First Eid of 2018 we decided to explore Ukraine. Ukraine is a big country, in fact it is the biggest country completely within Europe. But we had few days, 8 to be precise. So we stuck to two main cities, Kiev and Liviv, and two days to drive up to a hill town in Ukrainian Carpathians. Our first encounter with the country was not very pleasant. The immigration are not geared to accept foreign tourists. They are managed by military, therefore they are rough. Nothing tragic but it took us 3 hours to get out.
Day 1 and 2: Kiev
Once out of the airport we went full steam on Kiev. Uber works like a charm in Ukraine. While driving from airport we noticed these huge graffiti on the side of 20 to 30 story buildings. I have never seen likes of these anywhere. These were beautiful and at the same time one admires the precision and hard work that went into making this urban art. It makes the urban jungle look less intimidating. This was a great first impression. Our Uber brought us at the gate of our hotel. I think Uber has done more good to humanity than any government will ever do. Not many people speak English in Ukraine. It would have been an immense PiA without Uber to negotiate prices and tell destinations to taxi. With Uber we were in and out at exact PoIs without uttering a word.
Our hotel was in the center next to Independence Square. This place like many other city squares has history of revolution, most recently in 2014. After checkin, we had our first meal in Ukraine at a Georgian restaurant on the ground floor of our hotel building. They have these strange shape dumplings called Khinkali which are empty on top. Top is supposed to be used for holding only! I like the Tibetan Momos better for their quantity of stuffing and you can eat the entire thing without wasting. Food in Ukraine was great everywhere.
We spent rest of the day around Independence square watching the crowd, listening to street performers and musical fountains. Crowd was exceptionally pretty. Ukrainians are really good looking. Women are very fashionable and always dress attractively. The crowd is fun in Kiev.
On Day 2, we checked out of hotel as we were going to Lviv by night train. For breakfast, we ate sandwiches at a local Subway equivalent. The ingredients were fresh and tasty. Tea was superb. After breakfast we followed a walking tour from a Lonely Planet guide for Kiev. This was an amazing loop. We spent more than enough time at every landmark, taking pics, sitting in green lawns, snacking and watching people. We had another 3 days for site seeing when we return from Lviv, therefore we were not in a hurry.
Lunch again was exceptional and reasonably priced. Service was 5 star in restaurants. We had Kompot, a local drink made by cooking fruits, in a cafe at Kiev River Port. This one was great and we didn’t find similar Kompot anywhere after that. We also tried poppy seed croissants locally called Makom. These tasted amazing and I had these at every bakery after that.
We walked past the Ukrainian Parliament. Its not very elaborate like the Indian one, but I was surprised how close you can go to the building and even click pictures, unlike ours, where security scans you like you are an alien and your camera is a WMD. The parliament again has some very pretty statues around it. Our walking tour brought us to a strange building which was decorated on the outside with other-worldly creatures, House with Chimaeras or Horodecki House. This is a government building now.
We finished the walk on independence square which was again extremely busy. There were several live performers all around. On one side was an Iranian guy reciting some Persian poetry. On the other was a dance competition, girls vs boys. Girls were winning. People taking turns to get pictures with the sign “I ❤ Kyiv”. There was a pleasant glow in the sunlight. We enjoyed being part of the crowd for a while. Around 9 PM we got in a Uber for railway station. This driver was not particularly pleased to see us and kept swearing at traffic. Irina interpreted that he was not happy with the gay parade that was about to take place later in the evening. He blamed it for the traffic bottlenecks because of which he had to take a longer route. I didn’t like his behavior, it actually appeared very aggressive and made us uncomfortable. I would be much at peace with a gay driver than this one. I gave him 1 star less 😦
Ukraine is not Europe in terms of transportation infrastructure. But the train network is very efficient. The station was neat and the train was already parked on our platform one hour before its departure time. After few minutes the attendant arrived from inside and opened the door to our cabin. She was smartly dressed like a flight attendant. Once she had wiped all the holding rails and door handles, she lowered the stairs ! This was a night train and we had a cabin to our selves. Two seat beds separated by a neat table. Clean linens, towels and water bottles placed on the seats. It was spacious and cozy.
Day 3 and 4: Carpathians
7 hours later we were in Lviv. We were not staying in Lviv today. We had rented a car to drive to Carpathian Mountains. We would see Lviv on our way back on June 18 and 19. It was 618 when we met Dimitry, the car rental guy. As agreed he was waiting for us. He was quick in explaining the terms of the rental and paperwork. He asked us to call him in case we run into any issues. With that muscular built and a sharp honest face he sounded very convincing. If I ever have to select a rugby team, I would choose Dimitry on my side! Special thanks to the guys at 7cars and Dimitry. Before 7 we were on our way out of Lviv in our white Volkswagen Polo.
That early in the morning, getting out of Lviv was easy. Once out, we turned our maps on and started looking for the places we had marked to visit on the way to Carpathians. Our first stop was the wooden church in Rohatyn. The structure could pass for a temple in Shimla. The door was a thick squarish piece of wood with similar locking mechanisms. The upper reaches resembled a pretty log house. It was surrounded by a graveyard. These were very pretty graves and very old. Its amazing how people make art even out of death. We wanted to see the museum inside but the church was closed. We called the number on the door. The caretaker would only come at 10. In Ukraine it doesn’t help to be an early riser. We had Carpathians to cover so we decided to come back later.
In Rohatyn we visited the Jewish cemetery before leaving. These graves were very closely placed in a corner of an empty field. There was a considerable Jewish population in the area before WWII. The tombstones are large, some more than 5 feet high. An old man came to us thinking we were looking for some relatives. Irina spoke to him in broken Russian. He said people come here frequently searching for names and he helps them. All his teeth (about 4) were gold!
We left Rohatyn to come back hoping the church is open when we return. The scenery here onwards was amazing. The rolling landscape stretched till horizon. Neatly parted fields in some places gave way to forest. Everything was manicured. In places it remind me of the heaven scenes from the movie Gladiator, where Maximus walks through fields in this amazing light, his family waiting in the distance.
After fews minutes of driving we reached the town of Halych, Halych is the historic capital of this region, before it was moved to Lviv. We knew of a fort in Halych from travel forums. It was easy to find on maps. We parked the car in an empty lot and walked up towards the fort. A winding road about 500m long reached the ruins of this 14th century fort. The views over the town were very nice. We spent half an hour exploring the area around the ruins. The sky was darkening. We moved to the next destination.
It had started to rain now. We spotted a board for the museum on the opposite side of the road. We turned our car around. A group of tourists in a bus were finishing there visit. We went in, there was another group of school kids just moving out of the Ethnographic Museum of Halych. We bought tickets and the lady there introduced us to the museum in Ukranian. Then we were on our own to explore the campus. There were several types of houses built to depict the traditional dwellings of the region. The houses contained the traditional tools and household goods. There was a separate building which housed wine making machinery. Wine is an important part of the local culture. There was also a little wooden church. It was raining all the time during our visit. I was so happy to walk in the rain. Last I saw rain was in June 2017, the day of our wedding, when it turned a perfect Himachal summer day into a bone chilling adventure at 3000m. We drove further in the rain.
It was midday when we reached Ivano Frankivsk, the major town in the region and the Oblast (district) headquarters. The rain had halted. We parked our car and set out to find lunch. It was Sunday, people were gathered at the main church near the town square. We could hear the singing inside. We found a restaurant with nice reviews close by. It was called Fabrica. We were hungry and the food was very good. The halva ice cream was amazing. Out of the restaurant the rain had increased. We donned our rain jackets and walked to the car. Rain was a pleasant change from Oman. Even though it made driving and moving around difficult, I loved it.
We drove further towards our last destination on this road trip, Yaramche, in the Carpathian mountains. But before, there was one more place to visit, the Easter Egg Museum in Kolomiya, locally called the Pysanka Museum. Kolomiya eggshells were carved using delicate tools. Beautiful complex patterns and colors were added to the shells. No two were similar. A thought about Irina’s Easter eggs passed my mind. She boils the shells with onion peels to add color to them. Simple!
We had no hotel booking but we saw many places available on Internet. It was still an hours drive to Yaramche and it was still raining. The roads were good. Only an hour to reach the mountains, I was expecting some steep hairpins, but the road rose very gently. The plains gave way to mild to moderate slopes. Soon we were in Yaramche. Carpathians are no Himalayas in terms of elevation and ruggedness. The slopes are gentle and valleys are very wide. Mist and rain made the scenery beautiful. It added that yearning for a cozy bed and steaming tea. Yaramche is just a bunch of houses on both sides of the road that runs on one side of the valley. You can hear the river but you cannot see it from the road.
We had zeroed in on 2 places for stay. One was in the main town and the second one a bit out of town, on a side road going up the slope. Our adventure instinct told us to go with the second one. We still didn’t book or call the property. I turned the car on to the narrow side road. the road was only one car wide and it rose sharply on curves. We saw a beautiful wooden house when the blue dot on the map reached the destination marker. The parking lot was full so we half expected that there is no place for us. We still ran through the rainy lot, up the front stairs and into the house. Inside we were greeted by our pretty host. We told her that we needed a room for the night. She spoke little English but she was very cordial. She showed us a room on second floor. The room was spacious and well furnished. There was a fair sized balcony with a view of misty valley below. Breakfast was included in the price and dinner we could choose from the menu or drive to town. We took the room.
It was 6 in the evening and we unpacked and freshened up. We loved the room and the hosts. It remind us of our stay in a Turkish highland the previous year. That was a similar wood house next to a river. For dinner we chose fish, it was local trout, just like the Turkish place one year back. We called it a day after dinner. Weather forecast was rainy for the next day, but we wanted to touch rain!
Hosts promised breakfast at 9 AM. We were up at 7 and walking up the muddy road behind the house. It was raining and ground was slippery. We wanted to reach a highpoint about 400m higher than our house. The hosts told us it would take about an hour to reach the mountain top called Makovytsya. The scenery was very similar to my place in Himalayas during monsoons. I was enjoying the feeling “so close yet so far.” We reached a place with three flags. Mountain top was another 100m from here but we decided to return assuming there were no views in that weather. The walk was enough to make us hungry for breakfast.
We thanked our hosts and checked out of Karpatski Dzherela. It was a fulfilling stay. Only thing we wanted more was for it to be longer! We drove a bit further from Yaramche just to explore the area. The drive was amazing. Rain now had stopped but it was still cloudy. The scenery was dotted with pretty houses, little churches and grazing cattle. There were very few tourists around. We stopped in Tatariv to buy wild berries from a street vendor. We turned back from here to Lviv.
On the way back, we stopped at a tourist hotspot in Yaramche, the Probiy waterfall. There is a souvenir market here. The wood stuff is good quality and cheap. Perhaps made from local pine wood. We bought a carpet locally called Lizhnyk. This was similar to the ones we have in Shimla. We call it Khercha. Khercha is made from goat hair. Lizhnyk is made from sheep wool but the weaving pattern and the texture they produce are similar.
We drove down from Yaramche bypassing Kolomiya. We touched the outskirts of Ivano Frankivsk and we headed for the center of Halych. We read about another 13th century church in Halych which we planned to see today. We reached Halych by lunch time. We bought some snacks from the town center and headed for the church. The Church of St. Panteleymon was located out side of town in a quite neighborhood. We spent some time taking pictures and then headed to Rohatyn, where we were expecting the old wooden church to be open. It was closed. We called the number on the door but it was busy. A lady who came to visit a grave tried to call and help us. Finally the caretaker picked and she told us that museum is closed on Monday 😦
We found an old fort on the map close to Lviv. Disappointed by the church debacle, we headed to check it out. The fort was a few kilometers off the main road. Stare Selo Castle was in ruins. The outer wall was in good shape and formed an almost intact boundary. There was nothing left of the structure on inside. A cow was left to graze on the grass and a dog followed us while we explored the castle.
We reached Lviv by 7 PM, 1 hour before our promised return time. Dimitry was proficient as before and very happy to see the car back on time. We took another Uber to our stay for the night. Lively Lviv was a stark change from solitary Yaramche. This evening we explored the historic square of Lviv on foot. It was not too crowded. It was just perfect to have a lively atmosphere all around. We walked until late through the streets with memories of the misty Carpathians in our minds.
Day 5: Lviv
Next morning we checked out and left the luggage with the hotel. Today we would cover some important landmarks before we board the train back to Kiev. The Museum of Pharmacy was new for us. They say there are few such museums in other European cities. You enter through an old medicine shop which still works. They had instruments to measure and mix concoctions, medicine containers, jars of all sizes and some spooky apparatus. Next we took a cab to Lychakiv Cemetery. Most of the Lviv notables are buried here. The graves are elaborate. Some have sculptures built on top which can pass for expensive pieces of art. This cemetery is on 40 hectares of land and has more than 300,000 graves. We walked inside for an hour and returned to the center for lunch.
For lunch we chose a restaurant named Kriyvka. It was mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. Kriyvka means hiding place in Ukrainian. Theme of the place is military bunker. They have done an exceptional job to put this theme together. Its completely hidden except for a small sign on the street. The guard at the entrance holds a Kalashnikov and hands you a shot to pour down your throat in front of him. You enter a tunnel that opens into a bunker and then a series of bunkers with dim light. Furniture is military and utensils are military too. Staff shout slogans like “Glory to Ukraine” when they pass you. Food is good as usual for Ukraine. And the bill arrives in a AA shell! Later we found that this is one of the few unique theme restaurants in Lviv. Second one we found by chance.
After adding some mileage to our Lviv trip we decided to have a tea break. We found this restaurant next to the ruins of a synagogue. The waitress arrived and handed us the menus. There were no prices for food items. She says we can either pay what they tell us to pay or we can bargain in “true Jewish tradition”! We enjoyed our tea while watching our neighbors haggle with the waiters. I wonder what happens if the customer forgets the fun part and names a very low price and completely refuses to agree. For a change we decided not to bargain. The waitress then asked me to recite a poem if we wanted a good price, referring to the fact that by agreeing to a no price menu I can be at the losing end. I told a Hindi poem that just refuses to part with my memory since school. She brought us the bill which actually seemed discounted even though she didn’t understand a word of my poem.
We spent rest of the day sitting, watching the crowd in front of the opera. Later we picked our luggage and parked ourselves in another cafe near our hotel where we could use internet and also have a light dinner. Around 10:30 PM we got into a cab to the train station.
Day 6,7 and 8: Kiev
Kiev was cooler than before. Probably the rain and clouds had traveled here too. Though it didn’t rain until the last day of our trip. We checked into our new hotel which was next to the Golden Gate. We wanted to visit the deepest metro station in the world, Arsenalna. The other stations too appeared quite deep to me. The escalators are vertiginous. But Arsenalna uses 2 such escalators to reach the lines. The ride on the escalators seems longer than the train ride.
We had breakfast in a French cafe about 1 km from the station. Then we walked towards the famous UNESCO site of Kiev Pechersk Lavra. We spent most of the day in this campus which contains numerous churches, monasteries, museums and exhibitions.The caves were in the end of the campus. Tired and hungry, we decided to eat in the monastery eatery. Not satisfied with the food we decided to snack on some more mak sweets in the eatery below our hotel. Then we entered the Golden Gate. It is completely reconstructed on the outside. On the inside the old masonry has been left open for visitors to view. It was international Yoga day. In the park adjoining the gate we saw Hare Krishna people chanting and playing music. It was nice to see a piece of India in Kiev. Later we found another Hare Krishna group while strolling in A.V. Fomin Botanical Garden. The chants were soothing and I dozed off on the park bench.
Next day we went to Chernobyl Museum. The accident occurred in 1986. I don’t remember when I first heard about Chernobyl, because at six I must be too young to care about world energy situation and nuclear explosions. I think they talked a lot about it in Indian news. While growing up, I always thought about it as part of dark USSR history which is now buried. After visiting the museum I realised that it was a tragedy grave enough to be talked about across the world, forever. The Exclusion Zone today covers an area of 2,600 sq km. At the time of the incident the radioactive cloud traveled as far north as Scandinavia and almost touched Africa. Watching Trump and Kim today, I don’t think we have spoken enough about Chernobyl. Perhaps we never learn from history!
We spent rest of the day walking in 2 city parks. The first one was Park Landscape Alley where some offbeat sculptures are built along a walkway. The second was M. M. Hryshko National Botanical Garden. There were country theme parks inside the botanic garden, like Korea, Tibet and Indonesia. There were many plant and tree varieties but labels were all in Ukranian. For dinner we returned to the Georgian restaurant near our old hotel.
Last day in Kiev, we had a big breakfast in the eatery downstairs. Then we took an Uber to our last place in Kiev, Mezhyhirya Residence. It is well outside the city. Mezhyhirya Residence was the personal residence of the ex Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. He was dethroned because of corruption charges and the house was confiscated by the government. Though the property is still disputed, it is open to tourists as Museum of Corruption. They say that the ex-president siphoned public money via numerous subsidiaries to build the house of his dreams. He fitted it with every possible luxury and enjoyed it with his mistress. We rented bikes and went around the extensive gardens around the house. In between we had a 1.5 hour guided tour inside the house. On our way back it started to rain. We had a last bite in our regular eatery. We picked our luggage from the hotel and headed to airport.
wanderIngY 