I will be honest, my first trip cannot be called a classic hitchhiking. I had to travel by taxi and minibus several times. In the end, my parents were so worried about me that they made me turn around from Voronezh towards Moscow so that I could fly from there by direct flight to Almaty. But it was that trip that laid the foundation for my love for hitchhiking. Because it was there that I felt truly free for the first time.
I was not tied to a route, or time, or the arrival of transport. Everything depended entirely on me. When hitchhiking, you are free to decide where to stop and where not. At the same time, a lot depends on luck. Sometimes you can catch a car for several hours in a row, and sometimes you get a ride right away. Some people take 50 kilometers at most, some take several hundred.
It all started when my friend and I decided to meet in Kiev. As I said, I lived in Prague. My route went through Poland with stops in Katowice and Lviv. I was there a day later. We hung out there, and in the morning I put my friend in a taxi to Chernigov: it's a small town not far from the capital, he has relatives there. Now it's sad to realize that just a few years ago a Russian calmly went to visit his relatives in Ukraine.
It may sound naive, but I think people become bad only when they are in a group. Alone, we are all good. I also realized this while on the road. During my short experience of hitchhiking, I met dozens of people of different professions, views and morals. Neither religion, nor the language barrier, nor ethnicity gave rise to conflicts between us. On the road, you become more humane. You become more humane.
Recently, for example, I was driving to Issyk-Kul. I crossed the border into Kyrgyzstan. The connection was lost immediately. I trudged from customs to the nearest fork and caught a car. Inside were a father with two sons. It was hot. We got to talking. In the end, we stopped at a vegetable stand on the highway and bought a watermelon to quench our thirst. It was nice.
On the way back, already on the Kazakhstan side, I was picked up by a guy who was heading to Almaty. He started asking me who I was, where I was coming from, why I was taking such a risk. I explained, and he kept joking: “I can kill you here in the steppe. There’s nothing you can do.” I answered: “Yes, you can, but I know you won’t do it.”
I always carry a penknife for self-defense, but I've never needed it. Maybe to open a can of stew.