Off-road Festival in Russia

Irro

New member
Hi guys!

I see here is a lot of people who travel the world and expecially love expeditions! I'm from Russia, I live in Moscow and have a old-fashioned van (CrazyBu van, strange name, I know) which drived more that 60 000 km across the country. It's not too much but quite enough to see almost everything in European part of Russia. Next winter we plan to make 4x4 expedition from Moscow to Vorkuta (Siberia) by winter roads. Maybe someone here will be interested in such journey. You can join us with your car, besides that maybe we will take one or two people with us as a tourists. But OK, here I just wanted to share my experience this November in epic off-road Festival "Total Chukhloma"

If you don't like reading, you can just watch the to understand what it was about.... buuuut, I can't insert the video or the link, is it true? Sorry :)
You can find it by words: “Total Chukhloma” Off-road Adventure

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Soooo, Chukhloma is a town a serious distance north of Moscow. There is a town and also there is a lake. They are both named Chukhloma. Maybe they named the town after the lake or the lake after the town. I’m not sure. One thing for sure… there is no McDonalds in Chukhloma!

Off-Road Driving competition takes place the town of Chukhloma every year, in November, the nastiest possible month in Russia when the snow still hasn’t fallen yet and the grass and leaves have already faded under the weight of a heavy local atmosphere. During this wildly fertile festival, local wet and soggy soils are plowed and harrowed by the huge wheels of 200 jeeps and fertilized by chunks of plastics and metals falling off of these jeeps. A real holiday!

I can only describe the atmosphere at this festival as one of joy and celebration! All jeeps fall within one of the class divisions depending on their masochism and the wheel size. There were suffering «geojeepers» with relatively small wheels and without the life-saving winch (we were among them). And there were «egegey-jeepers» cruising the mud oceans in their super jeeps under the ecstatic gaze of hypnotized women and especially shivering men wrapped in as many layers as possible. And yes, «Egegey!» is Russian way of saying «Woooohoooo!» It is something that you scream while blasting through deep and gooey mud and a wildly bumpy road in a flash!

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Actually, I want to drive a super-off-road vehicle, too. At least once a year! What can be better than cruising mud rivers somewhere between your tent and the camp entrance without paying too much attention to where and how to go? And yes, CrazyBuuu got stuck in the mud many times, even in the camp area (thanks to «Egegey»’s wheels)! It can be a little insulting especially when long-awaited cold soup with two cm of frozen fat is somewhere within 300 meters of you but you can't get there because you don't know the path through the misty night full of other tents and jeeps. CrazyBu was quite good in off-roading too, especially when Tony, our driver, wanted to drink beer, so he needed to get to the camp very fast!

Actually, we had only one day of not being stuck in the mud at all! After nights full of cold and snow, the weather finally became our ally, freezing all the mud and the ground. That day our speed dropped dramatically… an ice road is not a good place for trusting your brakes. In the evening, we had two challenges of crossing rivers. The first one was a wooden bridge in very bad condition. We plucked up all our courage to cross it! And then we came up against the waist-deep ford. Fortunately, love of cars won over the love of adventure and we turned around to get to the camp very late by a long and lonesome road. Without nerve-wracking fords. My cold faithful soup was still waiting for me!

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And so more about Chukloma

Taking local roads into account, it can take you at least 10 hours to get there from Moscow. (However, nobody wants to go there!) It is really the middle of nowhere! Like Pinega and millions of other small towns. Chukhloma looks like it sounds. It looks like millions of other small Russian towns. You can find similar «Chukloma» style towns near Moscow, but there is a huge difference. If you live in the Moscow region, you need only 2 hours to get to the city and enjoy the bustling, bright, and promising city life of the typical office monkey (sarcasm sign) No way in Chukhloma!

As you roll northward you begin to see that there is just nothing besides multiple villages dying in front of your eyes. A once flourishing region is turning into nothing right here and right now... Almost like military settlements within tundra of Rybachy peninsula... Rare inhabitants are now found in the villages. Crosses fall from washed-up old churches. Cracks crawl along their bell towers. Houses decay and sink into the dark and empty ground. Once rich and elite ’Terem’ palaces fade to black together with the nature of the next grey autumn.

Nothing will change if you turn your photos into black and white. Local landscapes are fully made up of white snow, grey sky, and black wood. Some of the wood will be hidden by vibrantly green leaves in the spring, but some will stay forever as beat-up old houses with broken furniture, peasant cookware, papers of 1903 papering the walls and white colonies of mold in the ceiling. At least something thrives here even if it’s just mold.

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In the Chukhloma region, you can see how roads influence life. (Or for five days in November it’s how life influences the roads?) Any car can get to the nearby thinly populated villages by a local bumpy road. Where the road ends, all life ends, too. It can be sadly said that the number of villages out on these roads is many times larger than a number of their inhabitants. Twenty abandoned villages for two people and this is the real story. One of them is a very senior man and another is quite a young guy by comparison… only 50 years old.

But generally, our sturdy and strong CrazyBu was wonderful. It kept us warm and comfortable and served us well in the competition. We proved ourselves skilled and worthy of the challenge and feel as if we conquered not only Chukhloma but also proved worthy of any off-road driving hardships to face us in the future.

Our mood has now improved and we share a common belief that somehow everything is OK, the new houses will replace the old ones, new people will find their way to the Northland, and the most important part for me was that our customers and guests really enjoyed the trip (or simulated very well).

Good Luck!

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Jvdkooij

Observer
cool story, will view the video later.

As far as I am concerned, you already have a super offroad car with the UAZ Buhanka :D

At first I thought Chukhloma was somewhere in Siberia, but it is only just above Moscow :D

Always interested in more stories and certainly the trip you want to take ;-)
 

Irro

New member
I always thought that our UAZ is real offroad car but in this Festival... mmm, we've been loosers :) To much of SUPER offroad cars with huge wheels and winches from both sides. I've never drived such van!

I've been to Siberia many times and you know Chukhloma is not far from it even being so close to Moscow (only 500 km)! No roads, no money, no job, no good life. Maybe it was just November vibes...
But you know there's even a kind of jokes in Russia that life ends just after the MKAD (Moscow circle road)

PS. Your site about Altai is amazing. Hope to travel there one day.
 

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