Finding Russian Adventures

Finding Russian Adventures

First you need to find a company or group of fellow-adventurers. If you don’t have any friends in Russia interested in adventure travel, you can always write a letter. Say, to Gorbachev. This is no joke! In 1990, riding high on the wave of perestroika, a group of American friends wrote a letter to Russia, suggesting that the Cold War could be buried through bilateral adventure travel trips. The letter worked its way through the USSR tourism bureaucracy and landed in our laps. That year, we were among 20 Americans and 20 Russians who headed out to Karelia, to the Southern Shuya river. The Americans floated on rafts, the Russians on catamarans. Everyone spoke English, although of course the Americans picked up some Russian words along the way. Many of us keep in touch to this day.