After rising at 5 a.m., we took the train to Friedman, not far from Partisansk, where mountains loom nearby. Crowds on their way to weekend trips, family visits and traditional May Day potato-planting squeezed into the train. In one car, two young men engaged in a guitar battle, each trying to gather more sleepy listeners to his side. This meant chopping wood, building a fire and hanging pots on a branch stretched across the blaze. In Russia, camping equipment Westerners take for granted, such as miniature gas stoves and light-weight nylon backpacks, are simply too expensive for most outdoors people.
Many campers make their own backpacks out of canvas, and tents from discarded parachute material.
And an ax is a must, since meals are cooked over the fire. Also, there is no such thing as freeze-dried food. Everything has to be cooked from scratch, and since Russians believe it is important to eat as much meat as possible, everyone lugs cans of stewed meat to mix with porridge. The river was low this year, which meant an unusual amount of portaging and maneuvering around rocks. But when the rafts could simply float, there was time to notice the subtle arrival of spring.