From Buzha to Velikodvorye

A year ago Dasha and I discovered the full charm of kayak trips, paddling a 50-kilometer loop across the lakes of Meshchera. That year, though, we were – to put it mildly – not quite ready for that trip: we rented a rather clumsy, short "Nalim" that kept trying to spin around, and paddling it across a lake into a headwind was sheer torture. There were a few other strategic miscalculations as well. This year we bought a brand-new Ladoga-2 and a heap of clever little extras, and we decided to start the route from Tasin station, heading south down the Buzha river and across lakes Svyatoye and Dubovoye to join last year's route.

Day 1Buzha → Lake Svyatoye

Riding the suburban train with us were no fewer than five teams of water tourists; the train itself was so packed that we sat on the backpack with the kayak in the vestibule. When the vestibule grew even more crowded, we sat two children down beside us.

The walk from the station to the river is fairly simple: you just follow the railway tracks to the bridge — there's no real point in turning off into the forest. When we reached the water we found two camps of paddlers on either side of a rather noisy railway line, though, judging by how loudly they were belting out songs, the passing freight trains didn't trouble them much. We supposed they'd brought kayaks only to paddle out to the middle of the river now and then and come back for more vodka.

Once we'd packed up and lunched on freeze-dried meals (more on those later), we set off at 2 p.m. The river runs through forest and winds constantly; you often come across signs of beaver activity. Here, as along the whole rest of the route, there's one rule to follow: always choose the widest channel. Had we made that choice, we could have avoided meeting a beaver dam and a nasty bit of weaving through a narrow arm of the river clogged with logs.

At our six meters of length, sharp turns in the narrow channels became a rather interesting exercise. In the forest we spotted many fishermen's huts – from shacks cobbled together out of plywood scraps to perfectly decent little cabins. After the forest the Buzha flows into a very beautiful and pleasant marsh. Pleasant – exactly so. Despite the bogs all around, the river runs in its own channel, and it's impossible to get lost if you follow the map. Twice we went into the wrong arms, but only because I wasn't reading the map at all. It's fascinating to watch how the flora and fauna change, how marsh birds appear, how one kind of plant gives way to another.

The marshes empty into Lake Svyatoye – a big, beautiful lake with two islands, Beryozovy and Dubovy, both overgrown with birches and both with boggy shores. From the map we found a sandy spit, or so it seemed to us, on the eastern shore of the lake. When we drew up to it, we discovered there was no sandy beach there at all, but that didn't stop us from camping on a convenient clearing. Nearby were large campsites with a canopy and a table; we decided to keep our distance from them, but no one ever came to celebrate May Day there. On the cape across from the campsites stood a sturdily built fishermen's house; the fishermen had apparently gone off night fishing, or had pushed off for the hunting lodge on the other side of the lake. All night some animal ran around the tent, but we couldn't identify it.

Day's total: 24 kilometers in 4 hours 18 minutes

Day 2Dubovoye and Velikoye

We got up at 6 in the morning, had a quick breakfast, packed and put out on the water. Almost at once we ran into a light headwind, and on the lake that wind drove a quite noticeable swell. The Ladoga, however, slices through those waves beautifully and holds its course well, so we made our way out of Svyatoye fairly quickly and, through the channels and the little Lake Imles, entered Dubovoye.

Dubovoye is smaller in area than Lake Velikoye, but considerably longer – 10 kilometers. We crossed it in 2 hours, managing to rest a couple of times by grounding ourselves in the reeds — the strong headwind gave us no chance to relax. Luckily we had spray skirts, because at times the water washed over the gunwales.

We stopped for lunch not far from the ruined church in Yalmont and met a flotilla of 8 kayaks, clearly family trips. For about 15 minutes we chased a big green lizard, but in vain — the only trophy was a small piece of its tail.

Having lunched and rested, we set out onto Lake Shagara with the by-now-familiar headwind, but this time a storm front lay to the right on the horizon. We picked up the pace to reach the shore, or at least the reed thickets, pulled on our spray skirts and storm jackets. The wind grew stronger, and paddling against it became noticeably hard, as if you were pushing the kayak across a shoal. Near the reeds we passed some guys in T-shirts on open inflatable kayaks; it's hard to imagine what became of them after that.

And then an even stronger wind swept in, the rain lashing so hard that it instantly whipped the water into foam and raised a mist above it. We decided to keep going along the shore, turned into Lake Velikoye and caught a tailwind that carried us briskly through the remaining half hour of the storm. After half an hour the wind and rain switched off, the sun came out, and we entered Velikoye over smooth water.

A very large and beautiful lake. We wanted to explore two little islands in its northwestern part. Like the islets in Svyatoye, these, though covered in forest, couldn't boast good shores and consisted mostly of boggy ground, so we turned back, toward Ivankovskoye. Paddling in a storm is no great pleasure, and we stopped to rest at the large camping grounds; from there it's a stone's throw to the Yegoryevskoye highway, which is why people come in droves for the May holidays and any other weekend. The fishermen reported that "you can catch fish with your bare hands" and even tried to give us some to take along, but we simply had nothing to cook it on.

Having passed Ivankovskoye, we entered a branching system of fast channels in which every path is the right one. Last year we paddled here against the current, and it wore us out thoroughly. After it we headed toward Lake Sokorevo and, quite by chance, picked an excellent campsite with a massive table and benches — you couldn't see it from the shore.

For the third day we'd left the shortest stretch of the route, 8 kilometers against the current. During the night the temperature dropped sharply, and we didn't regret bringing warm sleeping bags. It must have grown so cold that even the holidaymakers strolling on the other side of the lake hid away in their tents.

Day's total: 41 kilometers in 7 hours 50 minutes.

Day 3Velikodvorye

In the morning it was +5 degrees and not getting any warmer. We woke around 7, since we had a final stretch of 8 kilometers left. In the cold we breakfasted quickly and packed up even faster — the whole thing felt like getting ready before a summit push. On the water it was windy, sunny and cold. The wind had changed direction along with us: where the day before we'd gone southwest into a southwest wind, today we were heading northwest to the accompaniment of a northwest wind. Wonders. We slipped through the lake and the powerful current in the artificial channel fairly quickly, pulled in to the bank and went off to get ready for the banya.

A few words about the gear

The Ladoga is an excellent craft. Despite its length and rather stiff handling, it pushes superbly against wind, current and storm — which is exactly what it's made for. It cuts through waves like a knife and holds its course beautifully on the lakes. We'd paddled on Serebryany Bor before this, and we can say that if you're not fighting wind or current, a speed of 5–6 kilometers an hour comes with fairly lazy work of the paddles. On smooth, still water we managed to get up to 9.3 km/h. At first I worried that you couldn't pack much into the long, narrow Ladoga, but we quickly figured out how to load it, and there turned out to be plenty of room. We tried a whole pile of "Trek and Eat" freeze-dried meals from LP. First place: Balkan-style risotto; second went to the various pastas and the borsch; third place to the chicken curry. The muesli and chocolate mousse are quite good, but you can buy muesli cheaper in larger packs, and instead of the mousse take a chocolate bar. The obvious advantage of freeze-dried meals is the speed of cooking and the absence of dirty dishes (we ate straight from the bag). It's worth buying a long spoon to go with them — then two people can eat in turns with a single spoon and wash nothing but it. We finished off our strategic reserve of "Growerz cup" coffee, a very tasty thing and, again, with no need to wash anything. Unfortunately, we haven't seen it for sale in Russia.

In the autumn I bought a Marmot Astral 2p tent on Amazon at an excellent discount. The tent is roomy, light for its size (1900 g without the extra footprint). Despite the tricky pole design (2 poles joined by half-poles), it pitches quickly. The solar panel also performed excellently, though on such a short trip its point is somewhat lost — we took it mostly for testing, as all the GPS units and phones ran off a power bank.

A very beautiful and interesting route. People usually paddle it as far as Spas-Klepiki, which makes sense, but we had no need to, since my parents were waiting for us in Velikodvorye. Someday we'll try to take the route farther — two nights really is too few, and this way you could even reach the Oka. The best time to do the route is the May holidays, since the water hasn't yet had time to drop much after the flood. If you go in summer, especially toward the end, the lakes dry out badly (the maximum depth of these lakes is around 3 meters), and the route turns into a wandering through the thickets — though perhaps someone enjoys that.

Day 1Buzha → Lake Svyatoye

Day 2Dubovoye and Velikoye

Day 3Velikodvorye

A few words about the gear

The route