LITMIR.BIZ

      It was an incredibly warm September. My son flew to Nizhny Novgorod in the midst of a golden and very hot autumn, atypical for this area. The temperature during the day reached plus 30 degrees, and at night the air quickly cooled to plus 10 degrees. Our path lay north. At about 11 o’clock in the morning we got off, or rather, got off the train at the Vetluzhskaya station, which is 160 kilometers from Nizhny Novgorod. Lined with backpacks and bags with fishing rods, the two of us carried a huge bag in which there were two boats: one was for us and fishing, and the other was a cargo boat for provisions and everything else. We decided to take a taxi to the river, of which there were more than a dozen at the station. We ended up on the shore, paying 200 rubles and driving 500 meters. There was no wind at all, it was completely calm, the sun was warming as it happens in summer. We quickly prepared our boats for rafting, loaded everything, organized a small snack and set off.

      At that time it was about 12 noon. We let loose the lines of the spinning and moved downstream. We threw baits along the banks of the Vetluga in anticipation of a bite. Our goal was to overcome in three days about 50 kilometers along the stream and go ashore near the village of Voskresenskoye, where the river comes close to the settlement. I planned to find a car in the village that could take us to the nearest train station, which was about 30 kilometers away.

      We looked at the beautiful banks and talked about various topics while moving along the river. Previously, I marked on the map the places where I planned to stay for the night. During the day, we did not go ashore without special need, except for picking mushrooms for making mushroom soup in the evening. We set up a dining room on our boating boat. Pulling the second boat by the rope to the main boat, we could, using a gas stove installed on a special table, heat up the soup cooked in the evening in a kettle, prepare a salad of vegetables, and also boil water for coffee and tea. During all the preparations for lunch or tea break, we constantly moved with the flow and did not waste precious time, since the distance that we had to travel in a day was precisely calculated based on our speed of movement.

      In the evenings it began to get dark early – twilight sets in very quickly in this area at the beginning of autumn, and it became dark already in half an hour after the beginning of sunset. For this reason, no later than six o’clock, we had to go ashore and prepare everything needed for an overnight stay: set up camp, dry the boats, collect firewood for the night and start cooking dinner before it gets dark. After all these preparations, one could calmly enjoy nature, cook dinner on the fire and just sit by the fire and chat.

      And at the end of the first day, I realized that the number of mosquitoes in these forests exceeds my expectations. There were a huge number of them, mosquitoes immediately began to bite as soon as they touched the surface of the body. We quickly got dressed and proceeded to step by step preparation for the night. Everything had to be done very quickly, because twilight, as I have already mentioned, at this time of year comes within forty minutes.