peratsyag" and a hundred others. Interestingly, you have to book them in advance (with the park administration), and the number of allowed 👨👩 is limited. I guess it's good for the ecology when it's so strict, but it still gives off a somewhat authoritarian vibe. In Latvia, this is rare, I think. For example, our well-maintained "Latvian State Forests recreation areas" (LVM atpūtas vieta) are free to visit, and there are quite a few of them. If you just want to pitch a ⛺️ on the shore of a lake on state land, you can do that too. It's a bit more complicated with 🔥 - in some places or at certain times, you can't build fires.
We had to ride around the lakes on the most nightmarish dirt road for quite a long time. I don't know what's up with graders in RB, but in Latvia this year the dirt roads were good, and in Estonia simply wonderful. Here we encountered many, many kilometers of a classic "washboard". I also forgot my pills at the overnight stay place, and closer to sunset I was suffering a lot. It seemed like we only had to endure a little bit until the finish line, but then we rolled up to a rather wide and deep river. On the map, there was a bridge over the river, but in reality, only wooden supports remained of it.
River crossing with bicycles
The previous part of the ride through the Braslaw district ended with us rolling up to a river with the remains of a bridge. It looked pretty deep - up to the neck, if not more. What to do? I checked the map. To the left is Lake Strusty, and to our right are a whole two lakes with the curious names "midnight hair and noonday hair". Turns out, if we want to bypass the river, we have to go way back and drag ourselves around these lakes for another 20km. Such situations arise quite often when planning rides, albeit in a different format. As Alfred Korzybski told us back in the early twentieth century, "The map is not the territory." Here, without any philosophical subtext, we experienced this powerful thought on ourselves so hard that it penetrated right to the liver. We are soldiers of hardcore, and we decided to bust through the river. After all, these are true MTB adventures!
Just at this time, a fisherwoman and a fisherman were returning to the shore nearby. After mulling it over, we decided that asking to transport a bike on a rubber boat was dangerous. We still exchanged a couple of words with the fishers to explain that we didn't have swim trunks and we'd be crossing the river butt-naked.
I'm not particularly shy about nudity. The reason isn't totally obvious. I am an atheist, a rationalist, but at the same time a rather trusting person. When secular psychologists and philosophers tell me that there is nothing that special, let alone sinful, about the human body, I believe them. Of course, the explanation must be logical and reasonable, humanistic, and consistent with a scientific worldview. It directly follows from this that the human body is just meat, skin, and bones packed into an aesthetic or not-so-aesthetic form. It's not mandatory to sexualize the body. And even if the form is not aesthetic, everyone has the right to be who they are, since nobody canceled humanism.
The fisherwoman replied that her ethical framework also allowed for nudity (not in such lofty words). The sun had turned red and swelled up, and there was no reason to wait. We quickly took off our clothes, stuffed them wherever we could. We grabbed our trusty aluminum steeds and our gear. One of us couldn't swim. For him, dragging a bike neck-deep in water through a river with a current was a straight-up real adrenaline rush.
Did the current sweep us into the hair lakes? Or did the fisherman fish us out? You'll find out in the next part.
Forest MTB and the safari park fence
Despite the current, we courageously overcame the river. The fisherman helped us haul the bikes ashore, and in return we helped him lift his boat onto the roof of his car. With this, our adventures ended - there was just a tiny bit left to the overnight base. The next day, one of the team members left us, and it was just the two of us with Garik. Riding on dirt roads was boring, and I planned our favorite forest MTB. The terrain was unfamiliar, you could expect anything. As it turned out, we were to expect an absolutely unbelievable amount of horseflies, mud, thickets, and basically the toughest conditions we ever get, except maybe for rain. I was swearing constantly, because the puddles were unbelievable, the mud got stuck everywhere it could and wouldn't let the bike ride normally. We got stung by nettles, were totally bitten up, and spent a monstrous amount of effort. It would have been the most difficult MTB trip, if not for my ride in Italy described in the previous parts.
Nevertheless, we eventually rode out of the swamp, bought some smoked fish (from Belarus) in a little village and headed to the lakeshore for lunch. We even managed to take a swim. Our buddy offered to come pick us up at the border by eight, and so we tried not to screw around. Unfortunately, a three-meter-high wire fence emerged on our way, and the detour was another ten km, if not twenty. A farmer we met had warned us that a fence awaited us, but we decided to check anyway. By the way, a goose was following the farmer as if tied to him, and the man informed us that the goose goes with him everywhere, on any errands.
On the fence, there were menacing signs saying that passage was forbidden, and that it was some kind of hunting? territory. We had a typically male problem: a lot of bravery, and not much brains. Of course, we climbed over the fence, and even dragged the bikes with us. All because we didn't want to let down our buddy, who by our estimates should have already been on his way. So we're riding through the dense thicket, thinking that a bullet's going to hit us any second now. We didn't know what kind of place this was, after all. Eventually we made it to the exit, which was mercifully only latched shut, and we didn't have to climb another three meters with the bikes. Glancing around like thieves, we left the territory. We found a "Safari Park" sign and finally realized what this place was: we weren't at risk of dying.
