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Kamchatka — the place I’ll never visit
Well, highly unlikely. During my years in Russia, I made little effort to travel to far places. I didn’t even visit Saint Petersburg, the second biggest city, until my late 20s. The farthest east I traveled was the city of Barnaul, in Western Siberia. It was a very brief work trip when I was doing due diligence on a regional retail company. I am hesitant to generalize, but if you’re a Moscovite, which I am, you rarely get out of the world of the capital unless you travel for work.
I’ve not been back to Russia since I left in 2013, and given the events of recent years, the chances of or the interest in visiting are extremely slim. The same goes for my kids — maybe, in the far future, when they are adults and Russia feels like a safe environment, they will travel.
The catalyst for this story was, however, a message from my oldest son:
The incident he refers to is the mysterious death of hikers in 1959 in the Ural Mountains:
The reply from me about Kamachka being one of the most amazing destinations on the planet is a bit strange considering I’ve never been to the place. The ironic thing is that when I was a kid, growing up in Soviet Moscow, I was intrigued by Kamchatka. I think it was because I was into volcanoes and the Kamchatka Peninsula has many. We had a book that had pictures of flowing lava and erupting volcanoes. Kamchatka was heavily featured in it and it felt like the most enigmatic place.
Little did I know that my son would experience a similar sentiment, decades later.
We continued:
