The Polish Long Walk Plus Expedition. The start. Up the Lena River from Yakutsk to Ust Kut
“..Long Walk Plus Expedition has just started! Two weeks ago we set out from Yakutsk to Olekmnisk. Since that time we have dozens of adventures but what’s the most important we met extremely a lot of wonderful people. Every place we visited we were welcome with great hospitality. We traveled by bus, car, motor boats and at last on foot,” writes Tomasz Grzywaczewski, an expedition cameraman, in today’s travel note especially for AskYakutia.com.
Okey, let’s start the story from its very beginning. Two and a half weeks ago three Polish guys appeared in Yakutsk. They were hosted in the city’s Catholic church and were accompanied by Valentina Shimanskaya, chairman of Yakutsk Polish community. Certainly, our ways crossed, and these young Poles asked me, “Have you heard about the book Slavomir Rawicz’s The Long Walk?” I said, “Sure. It’s a real story about the Polish prisoner, who escaped from Gulag and walked southward to India.” And they were like, “Yeah, but you know what?! Its author says that it was him, who escaped to British India, but in reality the depicted character appeared to be another Pole, who lives now in the UK in poverty. A true hero is Witold Glinski. He didn’t earn anything from the book revenues, because he is very modest and unpretentious, and the publishing house was too authoritative to convince him to keep silence.”
Further, three guys, Tomasz Grzywaczewski, Bartosz Malinowski, and Filip Drozdz, started disclosing all the truth. Finally, they said they wanted to make the documentary and share the truth with the whole world by making the Long Walk Plus Expedition.
As they declare on the Facebook fan page (btw, you can follow them up there), the expedition’s mission is walking, horse riding and bicycling on the tracks of Slavomir Rawicz’s book “The long Walk” from Yakutsk (that Soviet camp was located near this city) to Calcutta in India in the course of May – October 2010.
When I asked them, how they managed to find so many big sponsors, they said, “We couldn’t believe it ourselves. The idea came to us in the last New Year holidays. We started writing letters and here we are. The companies liked the story.” Yeah, not only companies like the expedition idea, but also the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed interest and willingness to help. Just look at the list of supporters on their website.
So… I was impressed, but I was impressed more by their route. On May 20 they asked me, how they could get from Yakutsk to Olekminsk. I said, “Are you kidding me? Today is the day of big spring flooding on the Lena River!” Check what I meant the post on the blog eYakutia – English Yakutia. “No boats go that direction. No even planes. It’s raining heavily.” They were just, “We are ready to walk.”
The last phrase convinced me they could make it through taiga, flood and many other obstacles along the Lena River to Olekminsk. I like adventurers. So I took a map and pointed at settlements they could go through, Pokrovsk, Bestyakh, Sinsk, Sanyjahtakh, Uritskoe, Khorintsy, etc.
I wished them good luck and they leaved Yakutsk the next day. It was still raining and flooding. Poor guys, they got wet and chilly.
Three days ago…
On June 3, they appeared on Facebook, namely in my inbox. Tomasz wrote to me, “Here is Tomasz from The Long Walk Plus Expedition. We have already got to Olekminsk. We had a lot of amazing adventures and met a lot of extremely friendly people. Yakutia is absolutely awesome! :)”
Fantastic!
The next abstract was not so amazing, “We have a small problem, because my camera battery charger broke down :( Can I ask you for help to deal with this problem?” Further, he asked me to buy a charger for his Nikon D90 batteries and send it to them via a Raketa ship to Olekminsk.
At the first glance, the favor sounds easy. Go and buy. But there is another problem. In Yakutsk local photographers do not tend to buy camera accessories in the city’s stores. They order everything on Moscow or Saint Petersburg online stores. It means ordinary shops do not sell anything like that at all. I was a little bit confused.
I was forced to post the ad in a local photo forum, asking whether anyone had a charger to sell to me. Answers were like, “I have one, but I can lend it for a while.” or “If it is urgent, they can come to me and charge their batteries.” There were no one, who could sell it for good.
Praise god, I have many friends. One of them is Ajar Varlamov, a local photographer, who told me by a phone that he had a friend, who might have chargers for sale in his not-so-much known small store. Later, Ajar informed me, there was one charger, and he was so afraid of others’ buying it before me, so he decided to purchase it at once. Oh my god! Ajar is a really awesome friend. I am so grateful to him.
The next morning, today, I managed to send it via the Raketa ship captain to Olekminsk. I let the Polish guys know about it. I wrote, “Be at the river port at 5 pm and meet the captain with your new charger. Meanwhile, you can write a travel not about your long walk from Yakutsk to Olekminsk.” And you know what? Tomasz made a story especially for my blog! Many, many thanks, Tomasz, for your contribution! Find his note below.
The story moral is “Take the reserve charger and batteries for your travel across Siberia’s Yakutia.” It’s not a joke.
The mentioned travel note:
“The Long Walk Plus Expedition has just started! Two weeks ago we set out from Yakutsk to Olekmnisk. Since that time we have dozens of adventures but what’s the most important we met extremely a lot of wonderful people. Every place we visited we were welcome with great hospitality.”
“We traveled by bus, car, motor boats and at last on foot. March through taiga was a really exhausting experience – deep mud, swamps, thousands of mosquitoes and rapid rivers.”
“We visited a few villages, e.g. Bulganiachtach, Edej or Saniachtach. Edej was totally blocked by kilometers of ice floats so the sight was absolutely astonishing.”
“However the whole Yakutia’s nature is awesome. We also saw monumental Lenskie Stolby (known also as Lena Pillars or stone pillars on the Lena River).”
“The administration of the region have given us a great aid in our journey. They especially help in arranging transport and providing accommodation. We are shocked that many people heard a lot about Poland, and everyone knew the Polish scientist and explorer, Waclaw Sieroszewski.”
“Now we stay in Olekmninsk, and today we’re going to explore a former camp, that is hidden deep in forest.”
“The Long Walk Plus Expedition team would like to thank all people who helped us and without whom our travel wouldn’t be possible.”
Tomasz Grzywaczewski, Bartosz Malinowski, Filip Drozdz
Tomasz, Bartosz and Filip. That is how guys looked at the finish.
UPDATE: The Polish students managed to make it to Calcutta. Instead of the planned October, they finished in November 2010, but the length of the long walk doesn’t matter. The point is that they completed the hardest expedition. The final report is available now at ExplorersWeb.com.
Similar Posts:
- Who did The Long Walk? Slavomir Rawicz or Witold Glinski?
- Where to buy the flag of Yakutia in Yakutsk? Wow, a hard question…
- 2009 Lena River Passenger Boats Timetable: Osetrovo (Ust-Kut) – Peleduj – Lensk – Olekminsk – Yakutsk
- Is there an ice road to the Lena Pillars?
- The Lena River: Yakutsk – Tiksi (Neelovo) – Yakutsk. By the ship “Mechanic Koulibin.”
