The first record has been broken! A Transbaikal resident has sailed along rivers to the Pacific Ocean on a sap boat.
Yuri Skorobogatov has been paddling a SUP (stand-up paddleboard) towards the Pacific Ocean for almost a month. He set off on April 29th from the village of Lesnoy Gorodok in the Zabaikalsky Krai, on the Ingoda River. He followed the Ingoda to the Shilka River, and from there to the Amur. He's already broken his own personal record, having paddled over 1000 km. He's now paddling along the Amur River near the border—he obtained permits for the rafting four months in advance.
"There are a lot of deserted areas on the Russian side. I hope the situation will improve after about 400 kilometers, but I'm not sure. There are winter huts every 3-5 kilometers on the Shilka, and I lived in them for a week! And to be honest, I thought the border service and the Ministry of Emergency Situations would be less vigilant. Every morning and evening, I get seven calls to different agencies. They're monitoring traffic, checking where I am, what I'm doing. There are different border posts at each section, and I need to coordinate with each one. And the Chinese border guards are also keeping an eye on me. Drones are constantly flying out of various bushes," Yuri tells NeMoskva.
According to the technical plan, it is scheduled to enter the Amur Estuary in the Sea of Okhotsk near Nikolaevsk-on-Amur on August 12. So the journey is just beginning, he added.
"My next goal is to break the Guinness World Record. It was set in 2023 by Peter Charlesworth, who paddled 2677 km 340 meters solo on an inflatable SUP (along the Murray River and lakes in Australia – NM). After that, my goal is to break the record set by Belarusian Stas Vulkanov, who paddled 3500 km on the Volga River on an inflatable SUP. This is currently the longest distance in the world for an inflatable SUP," Yuri noted.
So far, everything's going well, but after 1000 km, his body started to fail: joint and muscle pain and blisters appeared. "But that's normal and expected," the traveler noted. The only unexpected situation was a storm on the Shilka River.
"The wind picked up strong, waves started rising, and trees started falling along the shore. At that moment, I was passing a long rocky ridge where it was impossible to get ashore," the traveler says.
But he managed to cope with that too. He recently encountered his first wild animal—a family of wolves. But everyone went their separate ways. He shares his adventure on social media, learning about the local history along the way.
Video: telegram channel "Notes of a tourist»
