Rushin' Through Russia, Crawling Through Crimea

Odessa, July 2nd Terri and I are in Odessa, a very European-feeling cosmopolitan city, after a long night bus journey from Yalta. I ordinarily avoid all encounters with public transport, but the ferry that we thought would take us from Yalta to Odessa didn't exist, so we were reduced to the ignominy of a night bus. Since I last wrote, Terri and I rode eight days from Sochi to Yalta, along the northeast coast of the Black Sea. It was a lot harder going than I had expected, for a number of reasons: extreme hilliness, heavy traffic and a day and a half of crazy winds. We were quite relieved to make it to Yalta when we had planned to, and also quite happy to take a couple of days off the bike before heading off towards Moldova tomorrow. Terri and I were quite happy to have a leisurely couple of days off in Sochi. I was able to find a local bike mechanic to rebuild my back wheel with a new rim, and we were able to enjoy the wonderful sets, great lighting and fabulous voices of the local opera company performing Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades. By coincidence I had just read the Pushkin short story on which the opera is based, so I could follow the story. Terri was entranced by her first-ever opera. On the second day, we were able to lounge by the pool at our swanky hotel, getting ourselves psyched up for the road ahead. Our first day out of Sochi was perhaps the least enjoyable of the eight days. The traffic was relentless, with endless trucks grinding by noisily, covering us with diesel fumes. The road was a constant roller-coaster, climbing up hills and then diving steeply downward to cross rivers. We had hoped to make it to Tuapse, or perhaps beyond, but we had to stop at the small beach town of Shepsi, after 103 hard-fought kilometres and 2300 vertical metres. Terri snapped a spoke within an hour of starting cycling, and I was lucky to be able to fix it, as she had no spare spokes. Luckily, it was the spoke nipple that snapped, and not the spoke itself, and my spare nipples fit. In Shepsi, we enjoyed the cultural anthropology of watching the Russians at play on the beach: it was like every carnival sideshow strip in the world rolled together into one. People were firing BB guns at tin cans, trying to win stuffed animals; punching electronic punching bags; having their hair done in cornrows; barbecuing kebabs on the rocky shore; posing in the waves for sunset photos; being fired into the air by bungee catapults; having their fortunes read; buying hideous souvenirs. The next day began with more of the same: heat, hills and hideous traffic, as far as the important road junction of Djugba. Towards the end of the day, the hills relented a bit, but we only covered 80 km and climbed 1500 metres. We stayed in a small tourist apartment run by a cheerful local family, had a dip on the local beach, and went out to a local nightclub to dance to Russian pop tunes. One of the songs had the chorus line of "Dolce e Gabbana", appropriate given the Russian love of name brand consumer items. I tried a Dagestani brandy that tasted rather like distilled sweet sherry. On the third morning, much of the heavy truck traffic and some of the tourist car traffic vanished as we passed the road junction to Krasnodar and the cities of central Russia. The road flattened a bit as well, and we made good progress through a prosperous-looking countryside full of fruit orchards and roadside fruit stands. We had a lovely lunch stop beside a pretty waterfall, swam in the swimming hole below and enjoyed being out of traffic and in nature. The ride along the coast to Novorossiysk was pleasant and gave great coastal views. We stopped for a beer at a cafe run by a very personable Ukrainian named Stepan, who regaled us with tall tales. A few minutes later, a former professional cyclist named Edvard, a very well-preserved 72-year-old, stopped us to ask Terri if she would sell him her bicycle. He wasn't impressed with Terri's touring setup, or my cycling style (seat too high, not perfectly level). We rode through the immense industrial sprawl of Novorossiysk looking for a place to stay and for a bike shop to buy Terri some spokes. We struck out on spokes, but found a pleasant hotel in a forest behind a soccer stadium to sleep the sleep of the dead after 115 km. The last day in Russia was an absolute marathon. We climbed up over a hill to get out of Novorossiysk and entered a landscape transformed. Gone were the Caucasus, my constant companion since Gori, replaced by the great Eurasian steppe: rolling treeless plains stretching off to Manchuria in the east and Hungary in the west. The advantage of the steppe for cycling is that it's pretty flat; the disadvantage is that there's no shelter from the wind. We had several episodes of tough headwinds, but they were compensated by long stretches of tailwind that allowed us to rack up an impressive 145 km to the very end of the road in Russia, a 10-km sand spit leading to Port Kavkaz, a ferry port leading to the Crimea. We were shattered after nearly 9 hours in the saddle, especially as the last 10 km were into a ferocious headwind. We caught a late ferry and slept on the Ukrainian side in the "VIP lounge" at the ferry terminal, on some very comfortable couches. We awoke to a howling gale, and were told that this was pretty usual for this corner of the world. The difference in temperature between the Black Sea (to the south) and the Sea of Azov (to the north) creates constant screaming southerly winds that rake this barren, treeless corner of the Crimea. We battled gale-force crosswinds all day, finally giving up the fight after 73 hard-fought kilometres in which Terri (whose lightly loaded bike cut through the wind better than my heavy bike with its big front panniers) spent a lot of time trying to break the wind for me. We searched for a place to stay, but in this bleak Mongolian landscape, there were few people living and no hotels. We searched a nearby village for a place to put up our tent, and were shocked by the bleak, grinding rural poverty evident in the houses. We were relieved to find a nearby Uzbek chaikhana open, and slurped down lots of mutton and potatoes before putting up our tent in the shelter of their rose garden. We awoke to more howling winds and cold, grey skies. It took more hours of struggle to finally reach the coast near Feodosiya, where it was a shock to the system to find vast holiday hotel complexes; it was a world away from the Hungry Steppe we had just crossed. We had a lavish lunch at a posh restaurant, watching dolphins frolic offshore, and enjoyed being out of the fury of the tempest. We rode along, in calm air, past Feodosiya and over a hill to the small, pretty bay of Koktebel, surrounded by the vineyards that produce its excellent brandy (a huge step up from the Dagestani stuff). Although we had only done 60 km, we stopped early to let ourselves recover from the wind. We wandered the boardwalk, eating pizza and shashlik and (thanks to my mistranslation of a menu) chicken livers before turning in, hoping that the next day would be easier. It wasn't. We had a day equally vertical (2300 m) as the first day out of Sochi, although with much nicer views and far fewer cars. The hills were ridiculously steep, and we spent a lot of time far above the coast, in a landscape that seemed out of the Greek islands: limestone, vineyards, sparse savanna, golden grass. Occasionally we would dip to the coast, where Russians and Ukrainians were camping on the nicest beaches we'd seen yet. The day ended with Terri almost mutinous at the thought of yet another climb, but we set off and found a lovely beach at Ribache waiting for us on the other side. We devoured huge quantities of noodles, dumplings and shashlik before collapsing into bed in a fancy tourist apartment with wonderful sea views. The last day into Yalta had another fantastically vertical morning, but then, after fortifying ourselves in the town of Alushta for more of the same, the afternoon featured only one big climb and then a more-or-less level traverse, looking down on pretty bays and up at high coastal mountains. We dropped into Yalta, found a place to stay, and set about trying to find the ferry that was going to take us to Odessa. We quickly found that it didn't exist, so we changed plans and, after an enjoyable evening taking in the atmosphere of the boardwalk, yesterday morning we got bus tickets and then set off on foot to visit Yalta's most famous attraction, Tsar Nicholas II's summer home at the Great Livadia Palace. It is more famous as the site of the Yalta Conference, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt decided the fate of post-war Europe. After a long walk through the post-Soviet concrete disaster zone that is southern Yalta, we came out at the beautiful palace and enjoyed the views. By complete coincidence, a month ago I was at the site of the last great WWII Allied leaders' conference, at Potsdam, outside Berlin, where I kayaked past the houses used by Stalin, Trumana and Attlee during those talks. And a couple of weeks ago, in Gori, I walked through the rail car that Stalin took from Moscow to Yalta (well, to Simferopol) for the Yalta Conference. World War Two is dogging my footsteps, and will continue to do so as I cycle onwards this summer across what historian Timothy Snyder has dubbed the Bloodlands. We had a lovely day off in Odessa today, walking the streets, checking out the Pushkin Museum (he was exiled here for a year early in his career) and the famous Potemkin Steps and soaking up the lovely atmosphere. Tomorrow, it's back to the bikes, and an early start towards Trans-Dniestria (another slightly fictional ex-Soviet pseudo-state) and then Moldova, where Terri will head back to work, leaving me to continue northwest into Romania, Hungary and Slovakia before coming back to the Ukraine.

Cracking Up in Sochi

Sochi, June 20th

I have been pretty lax about updating my blog since the beginning of the trip, but now that I have a few days off the bike, here in the Russian Riviera, it's a good chance for me to bring myself up to date.

I last wrote from Gori. After my day off there with Stalin (and the disturbing mementos: Stalin beer glasses? Busts? Wine? We've got them!) and the medieval cave city of Uplistsikhe, I rode for nine consecutive days, heading west, then looping north through the wonderful tower-studded valleys of Svaneti, before returning to the lowlands to head across the breakaway republic of Abkhazia and into Russia.

The two days I spent riding to Kutaisi, along the main east-west Georgian highway, were fairly dreadful in terms of cycling. The traffic was intense, full of aggressive lunatics in Ladas, the scenery was indifferent, and it spent much of both days raining. On the first night, I found myself staying in a room in a holiday dacha in an old Soviet spa town called Sorami, surrounded by quite lovely pine forests. I was glad to be indoors, as most of the afternoon and night saw an enormous downpour hammering down. The second night, in Kutaisi, I stayed with a cheerful Georgian family in their homestay near the cathedral of Kutaisi, which looked lovely from a distance but proved to be a ruin under scaffolding when I got closer.

From this point onwards, cycling got a lot harder. Two years ago, when I was last in Georgia, I rode up the three main roads leading into the Caucasus in eastern Georgia, but didn't have time to explore the most famous area in the Georgian mountains, the remote region of Svaneti. This year's swing through Georgia was largely planned in order to remedy this omission. I set off from Kutaisi on a four-day blitzkrieg mission to get to Svaneti and back. I chose to take a back road, up through the town of Lentekhi and Lower Svaneti, then up over the 2620-metre-high Zagar Pass and into Upper Svaneti. Most tourists skip this route, as few jeeps take this remote and poorly-maintained track, and I thought it would be good to take advantage of having my own wheels to explore it.

The ride to Lentekhi was remarkably easy, with pavement most of the way, despite reports to the contrary. I started out passing through the grand old sanatorium town of Tskaltubo, where the local police kindly escorted me through the unsigned maze of roads that made up the town. The road did not climb as much as I would have hoped in elevation, despite lots of annoying ups and downs over foothills to get into the right valley (the delightfully unpronounceable Tskhenistkali). There were beautiful sections of deep gorge, with walls of rock and forests of oak and hornbeam soaring overhead. Eventually the valley relented and a broad basin of agricultural villages flanked the road, with prosperous-looking orchards not yet bearing fruit. I got more attention from the police in Tsageri, and then, as the day ended and I found a secluded riverside campsite, another group of police showed up to make sure I was OK. I appreciated the concern, but not the fact that they returned at midnight and 5 am to wake me up and make sure I was OK. It was not a restful night!

The next day was brutally hard, as the road deteriorated into little more than a mudslide and I fought my way uphill past the zone of permanent settlement. I passed a deserted village (nobody had moved uphill for the summer grazing season yet) and camped at the head of a magnificent valley, with a huge peak soaring into the (rain)clouds and an immense glacier providing the start of a rushing mountain river. Unfortunately, this idyllic spot's charms were dampened by the unrelenting rain that had dogged me all afternoon, the horrific state of the jeep track (a pass by a bulldozer had only made it worse; I pushed the bike for a couple of hours, unable to ride) and the view just downstream. There, in the midst of this majestic scenery, the Soviets had put some sort of industrial operation, perhaps related to road construction, perhaps related to the military. It lay in ruins, surrounded by thousands of rusting metal barrels which coloured the soil and water. I have no idea what was in them, but it didn't look at all healthy. I stayed well uphill of this zone of poison and slept well on a bed of grass and spectacular wildflowers.

The next morning I awoke to yet more rain, and spent the morning pushing my bike up over the last few hundred vertical metres of the Zagar Pass, a wonderful area of pristine meadows, birds, frogs and wildflowers. There was still a lot of snow around, but luckily the bulldozer had cleared a path through the patches that had covered the road until a few days previously. When I finally reached the top, the descent proved to be almost as hard as the ascent, trying to keep my bike under control on the rockfall that was the road surface. The track would disappear periodically into bomb-crater-sized mud puddles that were remarkably hard to ride. Eventually, brakes locked, I slithered into Ushguli, the highest village in Svaneti, bristling with the medieval-looking defensive towers that make Svaneti legendary. The towers were there, but it was raining so hard it was hard to take out my camera and try to capture them. Eventually I gave up the struggle and headed down a narrow, gloomy gorge where the Ingur river starts its long march to the Black Sea. I bottomed out at another pretty, rainy village, then climbed up over a small pass to a tributary valley where it stopped raining for the first time in over 24 hours. The view down into this valley was enchanting, a series of villages, each boasting a half-dozen or more Svan towers, under the green slopes of the valley's forests and meadows, adorned with yellow rhododendron blooms. I took my share of photos, then bumped down to find a place to stay in Mestia, the region's capital.

Refreshed by some wonderful cooking at Nino's homestay, I set off early the next morning for what I hoped would be an epic day. The road down to Zugdidi had been described to me by locals as "normalno", but it was an endless morass of mud and construction for the first 90 km. The first few dozen kilometres gave me great views, as the sun had come out to reveal the high peaks of the Caucasus. I was particularly taken by the view of Ushba, the emblematic Svan summmit. After this, the road dropped into the deep gorge of the Ingur that swallowed up all expansive vistas. I kept soldiering on grimly, and eventually, halfway around a huge hydroelectric reservoir, I saw the first real pavement I'd seen in three days. Heartened by this, as well as by a couple of cups of wine and some food that were forced on me by a merry birthday party beside the road, I dug deep and rode hard until 9 pm, through the richest, lushest part of Georgia, getting to Zugdidi at dusk. I ate an enormous meal and slept like the dead after ten and a half hours and 140 km over terrible roads.

I awoke feeling surprisingly fresh and rode off to the Abkhaz border the next morning. I had waited months to get my permission to enter this self-declared independent state (it broke away from Georgia during a bloody 1992-93 war that saw 70% of the population flee to Georgia), and I was slightly nervous about the various visa and border-crossing problems that could arise. I needn't have worried. After a rather gruff interrogation from the Georgians, I made my way across my companion for the past two days, the Ingur River, and entered Abkhazia, unsure what to expect.

Southern Abkhazia, or at least what I could see of it through the steady rain, was a largely depopulated wasteland, with nature reclaiming hundreds of abandoned houses and overgrown orchards. I rode along, hoping to get to Sukhumi before 6 pm in order to get my visa at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I showed up at 5, but was told that the bank at which I had to pay my fee was closed, and could I come back on Monday? I gritted my teeth, found an overpriced hotel, and settled in for the best sleep I'd had since the beginning of the trip.

I decided to try my luck at the northern border without a visa, and so set off to Gagra the next morning, after finding the only money-changer open on a Saturday. Abkhazia is off the world banking grid, so no ATMs and credit cards work there, and there are no private moneychangers. It added up to a late departure, but the ride to Gagra was short and easy, even with a stop to see the impressive Russian Orthodox monastery in Novy Afon (New Athos, as in Mt. Athos in Greece). Gagra was throbbing with Russian tourists, and I found a little homestay, went for a slightly disappointing swim, a satisfying supper and a beer at a nightclub that was full of Russian families dancing away with their children until the power went out all over town and we all went home to sleep at 10:30.

Yesterday I set off from Gagra for the border somewhat apprehensive. Would I be sent back to Sukhumi to collect my visa? Would I be told that I couldn't cross the border at all? (When I applied for my visa, I was told that it was forbidden to use Abkhazia to cross between Georgia and Russia.) As it turned out, after a pleasant seaside ride, with lovely vistas of forested mountains dropping into the Black Sea, the Abkhaz never even looked at me as I followed a line of Russian cars leading to the Russian passport post. A quick stamp, and I was into Russia.

Sochi is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the road leading from the border to Sochi is an endless construction zone that made riding very unpleasant. I was pleased to make it into town unscathed. Terri is joining me tomorrow for the next leg of this ride, so I will have a couple of days off the bike, good for letting tired muscles rebuild. Sochi so far seems like an overpriced, underwhelming beach resort full of the Russian nouveaux-riches. I am told that the coastline improves as you head northwest along the coast, so I'm hoping for better things soon.

More worryingly, I found a series of cracks in my rear wheel rim yesterday. This means that the wheel will have to be rebuilt with a new rim. I have to find the local bike mechanic this afternoon and make sure that he can do the job. This is the second rim that I have trashed on this bike; the first one was probably a freak flaw in the rim, but this wheel was never as robust as it should have been, and I'm a bit unhappy at the Swiss mechanics who looked it over and declared it fine a few weeks ago.

So from here, the plan is to ride through the Russian Riviera to the Crimea, crossing into the Ukraine, and then taking a ferry from Yalta to Odessa before riding into Trans-Dniestria, Moldova and Romania. I'm reading ahead in my Lonely Planet, getting excited about upcoming destinations. I can't wait!

Peace and Tailwinds

Graydon

The Gori Details

June 10, Gori

I have never started a bike trip so slothfully. After two days of indolence in Tbilisi, I rode all of 85 km yesterday, getting here to Gori, Stalin's birthplace, and promptly took a day off. In my defence, I had planned to get here early enough in the day to go to the infamous Stalin Museum before it closed, but heat, hills, my own slowness and a flat tire right on the outskirts of town put paid to that plan, and once I had to stay here half the day, I decided to make a day of it and see the fortress of Uplistsikhe too.

To recap from the beginning, I got to Tbilisi late on Monday afternoon, after bad weather made me miss a connection in Munich. After too few hours sleeping in the luxurious Movenpick Hotel bed that Lufthansa gave me, I flew through Istanbul to Tbilisi and went to bed exhausted.

My two full days in Tbilisi were great fun. The last time I was here, 2 years ago, I arrived shattered from a series of big mountain passes on the bicycle, so I really just sat around and ate. This time I found the energy to explore the restored Old Town (quite Persian in its feel, although also a bit too cute for its own good), soak in the famous hot springs that were Tbilisi's original reason for existence (Pushkin's favourite bath of his life happened there) and look at the impressive collection of gold and silver ornaments at the remarkably empty National Museum. I also ate lots of good food (khinkali, khachapuri and shashlik) and had perhaps one or two too many beers the last night while listening to live music at the Irish pub Dublin.

I have been feeling very tired since the end of the school year, perhaps relief from tension, and so this was probably not the best way to start my bike trip: already tired, and with too few hours of quality sleep. Whatever the reason, it was a slow, surprisingly tiring first day from Tbilisi to Gori. I took a back road south of the Mtkvari river, and so at least missed the appalling post-Soviet driving on the main road. A tourist I met called the way Georgians drive "apocalyptic", and he's not far wrong: weaving randomly around, taking corners at speeds incompatible with the miserable brakes and tires that their antiquated cars sport, never signalling, and treating traffic lights as a mild suggestion. I was tired by the time I got within sight of Gori, only to run over a thorn and lose 30 minutes of Stalin-gazing to repairing the flat tire.

The museum today was disturbing. A lot of money and effort was put into the museum in Soviet times, building a big edifice vaguely reminiscent of El Escorial, putting the old shack in which young Iosif Jugashvili spent his first few years under an Egyptian-style temple enclosure, and building up a comprehensive hagiography of Saint Joseph Stalin. There are a few glaring omissions in the story of The Man Who Saved Russia And The World. Look as I might, I could not see a single picture of Trotsky, Stalin's rival whom he had ice-picked to death in his Mexican exile. There was not a single mention of the Ukrainian and Kazakh famines, the Great Terror of the 1930s, the Gulag or any other possible character flaws. Lots of Father of the Nation photos, but no mention that most of the people in pictures with him in the 1920s would be shot in the purges a decade later. Only at the very end, after the room with his death mask in a circular Pantheon-like enclosure, is there a brief display of books about Stalin, not all of which are complimentary. But then outside, at the gift shop, they seem to be doing a brisk trade in 20-dollar busts, 15-dollar beer glasses and commemorative plates. It made me fairly nauseous, especially the faux-religious atmosphere (shared with the Maosoleum in Beijing and the tomb of Ho Chin Minh in Hanoi).

The ruins at Uplistsikhe, on the other hand, were much better than advertised. Like Vardzia and Davit Gereja, these are cave churches hollowed out of the soft sandstone cliffs beside the river outside Gori. The rock is soft enough that most of the ceilings have collapsed, but the walls and floors still stand, showing both early Christian churches (as in Cappadocia, in Turkey) and pre-Christian temples. It was pretty and breezy and there were great views, so it was a lovely spot to wash away the post-Stalin-Museum aftertaste from my mouth.

Tomorrow, it's back to the bike, riding towards Svaneti. I finally have my Abkhazian "visa" so I should be good to ride through that breakaway republic and out the other side to Sochi. If that doesn't work, I'll have to hop a bus to Trabzon in Turkey and catch a ferry from there to Sochi.

Peace and Tailwinds

Graydon

The Freedom of the Eastern Roads

Leysin, Switzerland, June 4 The school year has come to an end, and while I need to put up some pictures and stories from the spring term and the great cycling that I've enjoyed, it's time to talk briefly about this summer's upcoming travels. I'm flying to Tbilisi, Georgia tomorrow evening, with my trusty Rocky Mountain bicycle, ready for two and half months of travelling the eastern fringe of Europe. I love having a long, continuous block of time for travel, and the summer vacations here at Leysin American School are ideal for that. I also love filling in blanks on my personal map of the world, and the east of Europe, particularly the ex-Soviet fringe, is terra incognita for me for the most part. I should, if all goes well, visit eleven new countries (nine real countries, and two pseudostates--Abkhazia and Trans-Dniestria), bringing me over the 100-country mark in terms of my lifetime total. After this summer, the only European countries that I won't have visited at least once will be Ireland, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and (randomly) Slovenia. So the plan is to fly to Tbilisi tomorrow and ride up to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, from where I will return to Leysin on August 18th. The projected itinerary is the following: Tbilisi Svaneti Abkhazia Sochi (Russia) Kerch (Ukraine) Crimea Ferry to Odessa Odessa Transdniestria Moldova N. Romania Hungary Slovakia Lvov (Ukraine) W. Belarus Lithuania Latvia Estonia It should be about 5500 km or so of cycling, depending on exact routes. I may also, if I have enough time, nip into the funny little Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (the former East Prussian city of Konigsberg) on the way out of Vilnius. I'm looking forward to the trip a lot. It has been a tiring school year here, and I need to clear out the mental and emotional cobwebs, and I find the road and the simplicity and discipline which it imposes is perfect for just that. I just finished reading a meticulously researched, compelling and somewhat depressing book called Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder. It explores the mass killings perpetrated by Stalin and Hitler in the lands between Russia and Germany from 1932 to 1947. My route this summer basically rolls over and through the Bloodlands, making for a slightly grim theme tying together the various countries along the route. I hope to keep the blog updated at least weekly, although that may depend a bit on computer access and internet quality. I hope that the pictures, maps, stats and stories keep you entertained as you follow the blog. Peace and Tailwinds Graydon

A Disappointing Winter

Leysin, March 30, 2011 It's a grey, rainy day and Leysin is swathed in a veil of cloud that makes it feel as though my mountain eyrie is completely alone in the world. Quite pretty, very uninviting for outdoor activities, and so a perfect day to reflect on the last three months here in the Swiss Alps, while listening to a backlog of BBC and CBC radio podcasts. (Yes, I am a nerd!) When I last updated this blog (yes, Kent, I am still the world's laziest blogger!), the winter term here at Leysin American School was about to begin. I was looking forward to it, as Tuesdays and Thursdays during the winter are half-days for classes, ending at lunchtime, followed by afternoons on the ski slopes. It sounded idyllic, and, being a huge fan of skiing, I was looking forward to being on the slopes four days a week, plus a few evenings of skinning up the Berneuse for a nocturnal ski down. In fact, the winter turned out to be a colossal disappointment. After a beautiful snowfall on Christmas Eve, it simply stopped snowing. In Leysin, it was almost two months before it snowed again, although it did rain once or twice. Leysin's ski slopes were appalling: icy strips of artificial snow, frequently soggy and wet, with rocks peeking through. In addition to not having any new snow, it was also remarkably warm, sometimes hot, throughout January and early February. On February 6th and 7th, I took pictures of some of our students sunbathing in hammocks, and having class outdoors. On February 12th, I had a great bike ride to Interlaken, through the ski resort of Gstaad, with barely a flake of snow to be seen anywhere. It was not just Leysin that suffered, although we had probably the sunniest, warmest weather. Most of Switzerland also had an almost completely snow-free winter. I did go out skiing a few times, searching for that elusive endangered species, snow. I had a few good days at the nearest high-altitude resort, Glacier 3000, up above Diablerets, about a 30-minute drive from Leysin. It went bankrupt a few years ago and was bought by a few Gstaad residents, including Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone. The slopes on top of the glacier are generally not terribly steep, but between wind and very localized snowfall, there was often fresh powder up top. As well, the steeper slopes of the Combe d'Audon were open sometimes, and when they were in powder, they were truly excellent, despite the irritatingly long series of lifts to get back to the top. I went out on a ski tour to Le Metailler, a 3000-metre mountain south of the resort of Super Nendaz, in early February, but, although we were up high, and although the views were wonderful, the snow was mushy soup full of rocks. I did a very informative avalanche course with a local mountain guide, Roger Payne, at Glacier 3000 (since there wasn't enough snow in Leysin to even pretend that there could be an avalanche). I went with Terri to the lovely surroundings of the Gemmipass, up above Leukerbad, and had a great weekend playing on our inflatable Airboards. Another weekend, we hiked up the snowed-in road to the top of the Grand St. Bernard Pass, had soup and tea at the Hospice run by the local monks, and airboarded back down. Mostly I played squash and rode my bicycle, trying to make the most of a bad situation. My friends in BC and Japan kept e-mailing me to tell me about the epic snow years they were having, while I looked out at the flowers blooming in February and wondered what the hell I was doing in the Alps. A three-day weekend in late February had been pencilled in for some skiing, but with the drought continuing, I decided to add to my country count instead, and flew up to Copenhagen to visit my Yangon tennis friend Hans, who now works for the WHO in Copenhagen. It was cold and wintry and clear, and I had a great time, wandering the streets, visiting the Little Mermaid, gawking at the amazing displays in the flagship Lego store, and playing tennis with Hans. Neither a case of being poisoned by a dodgy kebab (in Denmark?!?!) nor the uniformly high prices put me off enjoying my 94th country. When I got back, it had actually snowed, and I had one week rather like the ones I had envisaged: skiing Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in Leysin, powder at Glacier 3000 on Saturday, and snowboarding on Sunday in fresh powder in Leysin. The following week, I toured up the Pic Chaussy with my sister Audie and a couple of my colleagues, and despite there not having been snow for three days, and despite the Pic Chaussy being perhaps the most popular ski touring peak in French-speaking Switzerland, we still had fresh tracks on the way down. That weekend, I did two ski tours near Leysin with Terri, one up the col beside the Pic Chaussy (some fantastic cold, deep powder on the shady north-facing slopes) and an eye-opener of the possibilities near Diablerets, when we toured from Isenau to L'Etivaz. A week after the last snowfall, and we still had great snow. I feel that if we could find that sort of snow in the worst winter in years in the Alps, next year I will have better ideas of where to go hunt elusive powder. A final weekend before the two-week spring break looked unpromising for snow in Switzerland, so Terri and I drove through the Grand St. Bernard tunnel to Aosta, Italy and its excellent food and general cheeriness. It was a much snowier world down there, and we had a decent day of skiing in Pila, before spending the next day walking and lunching in the snowy, pretty valley of Cogne as great fat flakes of snow belted down out of us. I was excited at the prospects of snow back in Switzerland, but as soon as the car poked its nose out of the tunnel into Switzerland, it became obvious that, as had happened several times this winter, the snow clouds had only peeked over the mountains into Switzerland before turning back again into snowy Italy. In places near the Grand St. Bernard, snow levels were only 20% of their historical average this winter. It amazes me that after a winter spent living in a ski resort in the Alps, I only once went to one of the famous Swiss ski resorts (Zermatt), since most weekends the snow was so miserable that it wasn't worth driving a couple of hours for more rotten snow. I certainly hope next ski season is better! For the spring break, I had tossed up the idea of abandoning the Alps in favour of the Persian Gulf, but the occasional snowfall that we had started to receive made me decide to stay in the Alps for two weeks of ski touring. I planned two five-day trips: first the Wildstrubel Route (click on "Prospectus" for the route) from Glacier 3000 to Kandersteg, then, after a day off, the classic Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt. The Wildstrubel Route was fantastic. With my colleague Sion, I skied east under perfectly bluebird skies, along the crest of the Pre-Alpine Ridge, bagging a series of 3000-metre peaks and skiing down through fresh powder (the heavy snowfall the day before we set off helped make for fresh tracks every day). It was a seductive lifestyle: an early breakfast, five or six hours of skinning up and then skiing down peaks, arriving at our comfortable Swiss Alpine Club huts in the early afternoon, having a beer and some rosti, taking an afternoon nap, eating a lavish evening meal, and then tucking up into bed at an early hour, ready for another day of the same. There were 19 people following the same route and same itinerary, and it was fun getting to know them and sharing ideas and travel tips for the mountains. The fourth and fifth days, around the Laemerrenhutte and the Gemmipass, were the highlights, with fantastic views of the High Alps and the best powder descents, with the Rothorn providing probably the single best ski run of the entire winter. After a lazy day in Leysin, I changed ski partners and headed to Chamonix with my colleague Paul. The plan was to spend five days ski touring between the twin meccas of Alpine sports, Chamonix and Zermatt. The weather forecast looked less brilliant than it had for the Wildstrubel Route, and so it proved. Getting to Chamonix on the little train from Martigny was a highlight of the trip, as we chugged up the spectacular Trient Gorge. Chamonix was a shock to the system after the quiet and beauty of the Wildstrubel trip, with the train filled to overflowing with hordes of skiers, and the city pulsing with the energy of tens of thousands of tourists. After a less than restful night in a local dive, we set off for the Grand Montet lift, where we found ourselves in the worst lift lines I have ever seen anywhere. We got to the bottom by 9 am, and skied off the top at 11 am. For such a mega-resort, Chamonix has some pretty antiquated and poorly-designed lift infrastructure. It was hot as we skied down a bumpy, unpleasant slope to the Argentiere glacier and put on our skins for the climb up to the Col du Chardonnet. The climb was relatively easy, but the weather clouded over and it began to snow. At the top of the col, it became apparent that we had been misinformed about the existence of a fixed rope, and our short glacier rope was clearly too short to get us down the 100 metres of 45-degree icy slope below us. We got halfway down by abseiling on another group's rope, before they abandoned us halfway down, and it took a while to be rescued by the guides from a second group. We arrived at the first day's cabane chastened, late and tired. The second day was more of the same, with an advertised two-hour climb and descent to Champex taking five hours, as we ice-climbed up a hard, steep slope to the Fenetre d'Arpette, having missed the start of an easier col. By the time we skied down rotten, bumpy slush in the Val d'Arpette into Champex, we had missed the last bus to take us to Verbier and the next leg of the tour. With the weather forecast looking gloomy, and our confidence shaken by two epic, rather unpleasant days, we decided to abandon the rest of the Haute Route and leave it for another time. After the spring break, less than two months of actual school remain, and I am busy trying to line up my summer's travels. I have bought a ticket to Tbilisi, in Georgia, and I'm trying to get my Abkhazian, Russian and Belorussian visas for a bicycle ride from Tbilisi, across most of the Eastern European and post-Soviet states that I have yet to visit, to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. I'm really looking forward to this, as it will take me to a few places that I've wanted to visit for years: Svaneti, the Crimea, Transylvania and the Tatra mountains. I will certainly keep the blog updated during this trip, and maybe even before then, as the school year draws towards its close.

A look back at my time in Leysin so far

January 3, 2010

It’s one of the first days of 2011 and I’m at home, nursing an extraordinarily painful tailbone, memento of a heavy fall on an icy slope two days ago while trying to re-learn snowboarding. It's probably not broken, but the bruising and swelling make any sort of sitting down, standing up or lunging forward pretty agonizing. Luckily (in some sense), snow conditions are so poor that I don't feel as though I'm missing much by not being out there every day. I still need to write up a bit about my trip to Newfoundland this summer with my mother, Audie, Saakje and Serge, but that will have to wait for another day to do it justice. The past four months have hurtled past rather like a luge track, and it’s only now, two weeks since classes finished, that I’m starting to feel alive again. Teaching can be a draining experience at the best of times, and when my students are neither particularly gifted (in general) nor particularly motivated, running through the donkey work necessary to run a class can be mentally pretty tough. My surroundings, perched on a mountain surrounded by higher peaks in the Swiss Alps, is pretty spectacular and the recreation opportunities they provide have been a sanity-saver since my arrival here 4 months ago, but I still find myself a bit tired and de-motivated as 2010 winds down. My friend Kent, who visited me at the end of August, called me “the world’s laziest blogger” in a post on his excellent (and un-lazy) blog The Dromomaniac. The charge is true; keeping my blog up-to-date has been one of the casualties of teaching. Now that I have some time to myself, I should really bring you, my faithful and long-suffering readers, up-to-date on my travels this fall. Part of the problem with living in a Western European country is that it’s not really very exotic. Searching for the unfamiliar is one of the main motivations I have for travel, and so I have perhaps travelled less than I would have otherwise. As well, not having a car is an impediment to travel here, despite the extensive public transport network. I hope to remedy that later this year, although used cars are more expensive and less reliable than in Japan, where most of my car ownership and driving has been done up until now. Leysin is a great location for cycling, with lots of mountain passes available for riding, and small tertiary roads and logging trails to escape from the heavy traffic. I tried to get out regularly for the first two months I was here, although I should have done better at taking advantage of the terrain. One of my favourite rides was in early September, when I rode down to Aigle (a very rapid 1000-metre vertical drop) and then up to Villars (another ski resort/international school town nearby), over the Col de la Croix, down to Les Diablerets, up and over the Col du Pillon, down to the gorgeous glitterati gathering place of Gstaad, along a pretty valley to Chateau d’Oex, over the Col des Mosses, down to Sepey and a final 500-vertical-metre climb back into Leysin. By the end of the day, I had climbed over 3000 vertical metres and covered part of a stage of next year’s Tour de Romandie, a professional cycling race used as a tune-up for the Tour de France. I also did a bit of cycling down along the Rhone Valley, where a well-designed bicycle path carries cyclists through forests and along the Rhone, far from the maddening traffic of the main roads. A lovely ride up to Morgins and down to Evian with fellow teachers was another great day in the saddle. Perhaps my favourite cycling of the fall, though, was a weekend spent riding through Burgundy with Terri, the Kiwi teacher I have been seeing here in Leysin, reliving my time as a Butterfield and Robinson cycling guide. I had forgotten how picture perfect the medieval stone villages and high-end vineyards are, and, to cap it off, we stayed in an atmospheric old castle, the Chateau Bellecroix. I also played some good quality tennis and squash here; there are a number of keen and competitive players at LAS, including one teacher who played collegiate tennis and who subsequently was a teaching pro for five years. Leysin is also a perfect spot for running, with forests and fields traversed by a network of trails perfect for trotting along. With my sister Audie eight months pregnant, she and her boyfriend Serge and another friend Daniel and I headed out to the mountains one Saturday to climb the nearby Dents du Midi, the 3000-metre peak that dominates the nearby stretch of the Rhone Valley. It was a long slog, but the weather was perfect and the views from the summit absolutely epic. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day out in the mountains. Some of our students were on their way the following weekend to climb the mountain I got away from Switzerland briefly in October when I flew on EasyJet to Belgium to visit my friend Wido and his family. Wido is working for a company in Geel, a small town in the Flemish countryside, and it was great to see him again after a number of years. I spent a day poking around the city of Antwerp, which I had never seen before, and another playing tennis with Wido and his two boys, followed by a long ride through the countryside on the well-organized bicycle paths that run everywhere. The weather was perfect, and it was all in all the best possible way to spend a rare long weekend. Shortly thereafter, I took part in a couple of genuinely Swiss festivals. First of all I made it, slightly late, to the desalpage of Etivaz, a celebration of the seasonal migration of the cows that produce the famous local cheese from the high summer pastures to the warmer lowlands. The next day I went with my mother and Terri to another cow-centred event, the famous cowfights of Martigny. Swiss cows (the females; we’re not talking about bulls here, although these cows are bigger than most bulls I’ve ever seen) are bred to be territorial and aggressive, and in early October the local farmers bring their biggest and butchest to the 2000-year-old Roman amphitheatre of Martigny to test their alpha dominance against other cows. Ten or so of these bovine behemoths are turned loose together, and after lots of ritualized snorting and pawing at the ground, eventually pairs of cows lock horns and the losers are escorted back out of the ring. I can’t say that I followed all the niceties of the rules, but I don’t think the crowd, big on biceps, mustaches, tattoos, motorcycles and wine, did much better than I did. It was a fascinating display, and one that I’m not sure occurs in many other parts of the world. It was a nice physical-cultural combination to have a wonderful bicycle ride along the Rhone to get to and from the Combat of the Queens. I accompanied a group of high school students on a school trip to an Outward Bound centre in the Bavarian Alps in Schwangau, Germany, a few kilometres from Mad King Ludwig’s fantastical Neuschwanstein castle at Fussen. The setting was excellent, and we had heavy snow to make the surroundings even more fairytale-like. The students were, by and large, not terribly enthusiastic or good company, but a few of them enjoyed it. We did some rock-climbing, a ropes course and built a home-made flying fox across a forest ravine. The highlight (for me) was a three-day hike up to stay in a back-country hut and a climb to the summit of a nearby mountain through a wonderful sugar-frosted treescape. I think the mountain guide and I enjoyed the walk far more than our seven students. I was struck, not for the first time, by the fact that the children of the hyper-rich seem to lack a great deal when it comes to motivation, determination and toughness. A wander through Neuschwanstein on the way home and an evening soaking in 19th-century thermal baths added a veneer of cultural to this “cultural trip”. Having our van engine crack and die on the way home, necessitating a long pit stop and then piling everyone into one overcrowded bus for the long haul back to Leysin was some sort of icing on the cake of this experience. In mid-November, I headed south of the Alps on a one-day marathon expedition to see a soccer match, the fabled Milan Derby between AC Milan (Silvio Berlusconi’s team, the most successful Italian team of all time) and Inter Milan (champion for the last 5 seasons and last year’s European champions). It was a long drive, and the weather in Milan was rainy and grim, but the atmosphere at the game was electrifying without there being any real threat of violence. The chanting, the flares, the banners and the cheering was great to see, although the game itself was a bit of a damp squib, with AC Milan winning 1-0 on an early penalty (scored by a former Inter star, Zlatan Ibrahimovic) and Inter barely making a single meaningful attempt on goal. The drive back was interminable, and I was glad I had packed my pillow so that I could sleep most of the way back. We arrived at 3:15 am and I had to be at work by 7:40 the next morning. Sleepy times! The game was a definite turning point for the Italian soccer season, with AC Milan now 13 points ahead of Inter and marching on inexorably towards the league title. Now that it’s Christmas break, my family, who have been gathering in Switzerland over the past couple of months rather like a tribe of steppe nomads, have spent the holidays together for the first time in 20 years. It’s been great fun: building a gingerbread house (or actually, a model of an entire street), luging on crazy Airboard inflatable luges, skinning up the mountain behind us, drinking wine, playing cards and board games and generally enjoying life. As I age, I realize that gatherings like this might not happen too many more times, so it’s been important to take advantage of having everyone around. The only downer has been a distinct lack of snow, curtailing real skiing. I hope the new year brings a lot more frequent powder dumps! So as 2011 begins, I hope to find more time and inspiration for writing and travel, and more powder for skiing. I hope that the new year finds you, my readers, enjoying the things that are important in your lives. Bonne annee!