Читать книгу A Practical Guidebook for Free Travellers. Translated from Russian by Peter Lagutkin - Антон Кротов - Страница 9

Before setting out, a hitch-hiker must know where he’s going – not just what cities lie on the way but also which roads will have to be used. Of all possible routes from one city to another – the shortest is not necessarily the fastest! Traffic, average speed, driving patterns, road condition vary greatly from highway to highway. Some roads are convenient for hitch-hiking, some are not, and others still can be found on your map but don’t exist in reality.

Roadwork is slowly improving in Russia, and a physically impassable major highway is largely a thing of the past. Arteries connecting Russia’s main cities and marked with the letter M in Russian atlases (such as M-5 from Moscow to Chelyabinsk, or M-18 from St. Petersburg to Murmansk) are all suitable for hitch-hiking, with much traffic round the clock and in every season.

Other roads, marked as those of «local significance’, can be more problematic.

Hitch-hiker’s speed and success will depend on the direction he is headed in. Biggest traffic, best road conditions, and most successful hitch-hiking happens on the roads leading to (or away from) Moscow. Even 2,000km (or 1,240mi) away from the capital, you can feel the pull of the metropolis. It is also quite convenient to travel to and from St. Petersburg, or any other larger urban area such as Chelyabinsk: big cities «draw in» vehicles from hundreds of kilometres away.

Usually, «capitals» (or centres) of first-level administrative divisions (some called oblasts, some krais, some «autonomous republics» in the mind-boggling Russian nomenclature) draw in cars from the entire region. Second-level divisions, the rayons, also have their «capitals» which attract cars from the periphery and eject them in the direction of the regional capital. There are fewer cars in areas near intra-divisional borders than around capitals of divisions.

Major and smaller urban areas act as «magnets,» drawing in cars from surrounding areas. The bigger the «magnet» and the greater the distance from the nearest other «magnet» – the stronger its attraction becomes. Success lies in moving along those «field lines,» whereas trying to cross one of them will be difficult. And where there’s no «force field» at all, i.e., in between the magnets (where borders of divisions, or countries, meet), traffic is the lightest and waiting time the longest, but chances are that when you finally get picked up you will be taken a long way.

It is advisable that everyone should have a road atlas, showing the entire territory of ex-USSR. A great variety of them became available recently, and most typical errors appearing in those published before 2000 have been corrected. But remember that no road atlas is guaranteed to be error-free! There may be a new road, not shown on your map, and drawing traffic away from the one you’ve used before; or you can find that a road or a bridge marked on your map doesn’t actually exist. Ask drivers and hitch-hikers about your planned route and avoid missing an important piece of the puzzle.

In the northernmost part of our country, some roads marked on maps are actually «winter roads,» only functioning from January to March and impassable at any other time.

Travelling abroad, keep it in mind that moving from one country to another can only be done through officially designated border crossings, and this also applies to ex-Soviet (now independent) republics. Some heavy-trafficked roads connecting countries like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan can pass through a border crossing which is only open to citizens of those respective countries and not to any third-country nationals; a Russian (or Western, or Chinese, etc.) traveller trying to cross there will be commanded out of the car and instructed to go look for another way. Or take the Russia – Mongolia crossing near Mondy, convenient for accessing the lake Khuvsgul, where citizens of the Ukraine or Byelorussia will have to make a 2,000-km detour to another crossing at Kyakhta. Some pairs of neighbouring countries in Asia and Africa don’t have any mutual border crossings at all because their rulers are at odds with each other. All such facts need to be found out before you set out on a cross-border journey.

Many border crossings close at night; some close for weekends. Arriving to such a crossing on Friday evening, you may find yourself waiting until Monday morning!

Drivers picking you up in frontier areas are commonly more likely to expect payment for the lift, so take extra care.