How a Tambov resident went around the world by bicycle

- Is traveling around the world on a bicycle is your dream since childhood or did you come to it as an adult?

- I guess I had this desire all my life when I was very young. Last year I cycled around the Tambov region in honor of its 85th anniversary. I was asked many times, where did this desire to travel came from. I traveled to all 23 Tambov region districts, that include 8 cities. At the end I realized where these verses came from. I remember my classmates wrote me in the 6th grade, "We wish to become Thor Heyerdahl, so that our whole class could ride in his huge boat."

- Is it right that your first trip on a bicycle to Vladivostok was 1995?

- Nobody can ride that far on the first try. I went on my first trip in the fourth grade. In the sixth grade I wished to become a Thor Heyerdahl. My first long trip has happened in 1989, before the army service. I have managed to travel from St. Petersburg through the Baltics and back home.

After the army I came home and began to prepare for my Vladivostok trip. The first thing I needed were the maps. However, there was a problem: at a time it was possible to buy only local maps. So my army friends sent me the maps of the Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Far East regions. I have copied them incorporating all the important destinations.

Then my plans were altered again. There was a "revolution" in our country in 1991. I had to earn money urgently because its value was changing every day. After several years of work, I decided on going to Vladivostok. It was 1994. I’ve managed to get to Ufa, where my bicycle has fell apart. I could not bear such an overload since I had to carry my clothes and food, which was in short supply.

So I had to come back home and repair the bike. I came to the local bicycle club, where I was offered to put together another bicycle, so I started to build bicycles. I have been always an inventor deep inside, and then the opportunity came along. Then, I have always been interested in sports standards, and I read somewhere that one has to travel five kilometers in eight minutes in order to fulfill cycling category. I tried to do it on my bike; the only thing is that “standard” was meant for a professional sports bike! Nonetheless, I went to Vladivostok with my bicycle in 1995.

- Did you like to read books about traveling as a child?

- There was a boy in our class, his mom worked in the library. She knew well all the children of the class, and she chose books for each of them according to their hobbies. She always gave me books dedicated to the travel, such as Robinson Crusoe and The Mysterious Island. My favorite subjects at school were always geography and mathematics. Our geography teacher used to show a place on the map, and we had to tell what was there. You know the city game? I always won it. When I offer my son to play it, he comments, "There is no use to play with him, we can't win even with an atlas in hand!”

I wrote down all my routes around Eurasia and drew flags of all countries in my school notebooks, which I handled out to the Tambov Sports Museum.

- Were you inspired by the example of the first Russian bicycle traveler Onisim Pankratov, who went around the globe in 1911-1913?

- Onisim Pankratov's story was a great excuse for me to go around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first circumnavigation. However, his voyage was not a full round-the-world trip. If you take a globe, he traveled around its top, from China to Europe and crossed North America. On a flat map that looks kind of wow, but if we crank up the globe it's not that much. For example, Africa doesn't look like the biggest continent on maps, even though it's probably the biggest. On the contrary, Greenland is drawn on maps as a continent, even though it is much smaller.

I got the idea to make a round-the-world trip in honor of the first Russian bicycle traveler when I have read about his journey in 1911. The sports committee of the region supported me and helped me to buy a ticket to the U.S., from where I started the trip.

At first I wanted to repeat Onisim Pankratov's route, but it turned out that circumnavigating the world requires certain rules. Many people say, "I've traveled around the world," but there are rules: how many kilometers you have to travel, what points of the world you have to visit. I was provided with information about that at the World Travelers Union. Well, let's do it, I decided. And so, for seven years I had to fulfill these rules completely: I had to cross all continents. I crossed the whole North America, right up to the Arctic Ocean. I got almost to the Antarctic coast, to the edge of the land of South America. Then I crossed Africa and Australia from the southern to the northern point. It seems that no one has ever ridden a bike that way in Australia, there are deserts there, three hundred kilometers from point to point.

Once I met a Japanese traveler in the Sechura Desert in South America. He was very fashionable, packed with various gadgets... It was back in 2011, when I have had just an ordinary phone. When we stopped in a village, I suggested to spend a night in a local hotel, because a room for two people would be cheaper. He said no way, there's no wi-fi there. Then the Japanese opened his laptop and it showed another hotel two blocks down with wifi. The next morning we had to leave. There was a desert, 180 kilometers across, and 250 kilometers around. I suggested him to go across, but the Japanese guy said, “I'll take the detour, it's perfect for me for five days.” I'm planning to drive across the desert in a day, and he's taking a detour for five days! He surprised me. Then, there was another older traveller from Sweden, who immediately recognized me because he saw my videous and photos online.

- When you traveled around your native Tambov region last year, you gave a speech at many schools. How do children react to your stories?

- I even had meetings in kindergarten. I was invited to speak at the Snowdrop kindergarten in Tambov. I came to 6 years olds at nine in the morning, and I left at half past twelve! The teachers were surprised: how could you keep the attention of six-year-old children for almost three hours?

To the athletic department students I showed sports facilities and activities from different countries. And for the kids I have a selection of exotic fruits and animals; I show them how coconuts, kiwis, mangoes grow... Do you know how a mango grows?

- On a tree?

- It's a huge tree, like apple trees, except that each fruit hangs on a ten-centimeters kind-of string as if it was a Christmas tree. Imagine, a huge tree with mangoes hanging on it. We were discussing with these kids what that fruit tastes like, what are their taste preferences. Besides photos, I had souvenirs from different countries: tomahawk, sombrero, African masks, Peruvian flute. Of course, all these things children could see with their own eyes, and touch.

- You have already visited so many places. What plans do you have for the future? Are you preparing for new travels?

- Just recently we had a tour in the honor of the 150th anniversary of Sergey Rachmaninov. There is a village Ivanovka 150 kilometers from Tambov, where his grandfather's family estate was, where his wife's relatives lived, and Rachmaninov lived there after the marriage. His children were born in Ivanovka in 1903 and 1907. After the Russian Revolution he left for a concert in Sweden and never came back to Russia.

So we have decided to organize a tour in honor of Rachmaninov's anniversary. First, 12 people on bicycles rode through Rachmaninov's places in the Tambov region. And afterwards just three of us reached by the bike Rachmaninov's house in Moscow.

Read also: The 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff is celebrated in Sicily

- So now you are planning more traveling in Russia?

- Not only. During the pandemic I traveled across Russia, I went to Dagestan. And now I have developed amazing route around Africa. I plan to go there in mid October, so that I can get back before the New Year. No one will put up the Christmas tree without me!