Gleb Travin is perhaps one of the most courageous travelers in history. The Russian cyclist set himself a fantastic task – to drive alone along the entire border of the USSR. Nevertheless, the athlete managed to achieve what he wanted, but on his way he had to face many difficult trials.
Travin had a particularly hard time up north…
Promotion of physical education
Gleb Travin was born on April 28, 1902 in the village of Kasyevo, Pskov district. His father, Leonty, was a ranger: from childhood he invested in his son a love of nature and taught her how to survive in the wild.
In 1913, the Travin family moved to Pskov, and young Gleb began to get involved in cycling. The turning point for the boy was meeting Adolf de Groot, who then visited Russia as part of a great cycling trip: from Antwerp to Persia via Scandinavia and Russia, and then back to Belgium via North Africa. and Spain. The idea so impressed Travin that he decided to follow in the footsteps of the daredevil Dutchman.
Pskov Museum-Reserve
Initially, Gleb hoped to travel around the world and began a five-year training: during his service in the army, he studied geography, botany, geodesy and many other sciences necessary for survival.
At the end of his service, Travin began working as an electrician at a station in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In 1928, the Soviet government did not approve the plan for a round-the-world trip, but was allowed to develop and approve a travel route along the border of the Soviet Union. The main idea was the promotion of physical culture: throughout the journey, he told the inhabitants of the country about the sport and promoted it to the masses.
The local executive committee of the city gave him an American Princeton 404 bicycle and a Japanese Kodak camera. The rest of the baggage took up almost no space: it consisted only of a log book and a pound of compressed biscuits, together with a kilogram of chocolate.
“Traveler in the Devil’s Chariot”
October 10, 1928 is the date of the beginning of the momentous journey. On the ship, Travin reached Vladivostok and began his journey. Along the southern border, he followed the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Not afraid of obstacles, the cyclist crossed the frozen Lake Baikal.
Arriving in Novosibirsk, Gleb turned to the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (as the future Kazakhstan was called in the late 1920s) and went on a journey through the Central Asian republics. In Dushanbe, a curious incident happened to him. On the athlete’s sleeve was a bandage with the inscription “Bicycle traveler Gleb Travin.” Arriving in a new region, he asked the inhabitants to translate it into the local language, but the word “bicycle” was not in Tajik; as a result, the phrase “traveler in a damn car” appeared on his bracelet.
Pskov Museum-Reserve
Having crossed the Caspian Sea with the help of a ferry, Travin ended up in the Caucasus, where in the summer of 1929 he began to conquer the European part of the country. Already in November, Gleb arrived in Murmansk. There he faced the most difficult stage, the northern one.
85 thousand kilometers
In one of the villages, the traveler got a fur suit, which allowed him to move around the north. Much of the journey was spent across ice, which regularly got Travin into trouble. Once, after spending the night, the cyclist discovered that his boots and his overalls were frozen in the ice. With the help of a knife, he managed to get out, but the brave hero had to go further in torn clothes and spread legs.
Having attacked a deer trail, Travin crawled to a small settlement – the journey lasted about a day. After warming up, he discovered that his fingers were badly damaged; as a result, he had to undergo a partial amputation. After that, Gleb got on the icebreaker “Lenin” of the Kara marine expedition, where the traveler told the famous Professor Evgenov about his exploits.
On the way to Chukotka, Travin twice fell through the ice and almost died, but managed to get to the small town of Russkoye Ustye, where he worked a little as a geography teacher. In July 1931, the cyclist ended up at Cape Dezhnev, where he tried to get permission to go around the world, but was again denied. As a result, Gleb boarded a ferry to Kamchatka and completed the journey. For outstanding achievement, he received the TRP badge and a pennant from the Kamchatka Regional Physical Education Council.
Unfortunately, the traveler’s personal diary has not been preserved: in the 30s, Travin’s relatives burned all the originals, fearing reprisals that seized his biographer, Vivian Itin. According to rough estimates, the route amounted to a total of 80-85 thousand kilometers, of which the path through the Arctic took about 10-13 thousand. Gleb covered part of the distance on a steamboat, part on a dog sled, but these circumstances do not detract from his achievement.
Pskov Museum-Reserve
Upon his return, Travin began training young cyclists and motorcyclists, and during the war years taught military affairs at the Kamchatka Morrybtechnicum. In 1962, the cyclist returned to Pskov, and 7 years later he rode part of the famous route together with the journalist Ilyushev. The great traveler died in 1979 at the age of 77.
