Ksenia Salazanova: "Velorossia", the Great Ural Trail and solo hikes
Title of the issue: "Ksenia Salazanova"
Ksenia Salazanova from Ufa left teaching at the medical university for tourism and is now building bike routes for the whole country. She tells how the Velorussia project is organized and how to join it, what the Big Ural Trail is and what it's like to walk alone for 17 days — on foot, by bike and by sapa.
Guest
A cyclist from Ufa, a participant in the Velorussia project, runs a tourism school for women and is engaged in the Great Ural Trail in Bashkiria.
Useful from the issue
- The "Velorossiya" cell without attachments
To open a representative office of the project in your region, you need a statement and a protocol from local activists. No money is required — just to issue papers.
- The organization speaks to the authorities
Officials usually do not hear the initiative of enthusiasts-individuals. The official structure with documents and a list of real activists gives weight to the conversation about infrastructure.
- Multiformat expands the route
The walking part, the bike and the sap can be sewn into one hike if you leave the bike on the route in advance and agree on the transfer of the sap.
- Thunderstorm: remove equipment
During a thunderstorm on the rocks, Ksenia was talking on the phone and then realized that it was a mistake. In a thunderstorm in the open, it is better not to use gadgets.
- The length of the path is not the main thing
Ksenia deliberately does not chase mileage: for her, the meaning of travel is in people, places and history, so she goes at her own pace.
- Finnish shelters as a sample
A network of free shelters with firewood allows you to travel around Finland without a tent. Ilya and Ksenia believe that Russia lacks such infrastructure.
From teachers to tourism
Ksenia was born and lives in Ufa, has been riding a bicycle for about ten years, and has been active in tourism since about 2017-2018. It started with the desire to occupy the weekend with something: a tour club, a cycling school, hiking. Gradually, skills and company developed around her, and Ksenia realized that she wanted to live in this — she left the department and took up tourism.
Cycling trips do not bring her income. She earns money from an online tourism school for women, where she helps to deal with fears and psychology of hiking, and project work: she writes applications for grants and manages projects.
What is "Velorussia" and how to join
The project grew out of the idea of a large cycling route in Bashkiria: a website, a grant and a paper guide with routes, history of places and mileage appeared. Then the format began to be replicated to other regions, and there was a "Bicycle Russia" — an attempt to link regional cycling communities so that they could exchange experiences and help each other.
Ksenia explains why an official structure is needed: no one will listen to enthusiastic individuals in a foreign region, and a registered organization with documents and a list of activists can talk to the authorities. To open a cell in your region, you need a statement and a protocol from local activists — no investment is required, only desire and patience with papers. In the general table, each activist has interests marked: tourism, infrastructure, competitions.
The Great Ural Trail and the "Ring 24"
The Great Ural Trail is a pedestrian, bicycle, and now a water route from the Perm Region through the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions and Bashkiria to Orenburg region. The idea is to make the Urals the same understandable tourist brand as Altai or the Caucasus: where to go, where to spend the night, how to get there. This year Ksenia is recruiting volunteers to mark the trail in Bashkiria.
Another of her projects is "Ring 24", a cross—country competition in the format of 6, 12 and 24 hours: participants receive a card and collect checkpoints. Ksenia was looking for sponsors and for the first time she walked a 24-hour distance herself — I wanted to understand how the body would behave after 20 hours of movement.
Multiroute and bears
Her most unusual hike is a three—part route for 363 km: about 150 km on foot, then a bicycle left on the route in advance, and at the end rafting on sapa with all the equipment. 17 days have passed. The route was formed from already existing trails, and later it turned out that her former boss from the department as a student passed the same sections.
Ksenia has ready-made stories for questions about bears: a tattoo with a bear made before the hike, and a fellow traveler named Mikhail, who came out to meet her after seeing her track online. She calls the most dangerous thunderstorms on the rocks, when she inadvertently used the phone, and the night in the tent, when a heavy wet branch collapsed on the tent — at first she thought it was a bear.
Ufa Community and plans
The largest Ufa cycling community is VeloUfa, which holds the Day of Thousands of cyclists; according to Ksenia, the project received a grant for replication to Kazan, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Orenburg. There is also a sports party, MTB riders who dig the tracks themselves, and the organizers of the brevets - Ksenia drove two hundred in about 11.5 hours.
The plans include a route of about a thousand kilometers from the Perm Region to Bashkiria without haste, with stops at historical sites, and someday — the Kola Peninsula in the summer. In parallel, she is studying for a master's degree at the Faculty of Geography and is going to write a book about the adventures of a cyclist.
Questions to Ilya
In the end, the roles change. Ilya says that a year is coming to the podcast, he has been racing in Novgorod since 2017, and he has been cycling mainly in Karelia, the Leningrad Region, Latvia and Finland. His maximum for the day is 400 km, and once he drove for five days in a row for 200 km.
Ilya brought an example from Finland, which is not enough in Russia: a network of free shelters for tourists with firewood, where you can spend the night without a tent. The conversation ends with the topic of children and travel: Ksenia believes that the child should not become the center of the family, but should choose from what the parents live.
Timestamps
- 00:00Acquaintance
- 00:56How Ksenia came to tourism
- 02:32Tourism School for Women
- 05:47What is "Velorosia"?
- 09:14How to join the project
- 15:00The Great Ural Trail
- 17:24"Ring 24"
- 21:29The route is on foot, by bike and sapa
- 24:44Ufa Cycling Community
- 28:53Annoying questions and bears
- 35:29Plans and a book
- 38:46Questions to Ilya
- 42:52Traveling with children
Mentioned in this episode
Cycling Russia · The Great Ural Trail · Ring 24 · VeloUfa · Day of a thousand cyclists · brevets