About me

I was born in the Soviet Union, a country that ceased to exist more than thirty years ago. The place of my birth is a city named Kursk. Having finished secondary school, I entered the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School (this is a military educational institution of The Armed Forces of the RSFSR) in 1982. Then I served in the USSR Armed Forces and held various officer positions. I was dismissed in 1993 due to the staff reduction, which took place because of the disbandment of the military unit stationed in Abkhazia. I retired with the rank of "captain". In 1995 I founded the trading and construction company Capitan-1 LLC, in which I have been working till nowadays. However, in recent years I am less occupied with it. :)

I became passionate with travelling after diving. In 2002 I tried out scuba diving in Egypt for the first time and... fell in love with the sea. Since then I have spent every vacation on diving. For the period of 20 years I have dived into all the oceans, including the Arctic Ocean and dozens of seas. I dived under the ice, swam in underwater caves and explored sunken ships and submarines. All in all, I've made more than 750 dives around the world. About them a particular story can be written.

In 2012 I got an ATV, which opened a new page in my life. By it I was able to travel to those corners of the world, where an ordinary man couldn't get. The ATV made it possible to go on small adventures and make small discoveries every week. One- or two-day trips to the south of the Moscow region together with friends allowed us to take a fresh look at the world around us, which isn't visible to most people from their car windows. Then I went on expeditions to Karelia, to Lake Baikal and to Buryatia. And a little later I bought a powerful and light snowmobile and travelled by it to fabulous Karelia again and around the Kola Peninsula.

At the end of 2012 I obtained a motorbike by chance. And it wasn't just a simple motorbike, but a legendary original American Harley-Davidson one. It happened like I was forcibly put on it by my mates from the HD Kremlin Kursant club. At first, this motorbike belonged to another person and I just recalled and practiced the basics of riding by this two-wheeled monster. But then in April in 2013 the huge black Harley-Davidson Electra Glide settled in my garage. One month later I went on my first motorbike trip 3000 km long across Spain and Portugal.

Actually, Harley wasn't my first motorbike. At the end of the 80s, I had already had a domestic motorbike "Ural" 'with a sidecar. That equipment used to be good and reliable. In 1991 I went by it on my first long-distance journey from Feodosia to Sukhumi. But for this motorbike I wouldn't have been to so many places and overcome so many troubles! In 1992, when it was the peak point of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, it was seriously "injured": the engine, the gear shift and the sidecar were damaged by fragments of an exploded shell. And the fighters from Shamil Basayev's squad suggested me exchanging my motorbike for a Volga GAZ-24 car. I did not agree on it because "comrades-in-arms" should not be betrayed. Moreover, that Volga car was captured and there was no license for it.

В 2014 году в моём гараже снова пополнение — новый BMW R1200GS Adventure. Это тоже в своём роде легендарный, но уже немецкий мотоцикл, специально созданный для длительный путешествий и не только по асфальтированным дорогам. С приобретением этого универсального мотоцикла я окончательно «заболел» мотопутешествиями. Первая поездка в мае 2014 года на полуостров Рыбачий, а потом…  Более семидесяти стран и более 300 000 км пройдено на сегодняшний день, включая такие экзотические государства, как Монголия, Иран, ЮАР, Марокко, Перу, Боливия, Мексика, Ирландия, Вьетнам, Афганистан……

Within the period from August to September 2018 I was experiencing my longest journey. I went across Russia (from Moscow to Magadan and back) along the Baikal-Amur mainline and the legendary Kolyma highway. The total length went out 23,200 km and it took 56 days to complete it.
I'm dreaming of crossing Africa from Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope and both American continents from the Cape Horn to Alaska. And then we'll see! 🙂