How strange that in Russian this word is written with an “e”, you just want to insist: it should be putIshestvie – after all it comes from the word PUT’, PATH, WAY.
A path into another ethnos is very much about the hunting trail inside – and here, on the hunt, you manage to catch yourself out in your fixed ideas: “how can anyone live like that?”
“But this is impossible!”
– you want to exclaim, watching children playing on the bank of the Ganges among the remains of half-burnt human bodies, looking at the living conditions or the wedding rites of countries that are very much different from ours – the “wild peoples”. Or, contemplating mega-frescoes in the style of the “Kama Sutra”, you cry out “but this is so intimately frank, and look – across the whole wall of a temple”. And the goddess Kali with a necklace of skulls, dancing on slashed bodies – now that’s a goddess for you! The sacrificial rituals in Nepal, and this kindest of peoples does not even have the particle “NOT” in its language – those streets, bloody for a whole week, contrary to all expectations, do not make these people aggressive.
And what samples of painstakingly fine work in wood and stone! And on such vast surfaces that sometimes you want to ask: how did the master have enough life for this, never mind patience! Such beauties, paradoxes, contrasts and extremes simply blow the mind of a European – a representative of Western culture. And at some point every jourNEY-maker exclaims: well, would you believe it, it can be done this way, and that way too, and in this realisation a wider view of rules, foundations and prohibitions arises, and everything superficial peels away.
This is how true values are restored.
And what is more amazing – travelling to other countries makes a person a patriot of their own country!
Suddenly! Precisely suddenly, two polar urges arise:
- the desire to travel again and again, and a deep understanding
- love for your own culture.
And this is natural – after such a pilgrimage or adventure a person expands, inside and out. This is possible only if you really walk these paths with your own body, and touch the wind of these places with your own eyes, ears and skin.
Such expansion does not happen from watching a film or reading an article.
“– I came to love my homeland, Ukraine, when I started travelling to India!” – says my friend Sasha India, a specialist in the countries of South-East Asia who has been leading pilgrimages to the countries of the East for 13 years.
Extreme journeys are probably the most transformative field there is.
Here is a remarkably honest field for evolution. It is a working ground – a reality adventure of your inner and outer borders. An undoubted expansion, with a step out onto your new horizons.
What a climb into the big mountains can give you! – it is not an armchair rehearsal in a psycho-training, this experience is taken in by the body, the breath, the bones, and becomes a point of quantum leap, or a point of no return. After this a person simply won’t be able to fall into self-pity or depression or criticism, and their former “problems” suddenly begin to make them laugh.
This restores the knowledge of:
- who you are,
- what you want and
- where you are living toward
And what else do you need? Happiness?
– As much happiness as you can hold!
The photos in the text are by Yuri Biryukov – a well-known photographer, traveller and mountaineer, co-author of the journey to NEPAL, to Everest, a guide to South India, a specialist in the countries of South-East Asia and Africa.
