How a Soviet cyclist made a SOLO ride across the entire border of the USSR
Gleb Travin’s tale of circumnavigating the Soviet Union’s borders on a single bicycle has never been repeated. He carried only a gun, a compass, a hunting knife and a kerosene lamp in his backpack. Eight hours a day in the saddle, food and water twice a day, sleeping on bare ground, whatever the weather – and all this for three straight years! Travin described it this way and, to this day, no one has matched his record.
How dreams of a grand journey were born
In October 1928, the then 26‑year‑old cyclist set out from Vladivostok eastward toward Khabarovsk. He rode along the southern border of the country, past Lake Baikal, crossed the Caspian Sea by ferry and pushed on through the Caucasus.
By November 1929, he had reached the very north, the city of Murmansk above the Arctic Circle. From there, he charted the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean, mostly riding right along the frosty surface.
Travin had conceived of this adventure while still a teenager. He had been inspired by Onisim Pankratov, a Russian military officer who was the first to bicycle around the world. And later, by Dutch cyclist Adolf de Groot, who had visited Travin’s hometown of Pskov during his large European tour.
The young man also intended to cycle around the world, but the end of the 1920s made it impossible to obtain an exit visa – he was denied one. So, he decided to circumnavigate the entire USSR instead.
On the brink of survival
Travin grew up in a “survival‑skills” club for hunter‑trackers. His father taught him how to hunt food and find shelter in the forest. Thus, the boy already possessed the skills required for a solo expedition. He trained for almost five years: long hours on a bicycle, studying geography and zoology.
Yet, it’s impossible to foresee everything, especially when trekking across the Arctic. When caught in a fissure between ice floes, Travin fell into the water and barely escaped. He froze his toes so badly that he had to amputate them himself to avoid gangrene.
The indigenous Nenets people offered him reindeers and dog‑sleds to reach civilization, but Travin turned them down. In Kamchatka, he asked to board a vessel used by polar explorers and they ferried him across open water.
Fact or fiction?
There was no real‑time monitoring of Travin’s ride. Newspapers did not cover it and journalists learned of him only from the polar explorers. The first press account came from a Siberian journalist named Vivian Itin, but the story of the bicycle tour only really gained popularity in 1965.
It was Vladimir Kharitanovsky and his book ‘The Man with the Iron Reindeer’ that popularized Travin’s journey. After World War II, there was a surge of interest in heroic tales of men overcoming the impossible. Travin was even compared to Alexey Maresyev, a pilot who crawled for 18 days through forests with broken legs during the war.
Nevertheless, doubts soon arose and numerous authors questioned whether Travin actually completed his journey (Especially given the fact that Vladimir Kharitanovsky had greatly exaggerated the mileage of the trip).
The ‘undeniable proof’ held in a museum
In Travin’s native city of Pskov, a museum houses the “undeniable proof” of his journey – a registration journal where all the border settlements he passed through are marked with postmarks (256 in total), along with the exact dates.
In addition, the museum holds the hero's personal belongings, as well as notebooks with daily diary entries. And of course, the main artifact – the very bicycle with its original handlebars, made from a rifle barrel.