podcast : https://anchor.fm/gal-brul/episodes/Between-land-and-art-e11oh95
It’s around midnight. My brother and I are discussing the pressing need to get away from the noisy megapolis. It’s decided, here and now, in the kitchen, we are going to Nikola-Lenivets. A few hours later, after a late-night shop to buy missing outdoor equipment, we are packing our backpacks and calling a taxi for the morning.
6 AM, our taxi driver has a doubtful face when he sees all our stuff. He has no idea yet where we are taking him today. Our destination is 3 hours away, westwards from Moscow. We move fast along the empty highway and, soon enough, we reach Kaluga region with its vast national park, “Ugra”. At some point, we leave the highway and find ourselves on a dirt road that leads us deeper and deeper into the forest. After 30 kilometers and a million comments from the taxi driver about how crazy we are, we emerge into a clearing with unusual ethnographic buildings. We are at the entrance of a whole country of magical cooperation between human and nature.
More here: https://microtravelers.org/2021/05/28/between-land-and-art/