Da - Di Mosca

Hey all!
I'm back in Sotchi and in one piece ...
Thanks for the emails, hope you didn't worry too much.
I actually returned to Adler yesterday and stayed the night at the same private accomodation on the hill as before. It was cool ... Andre, the Armenian-Russian master of the house, invited me to have dinner with his wife and kids, drink their homemade southern-russian wine, eat the cheese made by his mother on her farm in the hills ... all in all the meal was great and worth a lot more than he 200 R I paid for the room.

So how did it go, the trip into the 'mountains'?
Well, good and bad, interesting and not interesting.
The trip up, with the tour I joined for the seat on the bus, was OK. We stopped at a few places. The first was a stop on the side of the road at the top of a cliff with spectacular views of a gorge, with usual russian tourist-sploitation activities ... except whereas in Red Square people pay to have their photo taken with a monkey, up there I had a choice of a golden eagle, two vultures, a donkey, red deer and asiatic camel.

There was a nice selection of Dagestani daggers-swords, which I thought about but passed over. The other stop on the way, actually quite close to Krasnaya Pulyana (which means beautiful <old language>glade), dealt in alcohols and honey. A man spole for 10 minutes very quickly, so I understood almost nothing, but I did get to taste various wines and spirits, and 5 different types of honey (including one sourced from lemons - very nice).
KP itself was a hive of activity, with a lot of visitors even in summer.

Various restaurants, cafes, a mountain-climbing shop, and the bottom of the ski-lift, lots of guys hanging around their russian 4WDs waiting to take people up mountain tracks. There was people para-cliding from the top of the ski-lift - 100 dollars US, for maybe a 5 mintue drop. I didn't hang around long, though, as I had my own plans ...

I got conflicting information as to whether camping up away from the tourist area was permitted without a permit (which could only be obtained back in Adler, of course), but there was no clearly marked camping area in KP itself, either. A russian girl, Natalia,  working for the para-gliders who spoke english was surprised but impressed I wanted to sleep "up there", and didn't think there would be a problem. I didn't see anybody in uniform, ranger-style.
So without further ado I set off, climbing the hill that the Russians were climbing. My only goal was to get above the tree-line. I would later regret not being more specific about my plans ... in Australia I would definitely have told the police what I was doing, when I would be back, etc, but because I was worried someone would stop me, I didn't do it in KP (sorry, megan).

I left the trail  pretty early and went into 'don't be seen mode'. Tip for young players ... don't leave the path ... I am now a big fan of paths, and regret not following one for the journey 'up'. Bush-bashing makes everything a lot harder than it needs to be ... and you never know if you're heading for a dead-end.
The flora was fantastic. I wish I new more of the names ... its a definite weakness. The 'gators' were great. I discovered that the cans of meat I'd bough were actaully pate ... and that I can't eat a lot of pate. I would later bury three cans, unopened ... but I still have chocolate, buts, dried fruit ect and 2 min noodles.
I set off about 2 pm, and by nightfall I was quite high up but still in very dark forest ... finding about level ground to set-up the tent was a problem.
Fear of animals kept me awake and quiet for a while before falling asleep.

The second day I followed a massive dirt road, newly contructed, to the foot of a waterfall. I passeda tent and saw a russian couple up on a hillside. I waved, but they didn't wave back, and I pushed on. There was a bit of a path up to the right, which I followed until it pettered out. Things got very sub-tropical, lots of ferns, braken, rhodedendrons etc, and also very steep.

By afternoon I was basically climbing, using the trunks of trees and the stems of bushes for hand-holds. I hit a ridgeline, and tried to stay on it because there were gray cliffs in lots of places left and right. Progress consisted of working out how to get to the next higher old tree or prominatory, beyond which I couldn not see. Gradually the plants I was using to climb became smaller and smaller, until there was places where I was climbing up bare rock with bits of grass here and there - or rhodedendrons.

Obviously they were far from vertical or I couldn't have done it, and I never attempted anything I wasn't confident I could get up ... maybe that was the problem.
The second night I sept in the narrow space between stone and an old stree overlooking a small stone gorge with falling water ... just enough space to put the tent out. I was no longer worried about wild-life, but was very concerned that I would have to turn back soon ... and I was very concerned that I would fuck-up descending one of the rock-slopes, and die. At that stage, even the prospect of a broken leg was concerning, because then I wouldn't be able to go anywhere. That was when I started thinking about paths, trekking in groups, etc..

The third day was make it or break it. I continued up the ridge until I was above the tree-line, and my main aim was to find a way to get back down besides the way I'd gone up. I lost my hat (saw it haning in a tree but no way was I going back to get it) I ended up climbing down an almost vertical, 5 m slope with a covering of surprisingly strong small thorny plants. I was happy to get to the bottom, because I was on the edge of a large, highland meadow full of flowers, and several stony peaks were right there.

I drank from a spring at the top of a slate creek-bed, and followed the creek higher. Eventually I climbed out of the meadow up onto one of the peaks, and from there I could see the top of the ski-lift at about the same height but two peaks to the east about 700 m away.
There was a scary hour or so when i couldn't find my pack (I'd had to cache it to get to the top of the peak) but by the time I camped on the grass in a next-higher glade, I knew there had to be a path to the ski-lift because I'd seen old camp-fires and rubbish. I had a view of KP, far below, and of snow-capped mountains a little higher on the far side of the broad valley.
Spectacular.

The fourth day I explored the meadows, found a small lake with ice on the northern side, washed selfa nd clothes in the stream. I was actaully naked when I saw two russians approaching me. I soon learned I had found a group of fairly relaxed Russians in their early twenties, who'd come up on the lift. That night I joined them at their fire and it emerged that their cheif aim was to smoke pot, drink green tea and find mushrooms (and not just any mushrooms). One of them, Timotey, a psychology student in Sochi, spoke pretty good enblish and gave me an insight into his deep interest in the hallucenegenic properties of certain compounds found in certain mushrooms.

He had two friends from Sotchi, and there was an older couple, my age, who had flown down from Moscow.
I hung out with those guys and ate a lot of their food, and also followed some of the paths up onto peaks even higher than the one I had climed the day before.  Ealy arvo on the fifth day we followed a path to the ski-lift about an hour away. The clouds rolled in and drank mulled-wine in the cafe at the top of the lift - a surreal experience.

I took the lift down with them (the descent is free - yay) and I was impressed with how far I'd gone. The life had four stages, for a total of about 7 km. In KP I said goodbye to the group, touched base with Natalia (and saw that where are actually rangers there), and then caught a bus back to Adler. And that was the end of my highland adventure ...

I thought about going up again, but I've kind of had my fix for the moment.
I could go back, deeper into the mountains where there are only cow-herders and the wildlife, but I don't think its the place to go alone, and the chances of meeting other people doing the same thing would be remote. If there was clearly marked paths, maps etc, maybe, or if I knew enoguh Russian to find out what I need to know. Right now I'd rather do a trail where there are other people doing the same thing, and where there's a good chance of seeing wildlife without having to worry about being eaten.

Tonight I'm taking the train to Krasnodar. I'll spend a day or three there, and then my broad plan is to hit the Volga, maybe at the mouth on the Caspian (Astrakhan) or maybe at Volgograd, and spend two weeks or so hitting cities like Kazan until I get back to Moscow. I still want to spend at least a week in St P, too.

Adieu,
Liam, dimanche 28 août 2005 16:40.