Tale of the forgotten feat Bashny.Net

There was a man - Gleb Travin.
It is named after a 200 veloklub worldwide.
In 1928-1931 gg. Young residents of Kamchatka, the electrician, the athlete, the commander of the stock GL Travin made an extraordinary journey.
He traveled alone, without any support, along the borders of the Soviet Union, including the Arctic coast of the country on bicycle.





The magazine "Around the World" in 1975 published his article on this journey.
Comment text is meaningless, just read.
Tightrope walker works under the big top with insurance. It can be repeated every evening a number of dangerous and expect to survive if fail. I also did not have any insurance. And many of the things that happened along the way, I did not manage to repeat again. There veshi, which does not want to remember. And anyone on my place probably would have opposed, for example, retelling, he vmerz like the frog in the ice near the New Earth.

It was the early spring of 1930. I'm back on the ice along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya to the south, the island Vaigach. The whole day blew a hurricane west wind. His squally gusts threw me off the bike and dragged across the ice to the west. Requirement knife. I thrust it into the ice and held on to the handle until the wind died down a little. I got a night away from the beach, in the open sea. As always, the ax cut down a few bricks from compacted by wind and frostbitten snow made it a zavetrie-horonushku. At the head put a bicycle front wheel on the south to the morning not to waste time on orientation, Zagreb more on chubby snow from the sides instead of the blankets and I zasnul.Spal on his back, his arms crossed on his chest - it was warmer. Waking up, could not let go of hands or turn around ... the night next to my overnight a crack. Made water and snow that hid me, turned to ice. In short, I found myself trapped in the ice, to be exact - in an ice suit.

On the belt, I had the knife. With great difficulty, he freed one hand, and drew a knife and began to beat down the ice around them. It was tedious work. Ice chips into small pieces. I'm rather tired before you freed yourself from the sides. But from the back upholster itself it was not. He jerked his body forward - and felt that he had purchased an ice hump. And shoes, too, could not be freed completely. Above them, I cleared the ice, and when pulled his feet, the soles were both on the ice. Hair are frozen and stuck a stake on his head and his feet were almost bare. The frozen clothes prevented to sit on the bike. I had to wander with him on the snow crust.

I was lucky: got deer trail. Someone recently traveled on sleds. The track was fresh, not yet covered with snow. For a long time I walked this trail. He eventually led to the housing. I got up on the island and saw the smoke on the hill.

From joy suddenly paralyzed legs. I crawled on one hand to the Nenets plague.

Nenets, seeing me, began to run. Type something I have been like a stranger from another planet: a hump on the back of the ice, long strips, without caps and even a bicycle, they must have seen the first time.

With difficulty I got to my feet. From the Nenets separated frightened old man, but stopped on the side. I took a step toward him, and he - to me. He began to explain to him that the frostbitten feet - it seemed to me that the old man understands in Russian - but he still backed. Exhausted, I fell. The old man finally approached, helped her up and invited him to the tent.

With his help, I took off my clothes, or rather, not removed, and cut in pieces. The hair on the sweater are frozen, the body beneath him was white, frostbite. I jumped out of the tent and began to rub themselves with snow.

Meanwhile, in the tent we prepared dinner. The old man called me. I drank a cup of hot tea, ate a piece of venison - and suddenly felt severe pain in his legs. By evening, swollen thumbs, instead of them - blue balls. The pain did not abate. I feared gangrene and decided to do the surgery.

The plague had nowhere to hide from the watchful eyes. I had to amputate frostbitten toes in front of everybody. I cut with a knife swollen mass, took it as a stocking, with a fingernail. The wound is moistened with glycerine (I poured it into the camera bike to better retain air in the cold). The old man asked the bandage - and suddenly a woman shouting "Kelly! Keli! "Ran from the tent. I bandaged the wound with a handkerchief, tore it in half, and set to the second toe.

Then, when the operation is over and the woman returned to the tent, I asked what "Keli". The old man explained that it was the devil-eater. "You, - he says - you cut myself and cry. And this is only the devil can so! »

I have already taken over the line in Central Asia. In Dushanbe, in May 1929, I went to the editor of the local newspaper with the request to transfer the Tajik language inscription on the armband, "Traveler cycling Gleb Travin." The editor was confused, not knowing how to translate the word "bicycle". Bicycle then almost was not in those places, and that word very few people understand. In the end the bike was translated as devil-Arba - "damn wagon».

In Samarkand, print another armband - in Uzbek. A translation of Satan Arba and left. Could not find a better word for bicycle and in the Turkmen language. From the sands of the Karakum desert in Ashgabat, I also went to "hell cart».
In connection with the evil spirit, and I suspect in Karelia. There's solid lake, and I drove them straight on the first November ice. Before that I had the experience of this movement. On Baikal lighthouse keeper suggested that winter in Siberia, it's best to go on the ice. On his advice, I crossed the frozen Lake Baikal on a bicycle, and then made his way through the taiga on frostbitten riverbeds. So the frozen lake in Karelia were not an obstacle. Most barrier was a rumor that goes around the lake wild animals bizarre man with an iron hoop on the head. During the hoop taken lacquered strap, which I tying long hair, so they will not fall on the eyes. I made a vow to myself not to cut their hair until the end of his journey.

The rumor outlandish man on a bicycle came to Murmansk before me. When I drove to the outskirts of the city, I was stopped by a man in boots. He was a doctor by the name of Andrusenko. Old resident of the North, it is in any devils did not believe, but the fact that he had heard about me, considered supernatural. The doctor touched my fur coat, boots, and then asked permission to examine me. I agreed. He felt his pulse, listened to lungs, knocked on the back and chest, and said with satisfaction:

 - Do you, brother, health enough for two centuries!

A photograph of the meeting. Sometimes I gaze at her with a smile: a doctor atheist - and he did not immediately believe that I'm just well-trained people, keen extraordinary dream! Yes, the rights of Albert Einstein: "Prejudice is difficult to break down than the atom!»

Three of my favorite characters - Faust, Odysseus, Don Quixote. Faust has captivated me with its insatiable thirst for knowledge. Odyssey perfectly withstand the blows of fate. In Don Quixote was the sublime beauty of the idea of ​​selfless service and justice. All three embody the challenge accepted norms and ideas. All three gave me strength in difficult moments because, having gone to the Arctic on a bicycle, commonly known such a challenge and I threw.

The unusual and frightening man and beast. When I made my way along the Ussuri taiga, my bike was scared ... Tiger! Beast haunted me for a long time, hiding in the bushes, growling menacingly, twigs cracked, but did not dare to attack. Tiger never seen such a strange beast "on wheels" and would prefer to refrain from aggressive actions. I then did not even have a gun with him.

In the future, I do not just convinced that all the animals - in the forest there, the desert or tundra - beware of attacking me because of the bike. They are frightened of its bright red color, shiny nickel-plated needles, oil lamp and fluttering in the wind box. The bike was my trusted bodyguard.

Fear of the unusual instinctive. I myself have experienced it many times during the trip. Especially scary for me was the day I left the tent after the surgery. I hardly rearranged feet suffused with pain and was so weak that I dared to attack a hungry fox. It's tricky, evil creature. It usually wary to attack people, and then began to miss for torbasses who gave me the old man Nenets. I fell in the snow, arctic fox attacked from behind. I threw him off, threw the knife. But the fox agile, hit him hard. He began to get the knife out of a snowdrift - fox stared at his hand bitten. Yet I outsmarted him. He reached again for the knife with his left hand, fox darted to her, and I had the right - by the collar.

The skin of the fox then traveled with me to Chukotka. I wrap her throat instead of a scarf. But the idea of ​​an attack for a long time pursued fox like a nightmare. I was tormented by doubts: it was not rabid if this fox? After all, they never attack the person alone! Or I really so weak that fox elected me their prey? How, then, to compete with the ice element?

I prepared myself to travel only with the expectation of their forces. Help provided by a hindrance to me. Particularly acute I felt aboard the icebreaker "Lenin", icebound near Novaya Zemlya in the Kara Sea. Ice conditions in July 1930 was very harsh. Way to the mouth of the Yenisei River, where the icebreaker led a caravan of Soviet and foreign vessels beyond the forest was closed by ice. On hearing this, I took on the factors of the island Vaigach old boat, repair it, set sail and went to the doctor and two companions to the place of "imprisonment" icebreaker. When he reached the ice! fields, we disembarked from the boat, and got to the side of the ship on foot ... Part of the way still managed to ride a bicycle.

Then, during a press conference that the captain of the icebreaker arranged in the mess, I reported that Gleb Travin not the first cyclist in the polar latitudes. The bike was armed with the latest expedition of Robert Scott to the South Pole 1910-1912 years. It was used for walking on the main base of the expedition in Antarctica.

I'm told that traveling by bicycle along the border with the Soviet Union in September 1928. He started from Kamchatka, traveled the Far East, Siberia, Central Asia, the Crimea, the middle lane, Karelia. And now I am going to get to Chukotka.

He told me about the preparation for this trip. It began May 24, 1923, when the Dutch arrived to Pskov cyclist Adolphe de Groot, traveled almost the whole of Europe.

"The Dutchman could - thought then - and I did not do?" With this question has arisen, and my interest in the ultra-long flights.

The preparation took five and a half years. During this time I naezdil thousands of kilometers of cycling at near Pskov, and drove in any weather and on any road. Father-forester in childhood taught me to find food and lodging for the night in the forest and in the field, learn to eat raw meat. These skills I have sought to develop more confidence.

During his military service, which was held at the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, I have intensively studied the geography, geodesy, zoology and botany, photography, plumbing (Bike repair) - in short, everything that could be useful for a long trip. And of course, tempered themselves physically taking part in the swimming competition, the bar in cycling and boat racing.

Demobilized from the army in 1927, he received special permission from the commander of the Leningrad Military District on a trip to Kamchatka. I wanted to test myself in a totally unfamiliar environment.

In Kamchatka, was building the first power station, which gave the current in March 1928, then worked her electrician. And all their spare time training. I try yourself and bike on mountain trails, crossings on the rapid river, in the impenetrable forests. These training took a year. And just making sure that the bike will not let me anywhere, I went from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Vladivostok.

I told all this standing, refusing an invitation to sit the captain of the icebreaker. He stood, shifting from one foot to the other, are a prime to mute the pain and fear that people will notice it. Then, I thought, I will not release the ship. Objections have gathered in the mess already had enough. Head Kara Sea expedition, Professor NI Eugene, for example, said that he was 10 years studying the Taimyr and the mouth of the Yenisei River and knows that in the winter there are not even wolves. Frost and snow storms in this region expelled all living to the south.

In my observation, that in the winter I prefer to go on the ice, not oceanfront, the famous hydrographer just waved his hands and called me to suicide.

But I knew that no matter how harsh the winter in coastal Arctic ice, life there is not completely freezes. From severe frosts in the ice cracks. Each crack makes itself felt palpable buzz. Together with water in this crack tends fish. Later, I get the hand to catch it the hook of bicycle spokes. On the day I missed two fish. I ate a fresh, different - frozen as stroganina.

In addition to fish, my menu consisted of raw meat. The local hunters I learned to hunt down and shoot the northern animal - fox, seals, walruses, reindeer, polar bear. The habit of eating only raw food has confirmed the French doctor Alain Bombard. While sailing on a rubber boat across the Atlantic Ocean more than two months, he ate raw fish and plankton. I took food twice a day - at 6 am and 6 pm. 8:00 every day was spent on the road, 8 hours - sleep, rest of the time - in the search for food, lodging unit, diary entries.

Biking on the hard snow crust at first glance seems impossible. At the coast the tides pile ridges. I went to dozens of kilometers into the ocean, where they were ice fields, allows us to develop great speed at times ...

And then, on the icebreaker, none of the participants in the mess did not take seriously my intention to get on a bike to Chukotka. I listened with interest, some even admired, but all agreed on the fact that the idea is not feasible.

I have arranged for the night in the ship's infirmary. On the icebreaker was no free cabins, and yet I suspected that someone noticed that my feet are not all right. These fears tormented all night. In the morning, to prove that my legs are healthy, I ride a bicycle on the deck. And then thanked the sailors for their hospitality and announced that I was leaving on a ship "Volodarsky", which stuck in the ice of thirty kilometers from the icebreaker "Lenin».

Only then agreed to let me go to the icebreaker, but look for the ship in the ice was not easy.

I came away with an icebreaker at 6 o'clock in the morning. Despite the early hour, the whole deck was filled with people, as if they raised the alarm. I felt like in the judgment seat, down the ladder to the ice with pilot B. Chuhnovsky - he took a picture of me at parting.

Just walked away from the icebreaker, followed by three beeps ...

Great difficulty I should not look to the side of the icebreaker. I tried to get away for the hummocks, that he was out of sight. I was afraid as I had not pulled him back. I am aware that by leaving life - from the heat, food, a roof over his head.

I got to the steamer "Volodarsky" time: the next day the wind broke up the ice around him and he came to his swing Dixon. Then my way lying on Taimyr.

Taimyr ... How many times he broke the idea of ​​sailors - continue their journey along the coast of Siberia to the east! Only in 1878-1879 managed to go this route Russian-Swedish expedition led by E. Nordenskiöld, and then for two years from hibernation. And the first one through-flight navigation made only in 1932, the famous "Siberians". Two years before this flight Taimyr and subjected me to a severe test.

At the end of October 1930 I moved Pyasino, the largest river on the Taimyr Peninsula. Six years later, it began to build Norilsk. Recently frozen river, the ice was thin and slippery. Even closer to the opposite shore, I fell off a bicycle and broke the ice. Get out of the hole in the ice was very difficult. Ice crumbled under the arms, broke down under the weight of the body. When I felt the ice keeps me going, he sprawled on it, arms outstretched and legs. I will never forget this day. The sun was about a week to be seen, instead, on the smooth ice playing red midday glare of the dawn. They slowly went out. I felt with them and my life is extinguished. Soaked clothing immediately and are frozen icy frost. With an effort, I forced myself to move. Carefully, starting hands like seal flippers, crawled across the ice to the bike, pulled him from a dangerous place.

After this icy font Taimyr still rewarded me. Pyasina to shore, I came across almost poached snow mounds. They were flayed carcasses of deer, stuck upright in the snow. Immediately mountain were skinning. Apparently, on the eve of the freeze-up it is forwarded to the other side of a herd of wild deer, Nenets and stabbed them in the water. The hunt was successful, the meat was left in reserve.

I mainly got in the middle of the pile of reindeer skins to keep warm.



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