June 23-25, the Russia’s first Horizons Unlimited Travelers Meeting was held by Russian Moto Travel Company (Rusmototravel) in cooperation with the Horizons Unlimited on the territory of Valday National Park.
Format of the event is the meeting of moto travelers from all over the world to celebrate the lifestyle, exchange the experience, discuss routes, ride the National Park’s dirt and paved roads as well as participation in tour enduro riding workshops and presentations, movies, tours, banya with the lake swimming, kebabs and rice, and just meeting and getting to know new people. This year’s place was selected to be Valday Eco Club.
The event attended around 45 people, 15 of those are foreigners. Even one american made it to the event, though not by bike, he had hitchhiked it. Among other nationalities: Germans, Scottish, Finnish, Swedish, Spain and other European countries. Russian guys came from all over Russia: Moscow, St. Pete, Bryansk, Rostov and many other cities.
The first day was designated for meeting the guests and their getting to know each other as well as accommodation. Two accommodation options were offered, a camping zone with all the facilities and a hotel room. The camping zone is located on the lake shore some 200 meters away from the hotel.
A tour to Iver Monastery was planned for later that day, having returned from which we all were happy to experience banya and swimming in the lake. The evening featured a presentation and sharing information and insights about Russia and traveling around it, its roads, beautiful girls and hospitable people. All of the guest who attended were on the way to continue their trip in Russia. Patric from the USA was on his way to Magadan, a guy from England, Paul, was heading to Volgograd and then Caucasus. Some were heading to Motobuhta and North Cape.
The movie of our invited speaker, a notorious moto traveler Pavel Kobyak, was scheduled for after the presentation. Its name: For Freedom In Magadan. On top of this, Pavel has presented everyone with the access to the emergency hotline for moto travelers and travelers around Russia.
In the evening, after a delicious kebabs and some local beer, soulful conversations by the fire followed. The guys were happy to share their experiences and insightful information, talked and exchanged contacts while enjoying a beautiful sunset.
The following day we went on an interesting ride around the national park. As a group of 20, we rode somewhat 100 km of dirt roads of the park. Upon our return, a training was held on riding enduro bikes from our friends from biking school MotoStudy. Very insightful and useful information.
That evening everyone got together for a presentation on traveling the roads of Russian south and north. Our friend, the founder of cigarras house Total Flame, Maksim Privezentsev concluded the program for the evening by sharing a wonderful documentary “Motherland: All of this is mine”, about traveling on Ural’s bikes from Sakhalin to Saint Petersburg.
Then, there was delicious rice with spices (Plov), conversations, cigar smoking presented by Maxim. Some people were able to buy off some things from other participants from Motormir.
To conclude, we think that the event of this kind went excellently. Most importantly, the guest were very happy, having made new friends, some even joined together to travel further. The guys showed interests and said that they will come back for sure.
A couple of Horizons Unlimited Travelers Meeting are planned for the next week. Stay tuned and check out website www.rusmototravel.com for more updates on upcoming events and meetings.
