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Pavel Borisov
M.Sc. in physics, IT-specialist, photographer, naturalist
I was born in Khabarovsk, Russia and in school I wasn’t interested in travel, trekking etc. Books about pioneers and remote countries really agitated me but I wasn’t thinking that some time I can become one of them. Then I entered MIPT and gradually my lifestyle becomes more active: I liked cycling, horse-riding, snowboarding, alpinism and canoeing. I realised that mountains and forests attracted me most as long as extreme did. It was great feeling to go through russian marsh with a bicycle, especially when you finish this. After graduation I was spending most of time in the city, working as a researcher and then as an IT-specialist. Few times a year I travelled through remote regions of ex-USSR. Especially I liked tranquil and scenic mountains in Abkhazia where also there was no shortage in extreme.
Antonina Zakharova
journalist, travel-photographer, editor
(write a letter)
I lived in Moscow but have never been a native citizen of this city. My ancestors lived in Ivanovo region in a small town of . When I was a child I was spending every holiday in this place in a traditional russian athmosphere. On a vacation we went with my father to the river, made a fire, did fish-soup, picked mushrooms and berries, spent a night in a heavy old-style tarpaulin tent.
I was very energetic girl, studied art-slalom skating, liked cycling, drew, danced and read much. Once I went to mountain trekking to Caucasean Lago-Naki plateau and fell in love with mountains. I tried to check my love many times but it didn’t change – mountains is the place that inspires me most.
I studied journalism in MSU, and worked hard at the same time. I started as a content-manager then I was involved in Internet-PR and later I became the special project editor in a big magazine. My main occupation is journalism, and I wrote for russian “Around-the-World:Telegraph”, “Aeroflot”, SKIPASS, Time Out and others. I fell in love with photography simultaneously with my love to mountains and I hope both of these loves remain.
It’s easy!
Write a letter to Antonina – antonina.zakharova@gmail.com
Write a letter to Pavel – pashkin.elfe@gmail.com
Our Livejournal blogs: Pavel and Antonina
If you wish to use any our article as long as any our photo in your media don’t hesitate to contact us. Also you can order articles and/or photo-reports on the topic you are interested in. We are experienced to do that and also like it. Just ask!
We can translate written or orally from English to Russian (contact Pavel) and edit fiction and other texts in russian (contact Antonina).
If you are interested in the field test of the equipment and sportswear – please contact us. Also we consider cooperation with publishers and any type of mass-media about travel.
We develop and organize unique tours through the different remote regions of the world. The main our expertise are extreme and adventure tours in different countries including ex-USSR remote regions such as Kamchatka, Siberia, the Pamirs, Abkhazia etc. We can fully organize the expedition for a person or a group and work as a guides on the route.
For publishing and other commercial use of our articles or hi-res photographs you can contact us. Also you can request writing articles and photo-shooting on the subjects you are interested in. (eg. natural, cultural). The same way you can buy the high resolution photographs, which are already published on our site.
If you want to get a wallpaper for your desktop – it’s available for donation (arbitrary). You can donate as much as you want through PayPal and write by email which photo you want and your screen resolution (eg. 800x600px, 1280x960px).
We travel on our own limited budget and try to do it as cheap as we can. We spend about USD 500 a month for both of us.
If you can recommend us to your friends or mention our project on your website, blog or on some forum, we will appreciate your help. And just in case if you want to contribute to our journey for us to do more texts, photos and photos here, you can send some donation (as low as you want) .
Our journey from the beginning
We write the story together for more realism, like an interview.
Pavel: In the summer 2007 I climbed solo Mt. Elbrus and wrote how to do this in safe and correct way. In the comments I’ve met Anonina, who also just went back from Elbrus region. It appeared that both of us liked mountains and the other remote regions. Soon we realised that we have much more opportunity to go to mountains outside a single vacation in a year we had. We used any chance, every holiday and even weekend to wander for 2-3 days in the most accessible mountains of , or .
Antonina: When we were unable to go that far we used our wekend to make some trip in forests and fields surrounding Moscoq. We cycled, went skiing, prepared ourselves to summer alpinist route and even used crampons to walk a slippery logs as an ice-training. We participated MMB (moscow long-distance orienteering) and explored new and interesting places. Colleagues joked upon me: for sure it’s friday when Antonina came to the office with a backpack.
In the summer 2008 we had an unusual wedding (who could suppose it was not on the mountain ridge?) We came for this for some . Two weeks after wedding we came in Kyrgyzstan mountains.
Pavel: It was our first experience to travel so long. First we had , then we had some trekking alone: and . In between we . Overall time wasn’t so long: we’ve spent about 1,5 months here.
Then we gradually realised that we want a longer travel. That time it seemed to us that 3-4 months in a travel is enough. But we couldn’t start until Antonina graduated the university in the summer 2009. We developed a detail plan of 3-month journey in Tibet and even had a huge detail self-assembled map on the wall about 4×2,5 meters size.
Antonina: A month later graduation on 2009 July 18th we flew to Osh (Kyrgyzstan). It was a beginning of our journey that still continues. We informed parents about our plan to turn back after 3-6 months and described them our plans in detail (using our map of Tibet) But when we reached Kyrgyzstan our plans started to change. We almost skipped a week-long journey through ancient cities of Central Asia (Samarkand, Bukhara, etc.) and immediately escaped from the hot to Tajik mountains. Together with Stas
When we spent a month in a beautiful and hospitable Tajikistan we realised that in the future we have much chance to encounter winter in a Tibet so we , to enter Tibet by West-tibetan highway: the shortest way. But in China our plans also changed non-stop. West-tibetan highway was heavily guarded by chinese police and we didn’t have enough interest . So we descended to Takhla-Makan desert and have done a roundabout for 3,5 thousand km through Urumqi and Lanzhou . In Tibet we made over the Nyenchen-Tangla range and then made a kora around Nam-tso lake.
Pavel: When we turned back to Lhasa, Antonina managed to shoot a href=”http://gingertea.ru/chinese-celebration-lhasa/” > chinese military parade in front of the Potala palace which was due to 60th anniversary of PRC and included much tanks and other military units. Then we headed to Nepal and (with our friends Igor and Oxana). The winter was already here. We had water frozen in a bottle after a night even inside a tent. Antonina used heavy mittens in a style of socks to warm her feet in the night.
Subtropica wet Nepal seemed like a resort after Tibetan frost and wind. We stayed in Kathmandu a bit, made a trip to Pokhara and then we’ve built a raft from bamboo and inflated truck tubes and . During the journey we occasionally came inside Chitwan National Park. I had’t seen that big fire as we was supporting on the island we slept during the whole hight to avoid tigers and rhinos. In the morning rangers saw our fire and brought us on their elephants’ backs to outside the park boundary. We continue spending a week in a sleepy Sauraha village, famous with its elephant breeding centre and of course with daily public bath on elephants backs.
Antonina: Once in Kathmandu I roamed through numerous bookshops and occasionally met Sasha and Lena, who owned forum. They had been traveling along Asia for several years and support their site, which is quite popular in Russia. It inspired us and we decided to make our own site about travel with easy navigation and lots of photos which should have changed two our Livejournal blogs, which already contained a lot of useful and interesting articles. We puzzled over its name and finally decided to title it Why did we use such a title? First we thought about name which contains “travel” but then decided that the title should be common and bright, like Apple, Java etc. Besides we like ginger tea and drink it in any country and situation we are, with long conversation to each other in the evening. GingerCoffee.com was born about a year later to provide you with english translation of the most brilliant articles (automatic google translate service, that we used before appeared to be not that good)
Pavel: Before we went to travel we didn’t have any plans after Nepal. When we lived in Moscow we thought that probably could go to India, but we didn’t know much about it. Of course we didn’t have any plans for India. But as we a traveled our plans were becoming more clear. We realized that we didn’t want to come back to the gloomy megapolis of Moscow. Also we was spending in Asia only few money each months and our savings should support us for quite long time. We applied for India visas and decided to spend Christmas holiday on the beach with our friends Olya and Arkadiy , who went from Russia.
Before we attended – a buddhist festival in Bodhgaya, Bihar, India. There I suddenly realized my camera was broken (maybe it get some water inside when we floated on a bamboo raft, or maybe some nepalese was sitting on our backpack on the roof of overcrowded bus. So I and managed to buy a Pentax (despite that in India it’t almost impossible to find Pentax SLR even on black market).
Bihar full of dirt and beggars impressed us so much that immediately after Monlam we went to the mountains, where in fact is much better than on a plain. where the small old-style steam locomotive still pulls (or sometimes pushes) the train uphill. We went to Darjeeling and had an independent trekking in a highly scenic Sikkim hills. We in Gangtok, and next three days we tried most to . There we’ve met Olya and Arkadiy and spent about a week on a sleepy Gokarna beach. Extra one train-hassle and we saw On this event thousands of Hindu come to Varanasi to take a collective (and in fact very colourful) bath in Ganges. Then we get to the South India. We celebrated my birthday . Then we get to Rameswaram and – a low sweep of sand than almost connects India with Sri Lanka.
Going though India was not easy to us, especially Antonina. It seemed that we go for miles and miles between similar dirty and noisy towns. Later we , how did we liked some places of India. Later we just should do less move and travel more in the mountains, not plains.
Antonina: Then we came to Malaysia, where . , modern transport, internet everywhere and other attributes of modern lifestyle left an ambiguous impression: it was comfortable but so expensive that we couldn’t afford much with our savings. Was our style to travel long and cheap right or not? We were glad to get an invitation from the Boris, our friend in Jakarta and could finally get a up to 6 months extendable visa of Indonesia, which is also very cheap and not so globalized.
We began in Medan on the north of the island of Sumatera. We (the first of them half-year later began to erupt). Then we’ve on the west rim of Toba caldera. We crossed the equator and the enormous island of Sumatera, and went to Jakarta. We’ve , and even invited Antonina’s mother to join us. Then we started one and half month long . We tried to go through the roads that weren’t visited by the other travelers and so Pavel . We climbed several volcanoes and also Pavel have closely acquainted with the turtles, which lived underwater near the Flores island.
We tuned back to the Bali island and lived here until the end of 2010 august. We’ve met Masha and Ajay who created their own travel-blog Traveliving.org (we knew them from talks of Sasha and Lena from “Hindustan”). We again realised than travel-blog is useful and interesting (for us and for the readers). We worked hard that two months and finally created our travel website (in Russian).
In 2010 autumn we’ve made . That time we’ve chosen to visit the places which administratively belongs to Qinhai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces near the border with Tibetan Autonomous Region. We planned to went several mountain routes which hadn’t been visited yet, like . We get closely acquainted to everydaу life of tibetan herders and also with tibetan villagers and citizens. Also we made a photo and described live of many minor nationalities who still live in that region
Then we had two-weeks motorbike trip in a northern provinces of Laos. It was very unusual for us to meet here many nationalities which still live like in the Middle Ages (despite they are not that far from the modern cities)
Now we live on Borneo in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia and write you about our previous travel, do photos and create this english-version of our website.
See
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