Nov 17, 2006, 2:07 GMT
Tver, Russia - In all likelihood, the 15th century Russian trader, Afanasy Nikitin, did not set off on his voyage beyond the three seas to India in winter.
Standing on the snowy banks of the Volga river at the memorial to Nikitin at Tver, about 150 kilometres north-west of Moscow, on a bitterly cold winter morning waiting for our expedition to start, I wonder whether we are prepared for this five-week journey? Will we reach the port in Mumbai?
Our expedition should take us along the trade route the merchant took from Tver in 1469 along the Volga through several Russian cities including Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Samara, Astrakhan and then onto the Black Sea port of Sochi from where we will cross into Turkey, then Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran en route to Mumbai.
In the space of one week into this country, we have discovered Russia is not easy to traverse. Travelling with a group of 14, many of whom have outstanding personalities and are quick to voice their opinions, is proving cumbersome.
We have barely embarked on our trip only to discover that one of the 14 members, renowned landscape photographer Ashok Dilwali, 62, has cancelled and instead booked his flight back from Moscow.
The freewheeling and unplanned nature of our expedition, usually without lunch and occasional dinner breaks, is one long drive through a blizzard in minus eight degrees Celsius in vehicles without snow tyres thus causing the participants headaches.
But the the theft of his camera at a McDonald's in St. Petersburg proved the last straw for Ashok. The genial photographer decided he could not endure 30 days of similar experiences and packed his bags. But Nikitin, whose journey we are tracing, did not have an easy time either.
He left a detailed account of his travails in his journal published under the title, Voyage beyond the three Seas, in which he describes how he was robbed by Tartar hordes early in the journey.
Little-known as he is in India, Nikitin seems to be a fairly well- known figure in Russia, especially among the older generation who have read of him in their history books. Valentin Yarofiev, now in his early 50s, has idolised the 15th century traveller since boyhood.
A seasoned explorer with an unkempt beard, flowing hair and rugged features, he looks like someone recently returned from the Arctic Circle. He claims to hold a record as the only person to have flown over the North Pole in a hot air balloon.
Our team leader, Phalguni Matilal, 65, and holding up well on the trip so far, wonders why Valentin would want to join our rather amateurish expedition.
Valentin first heard of our expedition through Abhay Thakur, director of the Indian embassy' Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Culture in Moscow. He drove all the way to Tver to meet us. A member of Klub Puteshchvennikov (club for travellers), he enjoys immense popularity thanks to the television adventure programme.
Valentin will accompany us to our last stop in Russia, the Black Sea port of Sochi. He will join us in India in January on the second leg of our tour of the places visited by Nikitin during his three- year stay in southern India.
I'm already imagining a feature in which I see India through the eyes of modern-day Nikitin. It would also mean having a third Russian speaker in our team apart from Hari Vasudevan and Ramakant Diwedi.
Hari lectures in history at the University of Calcutta and is a walking encyclopaedia on everything Russian be it history, economy, geography, food, music or hotels.
Energy expert Sudha Mahalingam, who occasionally writes for a Hindu newspaper, and I have not suffered separation pangs from Dr Google with Hari around.
Phalguni Matilal, the team leader is slightly bewildered by the Russian weather and the tendency of some individuals to wander off and do their own thing.
Another team member Sudha, Sharmistha Mukherjee and I went to an opera at the Marinsky theatre, earlier known as the Kirov in St. Petersburg, thinking we could not miss this opportunity.
But we lost Sharmistha while wandering about the majestic St. Isaac's Cathedral and we spent nearly two agonised hours wondering what fate had befallen her.
We were constantly recalling warnings by Indian diplomats and students, encountered in St. Petersburg and Moscow, that it was not safe to wander around at night in the big cities. Two Indian students have already been attacked in St. Petersburg this year.
Both were cases of racial attacks, said the student community and one students died of his injuries. Most of the estimated 5,000 Indian students in Russia presently are studying medicine. Racism was unheard of in Soviet times, but then there were few foreigners or immigrants.
By the time we reached Moscow on Wednesday, we were all slightly unnerved by our Russian experiences as the snow-clad landscape and the cold climes are a novelty for Indians.
The hospitality and warmth extended to Indians is a pleasure and something I've not experienced in my travels in Europe.
But the bureaucracy and red tape is quite complex and despite enormous assistance from the Indian diplomatic circles, we encounter more hurdles every day. It took us more than six hours to get the film equipment out of customs at Moscow and three days to get our vehicles out of St. Petersburg port.
The cars left for St. Petersburg by ship from Mumbai on October 8 and arrived on November 5. Sudhir Kashyap, a team member and an engineer from Mahindra and Mahindra, reached St. Petersburg early and spent five days having countless forms translated, copied and signed with the help of Rajendra Jain, a physician and a surgeon.
But love of adventurous travel eventually prompted Jain, like Matilal, to close his surgery for more than a month and hop into our Scorpios.
Overall, Russia has been full of surprises. Many of them quite pleasant. When we boarded the train from Moscow to St. Petersburg train at the last minute, we had no time to buy food. Lunch consisted of one large slice of pizza each in a food hall.
Our coach attendants at first said there was nothing edible available and then within an hour had rustled up a feast of bread and pate, salad and vodka.
The feast was achieved by the suave and sweet-talking Ramakant Diwedi, an expert on Russia and central Asia, who works with the Delhi-based strategic think-tank, Institute for Defence Analysis.
The most hardworking among us is the three-member film crew from the Miditech company. Rajesh Jala, Bani Dhillon and Saji John are constantly gathering footage and lugging about their heavy equipment.
But their documentary is not the first film to focus on Nikitin. An Indo-Soviet production called Pardesi (foreigner) was directed by KA Abbas in 1957, and starred Russian actor Oleg Strizhenov as Nikitin and Indian actors Nargis and Balraj Sahni.
Recently recovered from the archives and restored, we had the opportunity to view it during a reception at the embassy in Moscow.
Melodramatic and true to Bollywood style, it was probably nothing like the real story of the Russian traveller.
Your Talkback on this Story