I'll abruptly switch from politics back to the travelogue genre. The first ride was almost hardcore-free, to Mount Mayak, and around lakes Strusta and Snudy.
⛰ Mayak is a 45-meter hillock, which seems like a trifle after my travels this year. Nevertheless, every place is beautiful in its own way, and the human 🧠 always compares everything relatively. That's why it's quite cool to ride even to nearby spots. Especially since the view from the ⛰ is wonderful: lakes and fields all around, and from the 🗼 you can see it all far, far away. True, we had to buy a ticket for the tower for a whole euro. Which, of course, after Italy, where we paid a minimum of five, brings a ☺️.
On the first day, there were no special MTB obstacles on our path, except for a foray into the thicket at the very beginning. There we quickly rolled up to such a swamp and thick underbrush that we had to turn back. Closer to the end we pushed a bit through an interesting little wood with dips, but nothing genuinely difficult.
Around lakes Strusta and Snudy there are tons of named camping spots. They are called very officially and in Cyrillic "Tourist Campsite", and their names are extremely diverse: "Vyselki", "Pesnyary", "Mezhozernaya", "Talaka", "Peratsyag" and a hundred others. Interestingly, you have to book them in advance (with the park administration), and the number of allowed 👨👩 is limited. I guess it's good for the environment when it's so strict, but it still reeks of something authoritarian. In Latvia this is rare, I think. For example, our well-maintained "Latvian State Forests recreation areas" (LVM atpūtas vieta) are free to visit, and there are plenty of them. If you just want to pitch a ⛺️ on a lake shore on state land, that's also allowed. With 🔥 it's a bit more complicated - in some places or times you can't build fires.
We had to ride around the lakes on a nightmarish dirt road, for quite a long time. I don't know how things are with graders in the Republic of Belarus, but in Latvia the dirt roads were good this year, and in Estonia they were simply wonderful. Here, however, we encountered many, many kilometers of classic "washboard". I also forgot my pills at our overnight stay, and closer to sunset I was suffering terribly. It seemed like we only had a tiny bit left to endure until the finish line, but then we rode up to a fairly wide and deep river. There was a bridge across the river on the map, but in reality only the wooden supports remained of it.
