Category Archives: Travels

Cycling from Poland to Romania across Ukraine

Day 1 (91 km)

My route soon left the N4/E40 road for village roads. I saw very few people walking in the street, but the church parking lots were full, so I suppose everyone was at Easter Monday mass. In the afternoon the landscape changed to vast, barren, snowy fields, with some challenging uphills. At one point I was passed by a group of sport cyclists. Drivers seem used to cyclists and I never felt uncomfortable on the road.

In the late afternoon I reached Przemyśl, another city with excellent cycling lanes that proved a motivation to make it the last 17 km to the Ukrainian border. I aimed for the Medyka border crossing, the only one where pedestrians and cyclists can cross (at other Poland–Ukraine border crossings one must be inside a vehicle). Here the Polish officers had a brief argument about whether a bicycle is a car or pedestrian, but ultimately I was directed to the pedestrian walkway.

On the Ukrainian side, the officers wanted me to show any medicines or knives brought with me, but they were otherwise uninterested in my bicycle and the other expensive items it carried.

I spent the night at the hotel on the Ukrainian side, 250 UAH/25€ for a large room in a charming wooden building that had that distinctive smell of wood walls heated by a stove. The attached restaurant was the typical roadside café found across the former Soviet Union, whose bright lights and colourful decoration clash with the dour mien of the (invariably male) clientele and the unspectacular food. Still, the chicken Kiev, fried potatoes and buckwheat groats proved adequate cycling fare.

Day 2 (74 km)

From the Ukrainain border town of Shehyni, the road goes toward the major city of Lviv and is of excellent quality. About 15 km down from the border, southbound cyclists must turn right onto the H-13 road, which is of a very poor construction indeed. All in all, this is one of the worst roads I have travelled on in any country.

I didn’t know what to expect on this road, but surprisingly, a lot of people live along it. I passed on this day through two large provincial towns, Sambir and Staryy Sambir, and there were plenty of villages along the road, with ornate Uniate churches. The Carpathians are not yet visible on this stretch and the cycling is not challenging.

I spent the night in Staryy Sambir. The first hotel I found was fully booked, so I ended up staying in a strange establishment next to the train station that was mainly a notary and lawyer’s office, but had one hotel room (at 150 UAH/15€).

Day 3 (64 km)

Getting out of Staryy Sambir was taxing. The dirty potholed streets were full of slush and I got sprayed by every passing car. Once I had left that town, the road improved somewhat for about 20 km before returning to its delapidated state. The morning was one gradual climb up to about 400 m, and then a long descent into the Turka valley. This must be very beautiful in the summer, and even on this grey and rainy day it was fine scenery.

Turka is a small town of 10,000 people and looks poor. I stopped at a restaurant and ordered “potatoes à la Turka”, which are chopped and fried with balls of spicy cream cheese.

Once out of Turka, the mountains begin in earnest, with a climb over 200 m out of the valley. I unwisely took the lesser used one of the two roads from Turka back onto the H-13, which was an hour of pushing the bike uphill on a surface that had essentially reverted to an unpaved state. Once I got back on the H-13, it went up and up with no end in sight. There was low visibility, and very little traffic. It was a snowy and utterly silent landscape with not a little beauty.

By the time it started to get dark, I was at 800 m and it was bitterly cold. I passed through a village perversely named Verkhne (‘The Top’ – it’s not, as there is still one huge climb after it) and wanted to ask for a warm, dry place to spend the night, but the houses seemed deserted. Perhaps they are only used now as summer homes. Pressing on another couple of kilometres to the next village, Yavoriv, I asked the hospitality of the first family I saw and was graciously taken in for the night.

Day 4 (92 km)

The village of Yavoriv turned out to be the highest point of the road across the Carpathians. A few minutes after cycling out of it, one comes to a police post where identification is checked, because here the H-13 passes very close to the Polish border. This post is also located on the line between Ukraine’s Lvivska and Zakarpatska oblasts.

Right after the police post, one begins a spectacular descent from 850 m to 400 m. This offered the best mountain scenery of the whole trip and is the reason why I would recommend traversing the western Ukrainian Carpathians from north to south instead of the inverse.

The road meets up with the Uzh river and follows it for the rest of the day until the city of Uzhgorod, so there was a feeling of constantly going downhill, in spite of a few minor uphills.

I had become used to very little traffic on the road, so cycling became stressful after the town of Velikyy Bereznyy when more cars started to pass, and after the town of Perechyn there were even some trucks. People drive recklessly here, so I was happy I was wearing a reflective vest.

Once in Uzhgorod, I stopped at the first lodgings I saw, Hotel Eduard, which proved a very good deal. For a mere 270 UAH I stayed in what felt like a luxury suite, with breakfast and wi-fi.

One should be careful when cycling into Uzhgorod and when walking around at night, as most of the city’s manhole covers and rain grates seem to have been stolen by metal thieves.

Day 5 (67 km)

The road going straight southeast from Uzhgorod is the M06, a major international highway that is unsafe to cycle on. I therefore travelled all day on village roads. First I passed through the village of Tsyganiv, which is nestled in a pleasant valley. After bicycling along a marsh and then another small community or two, I crossed the M06 highway and then entered the first bilingual village on my route, known in Ukrainian as Kholmets and in Hungarian as Korláthelmec.

At the end of the next village, Rus’ki Komarivtsi, there was a Roma (gypsy) settlement whose inhabitants were friendly but whose streets wre home to a large amount of angry, aggressive dogs.

From here I could have gone straight and then pushed my bike along 300 m of highway shoulder until the next good village road, but in order to avoid the highway entirely, my GPS routed me along what turned out to be an unpaved gas company service road. The first stretch was gravel, but ultimately that ran out and one could barely distinguish 4WD tracks through a muddy field. Pushing my bike through all of this took two hours and by the end everything I owned was filthy. I should have just backtracked, and I know now to take GPS routing with a grain of salt.

Eventually I made it to a village, but even here the road remained unpaved, so it took longer still to reach the closest asphalt road. Along the way I passed an abandoned kolkhoz (collective farm). It was eerie how so many large buildings were left standing empty.

Once back on the asphalt road, navigation was easier and I passed through a few nice villages that made me think how similar Zakarpatska oblast and Transylvania are. At one point, I ignored my GPS’s roundabout directions and chose to go along a few hundred metres of highway.

Once I turned off the highway back onto village roads, I passed a Russian Orthodox convent. The abbess allowed me to photograph only the grounds, and inside the church no photos were permitted. I must have seemed a disrespectful visitor with my dirty clothes. Such a place is worth seeing, but one should clean up a bit before going in.

By the evening, I had made it only to the town of Mukachevo. I had been here several times on hitchhiking journeys, and I really like the town. It has an enormous amount of smart cafés for a community of only 100,000 people, and the city centre has recently been renovated into a pedestrian-only zone. Decent, affordable accomodation is hard to find here and the best thing to do is just to ask people on the street until you find someone who can rent you a flat for the night. I got a nice place with wi-fi for 150 UAH.

Day 6 (96 km)

From Mukachevo, a driver or hitchhiker can just head straight south to the Romanian border crossing at Dyakove–Halmeu, but cyclists must instead go far southeast to Solotvyn–Sighetu Marmației, the only border crossing between Ukraine and Romania where those without a car can cross.

The landscape southeast of Mukachevo initially consists of rolling hills and lakes. At one point, the landscape became more vertical and the people noticeably poorer. The Austro-Hungarian feeling evaporated, and the town of Khust proved to be an utterly anonymous provincial town of the former Soviet Union. Before Khust there was a dramatic downhill, and I passed the monument at Krasno Pole, where the independent Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine was established on March 15, 1939, lasting only a single day.

After Khust I admit to losing interest in my surroundings, as I was mainly thinking about what great time I was making and how could make it to the Romanian border and the end of my journey by nightfall. But entering Solotvyno, the town on the Ukraine side of this border crossing, I was struck by the long row of newly-built, expensive-looking houses.

When approaching Solotvyno from the west, one has to keep straight on the road until after the railroad tracks in order to reach the turn leading to the centre of the town. There I came to a rickety old bridge over the Tisza River: that’s the border crossing. Getting through was uneventful on both side, and then I was home.

Summary

The Carpathian and Trans-Carpathian regions are mostly stress-free except for the potholes, and for a cyclist who has had time to get into shape, the uphills are nowhere near as challenging as one might expect. However, early April was not an ideal time due to the amount of water on the road, as well as the lack of any dry place to put up a tent (I certainly didn’t intend on staying in paid accommodation every night of this trip). If I could have freely scheduled this trip, I think that May–August would have been a better season.

I wish I had learned more Ukrainian before travelling here. Of all Ukrainians, the inhabitants of Lvivska oblast are the most hostile to attempts to communicate in Russian. In Zakarpatska oblast, however, people will readily speak in Russian, probably because it served as a language of inter-ethnic communication among the Ukrainians, Hungarians, Germans and other nationalities here.

Moving into bicycle touring

Elephant bathtime in Sauraha

The village of Sauraha is the gateway to the Chitwan National Park, Nepal’s number-three tourist destination. It feels far away from it all, as one comes along an unpaved road from the nearby town of Tandi Bazaar through an increasingly empty countryside, and then the tourist centre of the village is just a handful of guesthouses empty at this time of year. The river flowing along Sauraha forms the border with the Chitwan National Park.

I didn’t go to the national park, as it is among the sites whose entrance fees the Nepali government recently tripled in a shameless act of price gouging. But Sauraha is worth visiting just for the remarkably clean air, the jungle climate and, the best thing of all, elephant bathtime.

Tourists often ride in the park on trained elephants. Every day around 1100 a.m., these elephants are brought to the river near the River View Inn (you can walk across their courtyard to get to the place) for a bath. By paying 50 or 100 rupees to an elephant handler, you too can ride on top of an elephant in the river while it splashes water over itself with its trunk. Even if you don’t want to participate in this soggy experience, watching is great fun. Afterwards you can feed bananas to the elephant, which it eats peel and all.

Lumbini’s park and monasteries

Since at least the visit of the Emperor Ashoka in 249 BC (who left a pillar to mark the spot), Lumbini has been recognized by the devout as the fifth-century birthplace of Buddha and now it draws pilgrims from all over the Buddhist world. Coming from elsewhere in Nepal, though, you get dropped off at the nearby village of Buddha Nagar, inhabited mainly by Muslim traders and farmers. In language, culture and cleanliness, this is identical to the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh just across the border a few kilometres south, which after my last trip in the Subcontinent I’d nominate as The Worst Place in the World.

The government of Nepal has set aside an area 6 km long and 2 km wide around the birthplace of Buddha as a park. There is a lot of plastic thrown away here, and air pollution rolling in from across the border, but it is clean enough to provide a refuge for exotic birds and there are some monkeys. Besides the actual birth site, which has a pool that the Buddha’s mother is said to have bathed in, Ashoka’s pillar and some ancient buildings that are currently being excavated, space has been set aside for monasteries representing various Buddhist traditions. Thus there is a Chinese monastery, a Burmese one, a Vietnamese one, etc. In spite of the presence of a handful of foreign Buddhist monks, the staff performing menial tasks at these monasteries or selling trinkets outside are the aforementioned Muslim locals. It’s a strange symbiosis.

Some of the monasteries offer space for guests. I stayed in the Korean monastery for 300 rupees a night. One must sleep on the floor on a raised platform, with a minimum of bedding provided, and showers are cold, but three meals a day are included that surprisingly turned out to be authentic (if very simple) Korean cuisine. My travelling companion and I were the only Westerners present, while the vast majority of the tourists staying here were Koreans in their late teens and early twenties.

Pokhara

For tourists, Pokhara is the second city of Nepal after Kathmandu. It is located 100 km west of the capital, next to a lovely (and remarkably clean) lake with several peaks of the Annapurna range visible on most days. The tourist hub of Lakeside is very similar to Kathmandu’s Thamel district, but it is less cramped and with better dining options.

It was a good place to stay for three weeks, idily pursuing my studies along the lakeside, watching paragliders come down from the Sarangkot hill overlooking Phewa Lake, or browsing at the fantastic bookshops in this city too (where I found a biography of Samuel Beckett and a first edition of Sándor Weöres’s 1958 volume of world poetry translations A lélek idézése).

A walk south along the lake, crossing the dam and then going up into the hills brought me to the World Peace Pagoda. This is a Buddhist shrine set up by a Japanese religious organization in the early 1970s, demolished by a hostile Nepalese government, and subsequently rebuild to a lasting tolerance. From here one has a better view of the Annapurna range than in Pokhara itself, with Lakeside and Phewa Lake below.

The downsides of Nepal’s development are present in Pokhara as well. Once you get outside of Lakeside, the city of Pokhara is just as polluted as any other urban conglomeration in Nepal. I rented a bicycle for a day, and while it was pleasant riding once outside the city, going through two or three kilometres of high-traffic streets first was a lung-burning experience. One wonders what it must have been like here during the era of the hippie trail, when the road had not yet been built and travellers had to walk in from Kathmandu.

The tourism industry in Lakeside seems to have developed too fast too soon, with a lot of businesses for not so many tourists. Walking down the main street in the evening, one usually often only one table occupied in each large restaurant, with the waiting staff outnumbering the tourists dining. For most of my time here I have been the only customer in the large guesthouse in which I’m staying. It’s a wonder anyone makes a profit. The rising amount of Chinese and Indian tourists may yet fill the void, however.

Thamel and Durbar Square

The Thamel distict has been my base in Kathmandu. This tourist area has developed since the 1980s (replacing the smaller ‘Freak Street’ area further south that was popular in the days of the hippie trail). It consists of only two main streets less than 2 kilometres long but it is packed with hundreds of shops and trekking agencies. I spent over a month in Thamel during my last trip to Nepal, each day discovering new nooks and crannies. You can buy all kinds of trekking gear here, mostly Chinese fakes with badly-sewn North Face logos that will only last for one trip, but occasionally some authentic imports or new Nepali brands that compete on quality. There are innumerable stalls selling hippie cotton clothes from India, pashmina wool sweaters and Tibetan paintings. Naturally the part of Thamel that kept me here so long is that the district has many English-language bookshops, of which Pilgrims Feed’n’Read here is one of the best in South Asia, boasting many esoteric publications in its labyrinthine building.

On this trip, however, the magic has worn off. One is aware of seeing everything through a haze of smog, and diesel soot covers some of the wares on display outside shops. The air of the Kathmandu valley is exponentially more polluted than three years ago. The long walks I used to take outside of Thamel to eat or sightsee are no longer pleasant or even particularly bearable due to the oppressive fumes. It took some effort to get down to Durbar Square, where the former royal palace is located along with several shrines. This is one of Kathmandu’s several UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Boudha

I got a fairly cheap Air Arabia flight from Istanbul to Kathmandu via Sharjah, my second time flying to the Subcontinent with this nice budget airline that gets you a day-long layover in the UAE. Since my flight arrived in Kathmandu late in the evening, I wanted a quiet place to stay for the night within walking distance from the airport. I decided on Shechen Guest House, which is in Boudha, east of Kathmandu just off the ring road.

Shechen Guest House is run by Shechen Gompa, one of a number of Tibetan exile monasteries in Boudha. It is frequented by Westeners looking for contemplative or at least unnoisy lodgings. Nice clean sheets, attached bathroom and breakfast for 1300 Nepali rupees a night (~ 11€). There’s a lovely garden in the centre of the property, and a great big bookcase whose biggest attraction for me were some Lonely Planet travel guides from the 1980s (my, how the brand has changed).

The next day (I awoke to very hazy skies), I walked into the centre of Boudha. This is dominated by Boudhanath Stupa, built in the 5th century AD and circumambulated this morning by several tens of pilgrims. Many of the signs on shops are written in Tibetan alongside or instead of Nepali.

Debrecen University

The main building of the University of Debrecen, open to the public, is well worth visiting for any tourist in the city. It is built around a large central atrium in Neoclassical style inscribed with the names of famous alumni. One can observe students at work on various storeys of the building, and the space is beautifully lit even on dark winter days.

Rize

When going east along Turkey’s Black Sea coast, Rize is the last of the large cities one passes through. A lift out of Rize usually means one can finally break free of the long coastal strip where hitchhiking is somewhat difficult, because where one town ends, another begins. But this time I didn’t escape at first, because my driver insisted on taking me back into Rize and showing me the sights. Rize does have a few nice things to offer.

First we went to the ruins of a castle built during the Byzantine era. After that, we stopped by the city’s botanical garden. Both of these places had elaborate cafés run by the Çaykur tea company, but these were entirely deserted because of Ramadan (Rize seems considerably more religiously observant than other coastal cities).

A drive inland from the city revealed where this tea comes from, as the surrounding hills are covered with tea plantations and dotted here and there with the smokestacks of tea processing facilities. There are nice views of the city with its waterfront and new highrise buildings.

Getting east out of Istanbul gets easier

I’ve tried a couple of methods of getting east out of Istanbul before, namely first some cloverleaf intersection on the Asian side close to where I was staying at the time, and the second time taking the train to Gebze and getting a lift from there to a service station on the motorway. This time, however, I’ve found an option vastly superior to the others. I took bus 19Y from Kadiköy to the stop Ferhatpasa Meydani and then walked 10 minutes to a parking area and restaurant on the motorway at GPS coordinates 40.98835° 29.19258°. The motorway is blocked by a fence with razor wire which looks scary, until you notice that whole sections have been cut down. Once I got into the parking area, within 30 seconds I got a lift from the first truck driver I asked, who was on a long journey from the Netherlands to Mersin in the south of Turkey on the Mediterranean. We are at a highway restaurant having dinner as I write this. He will drop me off at the intersection near Gerede, from which it is still a long inland route to Samsun and the Black Sea coast.

Christopher Culver

observations on linguistics, travel and more