Dzianis Dudzinski visited 100 countries — he tells which ones impressed him the most. But he saves his most desired country for later

Dzianis Dudzinski told Nasha Niva about his favorite places in Belarus, solo travels, and the countries that surprised him the most.

"In childhood, it was easier to fly to the Moon"

— When I was five or six years old, the first adult book that fell into my hands was Jules Verne's 'The Mysterious Island'. First, my grandmother read it aloud to me, and then I continued by myself. It was my first introduction to adventures, travels, distant lands, jungles, and islands, — Dudzinski recounts.

Then there were other books by Jules Verne, Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe', the film 'In Search of Captain Grant'. And it was the books by Polish writer Alfred Szklarski about Tomek Wilmowski that ultimately captivated him.

— It was the 1980s. Back then, it was easier to fly to the Moon than to travel. People who had traveled to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia were like gods. They had enough stories for months about how they had been abroad.

One of his main childhood dreams is connected with the books about Tomek Wilmowski.

— I always wanted to go to Iquitos. It's a city in Peru, in the very heart of the Amazon. There are no roads leading there — you can only get there by floating down the Amazon or flying. I read about it as a child in Wilmowski's book, which I am now rereading in Polish.

Many years later, he finally got there.

— I sat on the bank of the Amazon, opened a bottle of beer, and realized: I didn't let that boy down. I promised myself that I would see this city someday. And I did.

"Your head is a pot of soup, filled with impressions"

Dudzinski undertook part of his journeys alone. He says there's a special pleasure in it.

— Everything you see, everything you decide, every next step you take belongs only to you and depends only on you.

Even when traveling with friends or loved ones, compromises have to be sought.

— A friend wanted to drink beer — and you sit with him for half an hour. Someone wants to get up at eight in the morning, while you'd like to sleep until ten. When you're alone, you only do what you want.

He considers moments when he's alone with a place especially valuable.

— You sit on Machu Picchu and don't tell anyone: 'Look how cool it is here'. You simply take everything in. You recall the history of this place, think about the people who lived here, walk these streets. And all of it belongs only to you.

No less important, according to him, is the journey back.

— When you travel there, you live with anticipation. But when you return, there are so many impressions that it's impossible to process them all at once. Your head is like a pot of soup, filled not with soup, but with impressions.

Павялічыць

Usually after such trips, Dudzinski says, people become silent.

— When we travel there, we are chatty and cheerful, but on the way back, everyone sits with a blank stare. You are so overwhelmed by everything you've seen that you simply keep silent.

"Who can remember now what's in Mongolia?"

When asked about the countries that had the biggest 'wow' effect, Dudzinski answers almost immediately: there were two — Morocco and Mongolia.

— Someone told me: 'Let's go to Morocco'. But for me, Morocco was... Well, I had read about it, but I imagined something like Egypt. And I thought: well, Morocco is Morocco. And it's also a long way to go, North Africa.

One of my favorite countries today is Morocco. And it has everything. For example, the snow-capped Mount Toubkal, the highest mountain in North Africa. We went there, with crampons, everything as it should be.

He especially remembered the city of Essaouira.

— One of my most favorite cities in the world. On the ocean shore, a cold ocean. White houses.

Dudzinski also recalls a three-day horseback trek along the Atlantic Ocean.

— When you gallop under the sun along the Atlantic Ocean shore on horseback — it's something incredible.

Павялічыць

Mongolia also became no less of a discovery.

— Who can remember now what's in Mongolia? Moreover, there are only two more or less large cities there — Ulaanbaatar and Murun. Everything else is something completely different.

Traveling around the country had to be done in old Soviet 'loaf' vans.

— There are no roads there. You can't eat or sleep in that 'loaf' because it's constantly shaking.

In one trip, the group crossed Mongolia from the desert to the northern regions.

— We crossed Mongolia traverse: from the desert, where there was a camel trek, through the foothills, to Northern Mongolia. From sands and plus 50 degrees Celsius — to reindeer herders and northern reindeer.

They had to spend the night with local residents.

Павялічыць

— You sleep in these yurts of the reindeer herders, eat with them. It's cold, raining, plus five degrees Celsius. Everything is leaking. The stove works, but it smokes. You suffocate, you cough. But it's awesome.

"In the Darien Gap, the four of us ate one Snickers for two days"

Dudzinski calls the Darien Gap the most difficult journey — a stretch of jungle on the border of Panama and Colombia, where the Pan-American Highway is interrupted.

— The Pan-American Highway is a system of roads from Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America. And it's interrupted in only one place.

Павялічыць

According to him, there are several reasons: drug trafficking, cartels, impassable swamps, and complex terrain.

— All cars and trucks traveling on the Pan-American Highway at some point simply turn onto a ferry. They bypass these 90 kilometers by water, and then return to the road.

Getting into the Darien is also not easy.

— It's a military zone. Scientists, ornithologists, herpetologists are allowed there. American soldiers come there to train in the jungle.

To get permission, the company of four friends had to show resourcefulness.

— We printed out badges for ourselves. I took badges from the 'Slavianski Bazaar', some papers with stamps. We arrive, and they ask us: 'Why do you want to go there?' And I start laying out all these papers. They don't understand what's written there. But it looks serious.

At military checkpoints, these papers came in handy more than once.

— Our guide showed them something, they called somewhere, clarified something. And only after that did they let us through.

The company did not attempt to cross the gap itself.

— This is one of the most inaccessible territories on Earth. We didn't go through the entire Darien Gap — it's very dangerous. But we did cover 20–25 kilometers.

The last point reachable by transport is the village of Yaviza.

— You travel in these minibuses. Here someone is breastfeeding a child, here are chickens, here are goats. Someone is already vomiting from the heat. And that's how you reach the last place — the village of Yaviza.

Павялічыць

That's where the asphalt ends.

— We got out somewhere around eight in the evening. It's dark. The bus turns around and goes back. And we stand with our backpacks in the middle of Yaviza.

Accommodation was found at a local resident, Doña Maria's place.

— We run around this village, looking for Doña Maria. And she says: 'If you want, the keys are in a glass by the entrance. Come in, choose a room and live. Pay later'. She's lying somewhere in a hammock and asks not to be disturbed.

Before heading into the jungle, the group went into a local tavern.

— Like in cowboy movies. We walked in — and the music immediately turned off. Everyone looks at us. Latinos in white T-shirts, all with machetes. We ask: 'Can we have something local to drink?' They pour us some murky drink into strange glasses, without even washing them. I say: 'Guys, don't be shy'. We drank it down — and that was it, the music turned back on, we became one of them.

In the Darien itself, life quickly boils down to the simplest things.

— A mountain stream. You spend all your time near it. You take water to drink from there, you wash yourself there, you wash your clothes there, you cool your beer there.

Everything necessary had to be carried on their backs.

— We were told: here's the last shop where you can buy canned goods, rice, something else. Buy everything now.

But even that wasn't enough.

— And someone remembered that there was a Snickers bar taken from the plane in a backpack. For the first time in my life, I saw four adult people eat one Snickers bar for two days.

And it was this that he remembered no less than the jungle itself.

— No one takes care of you there. There are no restaurants, no canteens. There's only you, what you brought with you. And the jungle around.

"My friends call it Dudism"

After a hundred countries and dozens of big journeys, Dudzinski says that the main result for him is not in the number of places visited.

— You become calmer about others' shortcomings, about others' misunderstandings, about others' flaws. You become more tolerant.

Gradually, he says, a special attitude towards life emerges.

— Whatever happens around you, you're like: oh well. You acquire a certain Buddhist calm.

It is travel, Dudzinski believes, that helped him find this state.

— My friends call it Dudism. I never get angry.

And he explains it very simply:

— You know how vast the world is. You've experienced it not just with your eyes, but with all your senses. You were cold in Northern Mongolia. You were hot and stuffy in the Amazon jungles. You lived among the tribes of Southern Ethiopia.

You arrive in a village where people walk around in loincloths, paint themselves, and hunt. You set up your tent and live next to them.

He was particularly struck by how differently people can perceive things that are ordinary to us.

— You're sitting by the campfire, and then you see a person emerge from your tent with a phone in their hands. They sit down next to you and ask: 'What is this?' You show that it's a phone. He fiddles with it for a bit longer and then leaves.

We brought soap bubbles, pencils, candies. And we also took socks from the plane. Why did we need them? One boy received these blue socks. At first, he even tried to eat them. Because before that, we had taught the children to unwrap candies.

Then Dudzinski's wife, Katsia, helped the boy put them on.

— He sat and simply examined these socks on his feet. We say: you can walk in them, you can take them off and take them home. But he simply didn't understand what it was and raised his legs in the air.

"Please, don't touch Vitsebsk"

Among Belarusian places that he remembered more than others, Dudzinski names Dzyatlava district and the Shchara river. He explains that it's because of the people — he had many friends in these places.

Dudzinski unhesitatingly names Hrodna as his favorite Belarusian city.

But he feels hurt about Vitsebsk.

— From a city that had a very interesting, fairytale, cozy potential, they made something plastic-paneled, — he explains.

In his opinion, Belarusian authorities often do not know how to work carefully with historical heritage.

— When they take on something, everything turns into some matryoshka doll, a fridge magnet, some nonsense.

Dudzinski admits that he had been to Vitsebsk many times during the 'Slavianski Bazaar' and observed how the city changed.

— I always wanted to say: please, don't touch Vitsebsk. At least leave it as it is.

He is particularly annoyed by the desire to make historical places 'prettier' at any cost.

— Many guests will come to us, so there will be a beautiful plastic facade here, metal tiles here, and here instead of cobblestones we'll lay tiles or pave everything with asphalt.

Similar feelings are evoked in him by the attitude towards historical monuments in general.

— I really don't like all this puffed up, matryoshka-like stuff.

As an example, he mentions Mir Castle.

— When I was a child and came to Mir, there was history there. There was a feeling of a real place. But now this history has been turned into some cheap popular print, and I'm sorry about that.

This is especially noticeable after traveling to other countries.

— You see how reverently people treat their old buildings, their history. But here, very often, there's a desire to renovate everything, decorate it, make it 'better'.

At the same time, Dudzinski himself admits that he misses Belarus primarily not because of the cities, but because of individual places and the memories associated with them.

Another Belarusian place that unexpectedly deeply touched Dudzinski is Yastrambel. There he was particularly impressed by an old manor house, which is gradually falling apart. 'A wonderful marvel that could become a real highlight of the place,' — the host describes the manor.

Павялічыць

He returned there several times again.

— Every time I bid farewell to the building. Because somewhere it was written that they would do something. And we know how they restore things here. There will definitely be metal tiles, plastic windows, and everything else.

"If I go to Australia, I won't have any dreams left"

Despite a hundred visited countries, one big dream of Dudzinski still remains unfulfilled.

— Central Africa is in the plans. Congo, Uganda, Rwanda. Mountain gorillas live there. You can visit them — with guides, of course.

But there are things he consciously postpones.

— I have two dreams left in life. To go to a Depeche Mode concert and to go to Australia.

Both date back to childhood.

— Australia is my favorite continent, my favorite country, which I have never been to. In school, I redrew the map of Australia on graph paper. I knew all the more or less large cities by heart.

But he's not in a hurry to attend a concert of his favorite band, nor to visit the country of his dreams.

— I don't go to Depeche Mode concerts and I don't even think about going to Australia. If I do that, I won't have any dreams left.

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