Читать книгу A Practical Guidebook for Free Travellers. Translated from Russian by Peter Lagutkin - Антон Кротов - Страница 7

Hitch-hiking (Russian: автостоп, pronounced off-toss-top) means getting free lifts from passing vehicles. There are two common misconceptions about hitch-hiking. One goes: «there are no free rides nowadays» (or: «who’s gonna pick you up for nothing?»). The other one is to the effect of, «it is pure luck when you get just the lift you needed,» or «you never know when you get there.» The good news is, both have been proven wrong by numerous hitch-hikers (myself included). Believe it or not, we get lifts (from cars and lorries), don’t pay (and aren’t expected to), and, to boot, when we hitch-hike, we can control the process.

Hitch-hiking (Anton Krotov and Katerina Boyarova)

Moreover, many patterns we notice while hitch-hiking in Russia work all the same in the other ex-Soviet states, in Eurasia, in Africa, and just about everywhere. You yourself can try this out when you want to.

Like all other things people do, hitch-hiking can be done either consistently («professionally’) – or spontaneously, or out of need, or casually. «Spontaneous» hitch-hiking without any rules or methods emerged in the first decades of the 20th century, with the advent of motor transport. In our time, people often flag down a passing car to get somewhere, sometimes for free, but not many of them know that information about hitch-hiking can be systematised in a certain way, turning it into a robust, comprehensive travelling method.

Having mastered the methods of hitch-hiking, one can cover about 500 to 600km (or about 350mi) in ten hours (in the daytime, sticking to major roads). For example, you can set out from Moscow and reach St. Petersburg or Minsk on the same day – or you can spend 24 hours on the road and reach Petrozavodsk, or Samara, or Brest (Byelorussia), or Rostov-on-Don, with no fares to pay or train schedules to keep in mind, sometimes faster than the train. Finally, your journey will be more of a lesson, teaching you things you would never have learnt in other ways – and letting you feel the genuine taste of the road experience.