Gleb Leontievich Travin(April 28, 1902, Pskov district - October 1979, Pskov) - Soviet traveler.
A native of the Pskov region. In 1928-1931, he traveled by bicycle along the borders of the USSR, including the Arctic coast, with a total length of 27-30 [unacceptable 860 days] thousand kilometers.
Family
Father is a forester. The family moved to Pskov in 1913.
Travel
Bicycle crossing background
Travin loved nature, in his youth he led a circle of “hunters-pathfinders”. His father taught him the science of survival - find food and lodging for the night in the forest and in the field, eat as needed, raw meat. In 1923, a Dutch cyclist arrives in Pskov, having traveled all over Europe. Then Travin plans to make a longer and more difficult journey.
Travel preparation
It took 5 years to prepare for the bike crossing, during which Travin traveled thousands of kilometers across the Pskov land. Studied geography, geodesy, zoology, botany, photography and plumbing while serving in the army. After the end of the service, he went to Kamchatka, where he continued his training on the Leitner army folding bike.
Bicycle crossing
Gleb Travin went on a bike trip on October 10, 1928. He sailed to Vladivostok by steamboat, then by land on a bicycle through Far East, Siberia, Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Ukraine, Central and North-Western part of Russia - 17 thousand [unacceptable 860 days] kilometers along the land borders.
The entire Arctic part of the border along the Northern Arctic Ocean from the Kola Peninsula to Cape Dezhnev in Chukotka, Travin covered 10-13 thousand [unacceptable 860 days] kilometers on a bicycle, hunting skis, dog sledding, on foot. He visited Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, the islands of Vaygach and Dixon, the villages of Khatanga, Russkoye Ustye, Uelen and others. The journey ended with a return to Kamchatka.
Erroneous estimates of the length of the route
In the work of A. Kharitanovsky "The Man with the Iron Deer", published in 1959 and 1965, Travin's route is estimated at 85 thousand kilometers, however, with such a length, Travin had to pass daily for three years an average of 77 km, which is not consistent with the figures obtained during the restoration of the route based on the data of the route book-registrar [non-authoritative source? 860 days].
In a short article of the Pskovskiy Nabat newspaper dated October 13, 1929, the length of the route already traveled is 80 thousand kilometers, but at the time of writing the newspaper article, the duration of the journey was one third of the total time spent (12 months), which gives an average daily mileage of 220 km per day .
Route sections covered by ships
Based on the data of the Registrar Travin, stored in the Pskov State Museum-Reserve, the following sections of the route were passed on the ships:
- Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - Vladivostok, October 10 - 23, 1928, 2600 km.
- Krasnovodsk - Baku, July 26 - 28, 1929, 280 km.
- Rostov-on-Don - Yalta, August 22 - 26, 1929, 580 km.
- Vaigach Island - Dikson Island, August 20 - September 11, 1930, 850 km.
- Gulf of Lawrence - Ust-Kamchatsk, September 30 - October 17, 1931, 1900 km
In total, 6210 km were covered by ships.
It is possible that the sections covered by the ships are:
- Murmansk - Arkhangelsk, November 21 - December 5, 1929, 820 km. To pass this section, Travin had to cross the Gorlo Strait, which separates the White Sea from the Barents Sea, but the Strait most the winter season is covered with drifting ice; ships are also navigated through this strait with the port of the city of Arkhangelsk, in winter period Vessels are escorted with the help of icebreakers.
- Ust-Kamchatsk - Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, October 17 - 24, 1931, distance along the coastline 560 km, along the road 737 km [unacceptable 860 days].
Subsequent years of life
After returning, Travin trained cyclists, motorcyclists and motorists, continued to play sports himself and involved young people in sports. During the years of the Great Patriotic War worked as a teacher of military affairs at the Kamchatka Marine Technical School. In 1962 he returned to Pskov.
G. L. Travin died in October 1979.
Personal life
He married Vera Shantina (d. 1959) after returning from a trip. He had five children: three daughters and two sons.
Travin's Journey in Art
Travin's journey is dedicated to Vivian Itin's essay "The Earth Has Become Its Own", published in the journal "Siberian Lights" and the book "Out to the Sea" in 1935.
In 1960, A. Kharitanovsky's book “The Man with the Iron Deer. Tale of forgotten feat”, withstood several reprints.
In 1981, the director of Tsentrnauchfilm, Vladlen Kryuchkin, filmed documentary about Travin.
Memory
- In honor of Travin's Arctic bike crossing, the Chukotka Komsomol members in July 1931 established commemorative sign at Cape Dezhnev.
- Travelers' clubs in Lozovaya, Lvov, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, as well as abroad - in the cities of Gera and Berlin are named after Gleb Travin.
- A bicycle, a hard drive, a compass, Travin's documents and photographs are stored in the Pskov Museum-Reserve.
Literature
- A. Kharitanovsky. The Man with the Iron Deer (The Tale of a Forgotten Feat) / A. B. Somakh. - Petropavlovsk printing house of the Kamchatka regional polygraph publishing house, 1959.
Gleb Leontyevich Travin was called an eccentric when in November 1929 he set off on a journey across the Arctic Ocean on a bicycle. In a year and a half, he traveled 40 thousand kilometers across the Arctic ice and the coast - from the Kola Peninsula to Cape Dezhnev in Chukotka. In his passport-registrar, the arrival of a cyclist in 1929-1931 in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, on the islands of Vaigach and Dikson, in the villages of Khatanga, Russkoye Ustye, Uelen and others was certified with seals.
A. Kharitanovsky's documentary story "The Man with the Iron Deer" provides eyewitness accounts. Famous polar pilot Hero Soviet Union B. G. Chukhnovsky saw Travin at Novaya Zemlya and on Dikson Island. The oldest Russian hydrographer, head of the Marine Kara Expedition of the 1930s, N. I. Evgenov, met with him in Varnek Bay in Yugorsky Shar. The commander of the polar aviation, M. I. Shevelev, testifies in this book that the pilots saw a cyclist at the mouth of the Yenisei. Finally, the first radio operator of Chukotka, I. K. Duzhkin, lives in Moscow, who recently confirmed the arrival of Travin in Uelen. In July 1931, Chukotka Komsomol members erected a memorial sign at Cape Dezhnev in honor of Travin's Arctic bike crossing. Now there is a monument made in the homeland of the brave traveler - in Pskov.
The Pskov Museum of Art and History exhibits a bicycle and equipment that Gleb Leontievich took with him on the road - a compass, a knife, a gun, a trunk with spare parts and tools.
After Gleb Travin, travel clubs in Lviv, as well as abroad - in the cities of Gera and Berlin (GDR) are named.
Travin lived in Kamchatka for more than 30 years. He participated in the construction of the first power plant in Petropavlovsk, worked on it. Then, after returning from his journey along the borders of the USSR (the Arctic route was only part of the bike crossing), he trained cyclists, motorcyclists and motorists. During the Great Patriotic War, Gleb Leontievich commanded a coastal defense regiment. Then he worked again in Kamchatka - as deputy director of the nautical school. Now Gleb Leontievich Travin lives in Pskov and is preparing to celebrate his 75th birthday with a new journey along the Arctic coast of our country - this time by car. It is scheduled for 1977.
Gleb Travin, returning to his journey on the pages of the magazine "Around the World", as if comprehends his "experiment" almost half a century ago, comprehends from the position today when the world never ceases to amaze humanity with new discoveries... Is it possible to swim across the ocean on a raft? Or on an inflatable lifeboat? Or on a sailboat alone? At first, many treated such undertakings as eccentricities. But such "eccentrics" as Thor Heyerdahl, Alain Bombard, Francis Chichester, changed the idea of the limits of human capabilities.
True, in his reflections, the hero and author of the essay "Without discount for time" does not recall these names, with the exception of Alain Bombard; he is far from judgments and conclusions. But, reading Travin's essay, we feel that his odyssey has withstood time and that even today, in the years space flights- it seems incredible that a person alone could make such a fantastic transition.
A tightrope walker works under the dome of the circus with insurance. He can repeat his dangerous number every evening and expect to stay alive if he fails. I didn't have any insurance. And much of what happened on the way, I could not repeat again.
There are things that you don't want to remember. And anyone in my place, probably, would have opposed, for example, retelling how he froze like a frog into the ice not far from Novaya Zemlya.
This happened in early spring 1930. I was returning along the ice along the western coast of Novaya Zemlya to the south, to the island of Vaygach. A gale-force east wind blew all day. Its heavy gusts threw me off my bike and dragged me across the ice to the west. Rescued the knife. I plunged it into the ice and held on to the handle until the wind died down a little. Settled for the night far from the coast, in the open sea. As always, he cut down several bricks with a hatchet from the snow compacted by the wind and bound by frost, and made a wind-burrow out of them. At the head of the bike I put the front wheel to the south so that in the morning I would not waste time orienting myself, I scooped up more puffy snow from the sides instead of a blanket and fell asleep.
I slept on my back with my arms crossed over my chest - it was warmer that way. When I woke up, I could neither unclench my hands nor turn around... At night, a crack formed near my lodging for the night. Water came out, and the snow that covered me turned to ice. In a word, I ended up in an ice trap, or rather, in an ice space suit.
I had a knife on my belt. With great difficulty, he freed one hand, pulled out a knife and began to beat the ice around him. It was tedious work. The ice broke off into small pieces. I was pretty tired before I freed myself from the sides. But it was impossible to upholster yourself from the back. I rushed forward with my whole body - and felt that I had acquired an ice hump. And the boots also could not be released completely.
From above, I cleared them of ice, and when I pulled out my legs, both soles remained in the ice. Her hair was frozen and sticking out like a stake on her head, and her legs were almost bare. Frozen clothes made it difficult to get on the bike. I had to trudge with him through the snowy crust.
I was lucky: I got a deer trail. Someone recently rode a sled. The trail was fresh, not yet powdered with snow. I followed this for a long time. He eventually led to housing. I went up to the island and saw smoke on a hillock.
My legs suddenly gave out for joy. I crawled on one hand to the Nenets plague.
The Nenets, noticing me, started to run. I looked like an alien from another planet: an ice hump on my back, long hair without a hat and even a bicycle, which they must have seen for the first time.
With difficulty I got to my feet. An old man separated from the frightened Nenets, but stopped aside. I took a step towards him, and he took a step away from me. I began to explain to him that he had frostbite on his legs - it seemed to me that the old man understood Russian - but he still backed away. Exhausted, I fell. The old man finally approached, helped me up and invited me to the chum.
With his help, I took off my clothes, or rather, did not take them off, but cut them into pieces. The wool on the sweater was frozen, the body underneath was white, frostbite. I jumped out of the tent and began to rub myself with snow.
In the meantime, dinner was being prepared in the chum. The old man called me. I drank a mug of hot tea, ate a piece of venison - and suddenly felt a strong pain in my legs. By the evening thumbs swollen, instead of them - blue balls. The pain didn't subside. I was afraid of gangrene and decided to have an operation.
There was nowhere to hide from prying eyes in the plague. I had to amputate frostbitten fingers in front of everyone. I cut off the swollen mass with a knife, took it off like a stocking, along with a fingernail. I moistened the wound with glycerin (I poured it into the bicycle chambers so that they better retain air in the cold). He asked the old man for a bandage - and suddenly the women shouted “Keli! Keli! rushed out of the plague. I bandaged the wound with a handkerchief, tearing it in half, and started on the second finger.
Then, when the operation was over and the women returned to the tent, I asked what "Keli" was. The old man explained that it was a devil-eater. “You,” he says, “cut yourself and do not cry. And that’s just the devil!”
I have already been taken for a trait in Central Asia. In Dushanbe in May 1929, I went to the editorial office of a local newspaper with a request to translate into Tajik the inscription on the armband: "Traveler on a bicycle Gleb Travin." The editor was embarrassed, not knowing how to translate the word "bike". There were almost no bicycles in those parts then, and few people understood this word. In the end, the bicycle was translated as shaitan-arba - "damn cart."
Another armband was printed in Samarkand - on Uzbek. And the translation of the shaitan-arba was left like that. There was no more suitable word for a bicycle in the Turkmen language. From Ashgabat to the sands of the Karakum, I also went on a "devil's cart".
In connection with evil spirit I was also suspected in Karelia. There are continuous lakes, and I drove them straight along the first november ice. Before that, I already had experience of such a movement. On Baikal, the lighthouse keeper suggested that in winter in Siberia it is most convenient to ride on ice. On his advice, I crossed the frozen Baikal on a bicycle, and then made my way through the taiga along the riverbeds bound by frost. So the frozen lakes in Karelia were not an obstacle. Rather, the obstacle was a rumor that a strange man with an iron hoop on his head was riding on the lakes on a strange animal. A lacquered strap was taken for a hoop, with which I tied my long hair so that it did not fall over my eyes. I made a vow to myself not to cut my hair until I had completed my journey.
The rumor about a strange man on a bicycle reached Murmansk before me. When I drove to the outskirts of the city, I was stopped by a man in felt boots. He turned out to be a doctor named Andrusenko. An old-timer from the North, he didn't believe in any devils, but what he heard about me he considered supernatural. The doctor touched my fur jacket, boots, and then asked permission to examine me. I agreed. He felt his pulse, listened to his lungs, tapped his back and chest, and said with satisfaction:
- You, brother, have enough health for two centuries!
There is a photograph of this meeting. I sometimes look at her with a smile: an atheist doctor - and he did not immediately believe that I was just a well-trained person, carried away by an extraordinary dream! Yes, Albert Einstein is right: “Prejudice is harder to split than an atom!”
My three favorite characters are Faust, Odysseus, Don Quixote. Faust captivated me with his insatiable thirst for knowledge. Odysseus perfectly withstands the blows of fate. Don Quixote had a lofty idea of disinterested service to beauty and justice. All three embody a challenge to generally accepted norms and ideas. All three gave me strength in difficult moments, because, having gone to the Arctic on a bicycle, I also threw such a challenge to the well-known.
The unfamiliar frightens both man and beast. When I was making my way through the Ussuri taiga, my bicycle was frightened ... by a tiger! Beast dol. o pursued me, hiding in the bushes, growling menacingly, cracking branches, but did not dare to attack. The tiger had never seen such a strange beast "on wheels" and preferred to refrain from aggressive actions. I didn't even have a gun with me at the time.
In the future, I was more than once convinced that all the animals - whether in the taiga, desert or tundra - were wary of attacking me precisely because of the bicycle. They were scared off by its bright red color, shiny nickel-plated spokes, an oil lantern and a flag fluttering in the wind. The bicycle was my reliable bodyguard.
Fear of the unaccustomed is instinctive. I myself experienced it more than once during my travels. Especially terrible for me was the day when I left the chum after the operation. I could hardly move my pain-filled legs and was so weak that a hungry fox dared to attack me. This is a cunning, evil animal. He is usually careful not to attack people, but then he began to grab the bag that the old Nenets gave me. I fell into the snow, the fox pounced from behind. He threw it off himself, threw the knife. But the Arctic fox is nimble, it is not easy to hit him. He began to get a knife from a snowdrift - the fox dug into his hand, bit. Still, I outsmarted him. He reached again for the knife with his left hand, the arctic fox rushed to her, and I with his right - by the scruff of the neck.
The skin of this fox then traveled with me to Chukotka. I wrapped it around my throat instead of a scarf. But the thought of a fox attack haunted me like a nightmare for a long time. I was tormented by doubts: is this fox really mad? After all, they never attack a person alone! Or am I really so weak that the fox chose me as his prey? How, then, to compete with the ice element?
I prepared myself for the journey only in my own strength. Help from the outside turned out to be just a hindrance for me. I felt this especially keenly on board the Lenin icebreaker, which was covered with ice near Novaya Zemlya in the Kara Sea. The ice situation in July 1930 was very severe. The way to the mouth of the Yenisei, where the icebreaker led a whole caravan of Soviet and foreign ships for the forest, was blocked by ice. Having learned about this, I took an old boat from the trading post of Vaigach Island, repaired it, set sail and set off with a doctor and two other fellow travelers to the place of the icebreaker's "imprisonment". Having reached the ice fields, we disembarked from the boat and got to the side of the ship on foot... Still, we managed to ride part of the way by bicycle.
Then, during a press conference that the captain of the icebreaker arranged in the wardroom, I said that Gleb Travin was not the first cyclist in the polar latitudes. The bicycle was in service with Robert Scott's last expedition to the South Pole in 1910-1912. It was used for walks at the expedition's main base in Antarctica.
I said that I had been traveling by bicycle along the borders of the USSR since September 1928. Started from Kamchatka, traveled through the Far East, Siberia, Central Asia, Crimea, middle lane, Karelia. And now I'm going to get to Chukotka.
I also talked about preparing for this trip. It began on May 24, 1923, when the Dutch cyclist Adolf de Groot reached Pskov, having traveled almost all of Europe.
“The Dutchman can,” I thought then, “but can’t I?” This question sparked my interest in ultra-long-haul flights.
It took five and a half years to prepare. During this time, I traveled thousands of kilometers on a bicycle in my Pskov region, and traveled in any weather and on any roads. As a child, my forester father taught me how to find food and lodging for the night in the forest and in the field, taught me to eat raw meat. I strived to further develop these skills in myself.
During army service, which took place at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, I intensively studied geography, geodesy, zoology and botany, photography, plumbing (for bicycle repair) - in a word, everything that could be useful for a long journey. And of course, he tempered himself physically by participating in competitions in swimming, barbell, bicycle and boat races.
Demobilized from the army in 1927, he received special permission from the commander of the Leningrad Military District for a trip to Kamchatka. I wanted to test myself in completely unfamiliar conditions.
He built the first power plant in Kamchatka, which gave electricity in March 1928, then worked as an electrician there. And all free time took up training. I also tried my hand at cycling on mountain trails, at crossings over swift rivers, in impenetrable forests. This training took a whole year. And, just making sure that the bike would not let me down anywhere, I set off from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Vladivostok.
I told about all this while standing, refusing the invitation of the captain of the icebreaker to sit down. He stood, shifting from foot to foot to muffle the unrelenting pain, and was afraid that people would notice this. Then, I thought, they won't let me off the ship. There were already enough objections from those gathered in the wardroom. The head of the Naval Kara Expedition, Professor N. I. Evgenov, for example, stated that he had studied Taimyr and the mouth of the Yenisei for 10 years and knew that even wolves did not stay there in winter. Frosts and snow storms in these parts drive all life to the south.
In response to my remark that in winter I prefer to ride on ice rather than the coast of the ocean, the famous hydrograph only waved his hands and called me a suicide.
But I already knew: no matter how severe the winter in the coastal arctic ice, life there does not completely freeze. From severe frosts cracks form in the ice. Each such crack makes itself felt with a tangible rumble. Together with water, fish rush into this crack. Later I got the hang of catching it with a hook from a bicycle spoke. I had two fish for a day. I ate one fresh, the other - frozen, like a stroganina.
In addition to fish, my menu included raw meat. I learned from local hunters how to track down and shoot northern animals - arctic fox, seal, walrus, deer, polar bear. The habit of eating only raw food was confirmed by the French doctor Alain Bombard. While sailing on a rubber boat through Atlantic Ocean he ate raw fish and plankton for more than two months. I ate twice a day - at 6 am and 6 pm. 8 hours a day were spent on the road, 8 hours - for sleep, the rest of the time - for searching for food, arranging an overnight stay, diary entries,
Riding a bike on a hard snow crust only at first glance seems impossible. Near the shore, the tides pile up the hummocks. I went tens of kilometers deep into the ocean, where there were ice fields, which sometimes made it possible to develop great speed ...
And yet, at that time, on the icebreaker, none of those gathered in the wardroom took seriously my intention to get to Chukotka by bicycle. They listened to me with interest, some even admired me, but everyone agreed that the idea was impossible. They put me up for the night in the ship's infirmary. There was no free cabin on the icebreaker, and yet I suspected that someone had noticed that my legs were not all right. These fears tormented me all night. In the morning, to prove that my legs were healthy, I went for a ride on the deck on a bicycle. And then he thanked the sailors for their hospitality and announced that I was leaving for the Volodarsky steamer, which was stuck in the ice about thirty kilometers from the Lenin icebreaker.
Only after that did they agree to let me off the icebreaker, although it was not easy to find the ship among the ice.
I left the icebreaker at 6 o'clock in the morning. Despite the early hour, the entire deck was filled with people, as if they were raised by alarm. I felt like I was on trial, going down the storm ladder onto the ice together with pilot B. G. Chukhnovsky - he photographed me at parting.
As soon as he moved away from the icebreaker, three beeps followed ...
It took a lot of work for me not to look in the direction of the icebreaker. I tried to quickly get behind the hummocks so that he disappeared from sight. I was afraid that I would be drawn back to him. I was aware that I was leaving life - from warmth, food, a roof over my head.
I got to the Volodarsky steamer in time: the next day the wind dispersed the ice around it, and it reached Dikson under its own power. Then my path lay on Taimyr.
Taimyr... How many times did the plan of navigators crash against it - to continue the journey along the coast of Siberia to the east! Only in 1878-1879 did the Russian-Swedish expedition, led by E. Nordenskiöld, manage to pass this route, and even then in two years with wintering. And the first through flight in one navigation was made only in 1932 by the famous "Sibiryakov". Two years before this flight, Taimyr put me to a severe test.
At the end of October 1930, I moved to Pyasina, the big river in Taimyr. Six years later, Norilsk began to build on it. The river had recently frozen over, the ice was thin and slippery. Already closer to the opposite shore, I fell off the bike and broke the ice. It was very difficult to get out of the hole. The ice crumbled under his hands, broke under the weight of the body. When I felt that the ice was holding me, I flattened myself on it, spreading my arms and legs. I will never forget this day. The sun has not been visible for a week, instead of it on mirror ice played the scarlet glare of midday dawn. They faded away little by little. I felt my life was fading along with them. Soaked clothes immediately froze and froze in the cold. With an effort of will, I forced myself to move. Cautiously, pushing off with his hands, like a seal with flippers, he crawled across the ice to the bicycle, dragging it away from the dangerous place.
After this ice font, Taimyr nevertheless rewarded me. Having got out on the bank of the Pyasina, I stumbled upon bumps that were barely puffed up with snow. They turned out to be skinned carcasses of deer, upright stuck in the snow. Skins were piled up right there. Apparently, on the eve of the freeze-up, a herd of wild deer crossed here to the other side, and the Nenets pricked them in the water. The hunt was successful, part of the meat was left in reserve.
First of all, I climbed into the middle of the pile of deerskins to keep warm. My clothes were melting from my body heat. After supper of frozen meat, I fell asleep soundly. In the morning I woke up healthy and vigorous, feeling a surge of strength in myself. Soon I met dog team. The owner of the team, a Nenets, gave me a little lift and suggested the best way to get to Khatanga.
In Taimyr, I saw a mammoth cemetery. Huge tusks protruded from the ground near the ocean coast. With great difficulty, I managed to loosen and pull out of the ground the smallest tusk. I gave it to a skilled bone carver in Chukotka. He sawed the tusk into plates and on one of them he painted a whale, a walrus, a seal and brought out the inscription: "Traveler on a bicycle Gleb Travin." This miniature is now kept in the Pskov Museum of Art and History.
Where did I find joy during my journey?
First of all, in the very movement towards the intended goal. Every day I took the exam. Survived - survived. Failure meant death. No matter how hard it was for me, I set myself up for the fact that the most difficult was yet to come. Having overcome the danger, I experienced great joy from the knowledge that I was one step closer to the goal. Joy followed danger, like tide after tide. It was the primordial joy of being, the joy from the consciousness of the emancipation of one's forces.
In the Arctic, I had to live and act in a completely different way than in the taiga or in the desert. And for this it was necessary to constantly observe and learn from both people and animals.
Have there been moments when I regretted that I went on this perilous journey? Not! Did not have. There was pain in my legs, there was a fear that I would not reach the goal ... But all this was forgotten, let's say, in front of the beauty of icebergs frozen into ice. This beauty filled me with both joy and strength.
No less joy brought acquaintance with the people of the North.
Once I had a chance to listen to a shaman. I was invited to him by an old Yakut, with whom I spent the night in a yaranga. The old man helped me fix the cracked steering wheel. Instead of a steering wheel, he offered the barrel of an old Norwegian rifle, having previously bent it on fire. And I must say that the new steering wheel never failed. Until now, it has been preserved on my bicycle, exhibited in the Pskov Museum. I did not know how to thank the old man for the repair, and he did not want to accept anything. In the end, the Yakut nevertheless admitted that he was tortured by worms. I gave him medicine, which I took with me just in case on the road. The medicine helped. The old man told the whole camp about this and, wanting to please me in some other way, offered to go to the shaman.
The Yakut harnessed the reindeer and took me to the mountains. The shaman's yaranga was larger than that of other residents. He came out to us from behind the canopy by the light of the oil pan. Yakuts were already sitting in a circle in the yaranga. The shaman shook the trinkets and rhythmically beat the tambourine, gradually speeding up the rhythm. He danced, singing mournfully, and those gathered in the yaranga echoed him, swaying.
I looked at the shadow of the shaman falling on the wall. He seemed to hypnotize the listeners with his play and movements and somehow seemed to me like a cobra, which was swaying in front of me in the same way in the gorge on the border with Afghanistan...
I was driving along this gorge with a strong tailwind. It was getting dark. He lit an oil lantern, hoping to get through the gorge before total darkness fell. And suddenly a light flashed in front of me. I hit the brakes, jumped off and froze in surprise. A meter from the front wheel was a cobra on its tail. Pulling back her hood, she shook her head. Her eyes reflected the light of an oil lantern.
I slowly backed away and only then noticed that on the walls of the gorge there were tangles of coiled snakes. Paralyzed with fear, I moved in slow motion and kept my eyes on the cobra. She stood at attention in front of me like a sentry. I took a few more steps back, each of which could have been fatal for me. The cobra did not move. Then I carefully turned the bike around and sat on it, drenched in cold sweat. My legs pressed the pedals with all their might, and it seemed to me that the bike was rooted to the ground ...
Suddenly, the old Yakut, who had brought me to the shaman, pulled me by the sleeve towards the exit. I did not immediately understand what he wanted. Only his eyes said he was worried.
On the street, the old man said that the shaman did not like me for some reason. The shaman composed a whole story to the sound of his tambourine, as if there were two more companions with me, but I killed them and ate them. The old man did not believe the shaman: he is not from here, he came to these places from somewhere in the south.
Then a shaman came out of the yaranga in a fur coat thrown over his naked body. Now, in the light, I could see his face better. It was overgrown with a thick black beard, the cut of the eyes was not slanted.
“Doctor, bandage my finger!” he said in a broken voice. His accent was not Yakut.
"I'm as much a doctor as you are a shaman!"
I jumped to the old man in a sleigh, and he drove the deer with all his might.
A few days later I reached the Russian Ustye on the Indigirka. In this village, which consisted of a dozen log cabins, lived Russian hunters who traded in fur-bearing animals. For hundreds of kilometers along the coast of the ocean their "grazes" were placed - huge traps made of logs. At the mouths of the rivers, I came across hunting dugouts, log cabins or yarangas lined with turf. Some firewood and some food could be found in them.
I was surprised by the soft melodious dialect of the Russo-Ustyans. The youth respectfully called the elders bats. From them I learned a legend that their village has existed since the time of Ivan the Terrible. It was founded by the Pomors, who arrived here from the west on koches - small flat-bottomed sailboats. Pomors, in turn, came from the Novgorod land. And I myself am a Pskovian, so the Russo-Ustyans were almost like a fellow countryman ...
I was received very cordially. I was a guest in every house, I ate caviar cakes, festive stroganina. He drank brick tea and told everything he knew about life in Central Russia and along the polar coast. And I also told them about the Pskovites - the pioneers northern seas who visited these parts - Dmitry and Khariton Laptev, about Wrangel.
I lived in the Russian Ustye for several happy days. There was no teacher at school, instead I gave the children geography lessons. They listened to me with great interest, several times asked me to talk about warm climes. And of course, I rode them all on a bicycle.
But these happy Days were overshadowed by bandits. Not far from the village, they killed a Komsomol teacher who was returning to school from district center. Together with other residents of the village, I went to search for the gang. The leader was captured. It turned out to be my old friend - the "shaman". It was, as it turned out later, a former White Guard officer ...
From hunters in the Russian Ustye, I learned about the drift of the famous Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen in 1918-1920 on the Maud ship near the Bear Islands in the East Siberian Sea. Making their way to the east, Roald Amundsen and his companions made a stop on the island of Chetyrekhstolbovy. I decided to look for this parking lot. The road to the island was suggested to me by the inhabitants of the Russian Ustye, who came in the winter while hunting on the Bear Islands.
I approached the Chetyrekhstolbovy island from the northeast side. There, at big stone, there was a playground. On it I found a long-handled Norwegian ax covered with snow, four teacups and a dark bottle of wine. It was sealed with sealing wax. Through the glass one could see the signature on the note: "Amundsen."
The sad news of the death of this brave man who conquered South Pole in 1911. Roald Amundsen died in 1928 in the Barents Sea. Soviet fishermen accidentally caught in the area of his death the float and tank of the aircraft, on which he was looking for the crashed airship "Italia" with Nobile on board.
Sacredly honoring the laws of the North, I did not touch the relics of Amundsen on the island of Chetyrekhstolbovy. Next to them, I left my relics: a few cartridges, some shots, broken parts from a bicycle and a bottle of glycerin, where I put a description of the route I had done. I sealed the bottle with a piece of stearin candle.
From the island of Chetyrekhstolbovogo I again went to the mainland. Approaching the rocky, steep shore, from a distance I noticed White spot. I mistook this spot for a polar fox. Close by, it turned out to be a polar bear. With the first shot, I wounded her. Fortunately, she did not immediately attack, but, taking some kind of white lump, climbed up the rock with him. I could not reload the gun because of the transverse rupture of the sleeve. I could not manage to knock her out, and the she-bear rose higher and higher up the rock.
Finally, I knocked out the stuck cartridge case from the barrel and fired again. The bear froze on a sheer cliff with an outstretched neck.
With difficulty I reached my prey. And then I realized why the bear did not attack. She saved her teddy bear. The maternal instinct was stronger than the instinct of a predator.
I lowered the bear by the paw onto the ice and skinned it. Her skin was six paces long. And the teddy bear was very small. I took him with me and traveled with him for a month and a half.
We became friends. I named him Mishutka. I was more fun with him, and warmer on the road. We slept together, hugging each other. Bear fur coat is shaggy, warms well. Only from sleep, the bear cub sometimes tried to bite my hand. You couldn't take off your gloves.
We ate together, mostly fish. Once during breakfast, he bit my hand - I got angry with him and decided to punish him. I threw him over a high hummock so that he would not see me, and I got on my bike and rode over a dense snow crust. Mishutka immediately began to shout: “Vakuliku! Vakuliku! Say, forgive me.
He caught up with me, somersaulted under the front wheel and did not let go anywhere all day. It can be seen that he was really afraid to be alone.
I traveled with a bear cub to Pevek. Here, the locals - Chukchi no less than a bicycle, marveled at the friendship between a man and a bear. The Chukchi bear is a sacred animal.
In Pevek I stayed with him at the owner of the trading post. Mishutka, as always, getting angry while eating, knocked over on the floor a bowl of hot soup, which was treated by his owner. As punishment, I sent the bear cub out into the hallway. But the owner was very worried about him and persuaded me to lay a bearskin in the hallway so that Mishutka would be warmer. In the morning we found the bear cub dead. I had several bear skins, and by mistake I put his mother's skin on him. Now I wanted to say to Mishutka: “Vakulik!”
Since then, I have not killed any more polar bears. It became a shame to destroy such a huge and rare animal for the sake of a few kilograms of meat that I could eat or take with me on the road.
I value any Living being. I only killed the beast out of necessity. Nature could have killed me too, but spared me. She spared her, because I treated her with respect, trying to comprehend and apply her laws.
Gleb Travin
Name Gleba Travina almost forgotten today, despite the fact that his life story is so fascinating that it could easily become an adventure movie script. Travin can be called a pioneer of cycling in the USSR and a real hero: on a two-wheeled transport, he traveled a route of 85 thousand km along the borders of the big country in the world, thus proving that the possibilities human body practically limitless! However, at home, the achievement was not appreciated ...
Gleb Travin is from Pskov, but he started his journey from Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka. By the way, he came there from the army: dreaming of traveling, the adventurer called this distant city his home and received a ticket for free. Gleb was fond of cycling and decided to find a legal way to ride freely: declaring his desire to popularize cycling, he made a route along all the borders of the USSR and got a Princeton 404 model at his disposal. It was on this bike that he overcame the whole long way.
Travin was fearless and distinguished by the strongest health: he went on a trip without warm clothes, and his entire food supply consisted of biscuits and chocolate. They had to eat what they managed to get on hunting or fishing, and excellent hardening made it possible to manage with a minimum of clothing.
Travin's route ran through hot deserts, the highest mountain gorges and, of course, the snowy Siberian region. The traveler reached Murmansk by May 1928 and began his 40-km journey along the Arctic Ocean. The Siberian segment of the journey became the most difficult for Gleb Travin. During the time spent in extreme low temperatures, he had to sleep in snowdrifts, fight frostbite (the cyclist was forced to independently amputate his big toes, fearing the development of gangrene, after he raced through the icy desert for a day with practically no clothes, which simply froze in the snow overnight), hunt polar bears. Gleb was well acquainted with the life and life of the Nenets, the local people, they offered shelter to the traveler more than once, but treated him like a spirit or a ghost that rides an iron deer.
Getting to extreme point Russia in the north, Gleb sent a request to continue traveling abroad, but the response was negative. Having been refused, he was forced to return to Kamchatka on a whaling ship. The achievements of Gleb Travin were not appreciated: no one was seriously interested in his history, the Kamchatka leadership limited itself to a commemorative pennant for his contribution to the development of the physical culture movement, and in one of the books about the North, Gleb was completely referred to as a "worthless hero", accused of being that he rested in those years, while the whole country was poring over the implementation of the five-year plan.
Despite the fact that Travin traveled with a camera, there were practically no photographs from his expedition left, everything was destroyed by his relatives due to fear of reprisals (the bureaucratic machine did not spare the writer Vivian Itin, who compiled the work on Travin's trip). After returning, Gleb continued to popularize cycling, taught and trained athletes, and during the war years worked as a military instructor in Kamchatka. Gleb Travin died in complete oblivion in 1979.
Travin's dream of world tour was not destined to come true, but history knows several cases when travelers traveled around the whole Earth on a bike. Read about desperate travelers in our review.
85 thousand kilometers by bike along the borders of the Soviet Union. 40 of them - along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, from the Yamal Peninsula to Cape Dezhnev - a madness that not a single person in history has dared to do. If it had happened in America, about a dozen films would have been made about Gleb Travin long ago, but fate has developed in such a way that now the name of Travin is almost forgotten.
Gleb Travin
traveler
Little is known about Gleb Travin. There is a book that describes his journey, there is a detailed essay, several notes and articles varying degrees prescription. But in his case, this is clearly not enough. Vivian Itin - the first of the authors who wrote about Travin, was subsequently repressed. After that, Travin's relatives destroyed the entire travel archive, fearing any connection with the convicted writer. Photos, diary - everything disappeared, leaving no chance for new details. And Travin was not a “real” traveler or professional athlete. There was no practical or scientific point to his adventure. Not appreciated.
The son of a janitor from Pskov, a young commander of the Red Army, just retired, an electrician who implemented the GOELRO plan in Kamchatka, a romantic who, together with his friends, dreamed of using the energy of Kamchatka's volcanic hills. 26-year-old Gleb Travin also got to Kamchatka in a very adventurous way - after the army he took advantage of the right to free travel to his homeland, but as hometown named Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka. In the view of a resident of Pskov - the end of the world, the most distant city in the country.
Travel itinerary
Travin dreamed of traveling around the world. I realized that they would not be allowed to leave the country, changed my plans and decided to go around the borders of the young Soviet Union - for training. Declaring his campaign propaganda of physical education, under the guise of the first five-year plan, Travin asked the executive committee of Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka for an excellent American bicycle, which was delivered specially for him by ferry - a Princeton road bike, model 404 in one of two standard colors - red with white enamel arrows on frame. And since we are talking about cycling exoticism, Travin trained on an army folding Leitner, which either he himself or his biographer Alexander Kharitanovsky mistakenly called foreign, but he was going to Riga, at the factory of the Russian engineer, entrepreneur and pioneer of domestic bicycle construction Alexander Leitner, whose story deserves a separate story.
Some of the equipment arrived with the ferry, including the Japanese Kodak - with its help many unique shots were taken, of which very few survived. On this, Travin's training camp ended. He did not take warm clothes, as he was an extremely hardened person, who had great hiking experience and rare health. Shorts, tank top, leotards and light jacket. Instead of a hat - long hair, which he specially grew before the trip. From stocks of food - only biscuits and chocolate. Some money. It was important for Travin to travel light, not to burden himself with the comforts of life.
In October 1928, the cyclist left Vladivostok, reached Khabarovsk and turned west along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Baikal. Funny detail: in the Chita region on the road, he met strange person named Kolyakov. He walked from Primorye to Moscow to give Kalinin a bag full of complaints. local population, and returned back. Kolyakov criticized Travin's method of transportation, and Travin was offended: "Woe-walker."
From Novosibirsk - to the south, to the deserts and mountains - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan. Hard mode - at least eight to ten hours in the saddle, food and water twice a day - at six in the morning and at six in the evening. He ate what he could get on the ground by hunting and fishing, slept exactly where the night would find him, on bare ground, putting a folded jacket under his head.
He reached the Caspian Sea, crossed it by ferry, crossed the Caucasus, reached the European part of the country - Travin recalls this huge stretch as a pleasant walk. Neither the waterless desert, nor the mountain gorge swarming with snakes, nor the invasion of hordes of locusts were any comparison with what awaited him in the North. In November 1929, the traveler reached Murmansk. From there began a stretch of 40,000 kilometers that he will travel along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, most of the way - right on its smooth frozen surface.
He ate what he could get on the ground by hunting and fishing, slept exactly where the night would find him, on bare ground, putting a folded jacket under his head.
Travin's travels are described in detail in two books: "The Man with the Iron Deer" by Alexander Kharitanovsky, as well as Itin's essay "The Earth Has Become Our Own". In details, they often differ, and now it is no longer possible to know whose description is closer to the truth. Itin wrote his essay much earlier, in hot pursuit, so his version is likely to be more honest. Kharitanovsky's story is seasoned with the spirit of Komsomol pastorality, replete with ideological clichés and smoothes reality, but this is the only book that describes the whole path in detail, while Itin, being a polar explorer, is more concerned with the "polar odyssey", which, however, is also the most interesting .
The man with the iron deer
Alexander Kharitanovsky
Waking up after spending the night in the area of Dolgiy Island, Travin discovered that his boots and a new fur overall, which he got hold of in one of the northern villages, were frozen into the ice - he slept, as usual, buried in a snowdrift, at night a sea water, soaked wool and froze.
With the help of a knife, Travin barely managed to get out, but the things were hopelessly damaged - the overalls turned into tatters, the soles of the boots broke through, which were already becoming unusable. For almost a day, the cyclist raced without stopping in search of housing. When, finally, Travin fell into the Nenets tent, his legs were severely frostbitten. Fearing gangrene, he decided that it would be better to amputate the darkened and swollen thumbs, and immediately cut them off with a knife. Looking at this, the Nenets decided that before them was not a person, but a spirit. So the news spread around the neighborhood - the devil himself rides on an iron deer across the tundra. He feeds himself charcoal, and the deer does not need food at all.
Approaching the Taimyr Peninsula, Travin fell through the ice. First of all, he pulled out the bike, then got out himself, soaking wet. He took off his wet clothes, rubbed himself with snow and buried himself naked in a snowdrift - the only shelter for many kilometers around. How long he sat there, waiting for his clothes to dry in the cold, is unknown. Then Travin put on his still wet clothes and ran around the neighborhood for several hours, drying them with his own warmth. Nearby, he found a pile of deer carcasses dumped by local hunters, climbed into it and slept peacefully, rejoicing that at last there was an opportunity to rest in warmth and comfort.
And here is an excerpt from the traveler's diary, miraculously preserved in Itin's essay: “I killed an old polar bear. The length of the skinned is six paces. Two little bear cubs were taken alive. For five days the cubs were my companions. One of them, the larger one, had come to terms with the situation earlier and began to take meat from his hands and suck his thumb. But since it was rather difficult to deal with both, when all the meat came out, I had to kill the older one, and I dragged the younger one with me to the trading post of Cape Pevek. I wanted to send the cub to the mainland, but the shamans said that all the bears would go after the cub and there would be no fishing. Therefore, head Semyonov, who at first was delighted with the bear cub, did not want to mess with him. I had an idea to move on about. Wrangel and could not take the teddy bear with him.
“I killed an old polar bear. Skinning length 6 paces. Two little bear cubs were taken alive. For five days the cubs were
my companions."
There is also a story with a polar bear: once a snowstorm knocked Travin off his feet, covered him with snow, for some time he lost consciousness, and he dreamed that he was lying on the river bank and basking in the sun. Recovering, Travin found that the bear had dug up the snow and was sniffing his face greedily.
In July 1931, Travin reached Cape Dezhnev, the extreme point of the northeastern part of Russia. There he built a modest commemorative sign in honor of the end of the polar transition and immediately began to send telegrams - again asked for permission to go abroad so that he could continue his journey without delay - drive along the western coast of both Americas, reach Tierra del Fuego, cross to Africa, cross the Sahara and Arabia , from there - to India and China, in order to return to Russia through Tibet and Mongolia. The response telegram refused to leave and offered to return to the starting point of their journey with the nearest ship. In August Travin returned to Kamchatka on a whaling ship.
What happened next? Travin was handed a pennant with a commemorative inscription: "The Kamchatka Regional Council of Physical Education is an active drummer of the physical culture movement of Kamchatka." And the TRP badge. The nomenklatura writer Viktorin Popov, devoting a chapter to Travin in his book about the North, called it "The worthless hero" - while the country was fulfilling the five-year plan in three years, he was lounging around somewhere. Travin returned to ordinary life, cut his hair, worked as a fitter at a power plant, an instructor, taught military affairs. Kharitanovsky recalls that when he first got home to an already elderly traveler, he had to work hard, looking around the house for artifacts of his trip. “Apparently, the relics in the house were not often remembered,” Kharitanovsky concluded.
They say that Travin died forgotten by everyone in 1979. Now only regulars of cycling forums remember him. They remember and again begin to criticize frames, forks, rims - these break, these bend. And the antediluvian "Princeton" traveled 85 thousand kilometers, overcame deserts, mountains, the Arctic - and nothing. And with him Gleb Travin - great traveler about which someday a film must be made.
Nomenklatura writer Viktorin Popov, dedicating a chapter to Travin in his book
about the North, called her "Useless Hero."
