124 Chapter 3
he found shelter aboard the icebreaker Lenin , but he had to hide the extent of
his injuries so that the naval doctor would not detain him.^89
Travin seemed to eschew civilization, although he was no hermit. In other
ways, he demonstrated mastery of all the traits celebrated by independent
tourism: preparedness, self-reliance, ingenuity, and skill. He noted that he
did not need to carry food because he could always fi nd a meal in a peasant
cottage; in the north he could catch fi sh with a bicycle spoke and hunt birds,
fox, or bear with his rifl e. At one point, he shot a polar bear for meat and its
skin, only to discover it was a mother with two cubs. (He had been given a
dogsled at this point after having been seriously injured in an ice cave-in: he
spent two months in a northern collective farm settlement, recovering from
his injuries and fending off the local matchmakers.) He added one cub to his
larder and carried the second one live in reserve, but he soon grew attached
to the little fellow, Mishutka, and it became a pet. The Chukchis, he related,
were as amazed by this friendship between a man and a bear, an animal they
considered holy, as by his bicycle. But Mishutka met an unhappy end: in
another settlement, he had playfully spilled some soup Travin was drinking,
and Travin punished him by locking him in a shed overnight. He had given
the cub a bearskin to keep him warm, but he mistakenly gave him his moth-
er’s fur. He found the cub dead in morning, killed, Travin believed, by grief.
Travin vowed then that he would never again kill a polar bear and later in-
sisted that because he respected nature, nature had allowed him to survive.^90
What motivated Travin to make this journey? As he recounted later in
life, he drew his joy from the movement toward the goal he had set for him-
self. “Every day I took an examination. If I passed, I would remain alive. To
fail—meant death.” Publicity meant nothing to him, and he did not seek it
out. At a time when polar aviators were drawing press attention for their
exploits north of the Arctic Circle and traveling tramps were gaining fame
for the length of their solo journeys around the country, Travin charted his
own personal journey without fanfare or notice. He would later assert that he
kept silent because of the “negative connotation of the term ‘tourist,’ associ-
ated with leisure and holiday-making, even an ‘independent tourist.’ ” Travin
himself had relied on the French adventure tale Without a Penny in your
Pocket in preparing for his own tour, but he did not seek to capitalize on his
experience by sharing his adventures with the reading public.^91
Travin’s journey would sink further into obscurity when in 1937, as the
purges raged, his sister burned the notes he had sent her in the course of his- Travin, “Bez skidki,” 56–58.
- Ibid., 61.
- Ibid., 60. On the fascination for the north, see McCannon, Red Arctic. The real
increase in polar exploration and attendant publicity did not begin until 1932, but there
was plenty of exploratory activity going on along the northern USSR border at the time of
Travin’s tour. Kharitonovskii, Chelovek , 212, 41. The Penny reference is probably to Louis
Boussenard, Sans le sou (Paris, 1895). Boussenard’s travel adventure stories were popular in
Russia through the twentieth century, according to library listings.