Viktor Pinchuk

Viкtor Valerievich Pinchuk (ru: Виктор Валéриевич Пинчýк; born 14 June 1969, Simferopol, USSR) is a Russian traveler, journalist, author of books in the genre travel literature, photographer.

Third african trip (ru: Третья афровылазка)

 * Warm autumn day. The last hours and minutes of the outgoing Indian summer. The weather is wonderful. The sun gives warmth to everyone. Children play at merchandisers. Smiles of good people from billboards attract to buy a cockroach remedy. Male pensioners in trolleybuses give his sits to female pensioners. Traffic cop gives out invitations to a concert of police ditties. Somewhere in the yellowed foliage, a stupid starling sings his trills. And yet something is missing. Missing her. Inconceivable, but there were times when I could somehow do without Africa.
 * Time moves inexorably forward and this process is irreversible. The list of countries that I managed to visit is increasing every year. There are still no sponsors and probably will not be. However, are they needed? Easily and just to do without someone's help: it is necessary only, without feeling sorry for itself, to disdain money a little, to slightly ignore comfort and a cosiness and to believe very much in the forces even if... they are not present.
 * On December 3, 2010, from the Nativity of Christ, with a small camping backpack behind my back, I left the house, running away from the routine of pale gray days, which look like twins in a morgue. In the backpack — a monthly supply of oatmeal, a metal bowl and a mug, in the passport — not a single visa, in the head — dreams, ideas and a vague future.
 * During my childhood, the inscription «tourist» accompanied the picture, where a person in sneakers with a backpack climbs the mountains. Now under a similar comment — a beachgoers: sunglasses, a sun lounger under a palm tree near the azure waters of the ocean. Everything flows, everything changes.

Six months by the islands... and countries (ru: Полгода по островам... и странам)

 * An angel of heaven appeared to me in a dream: «I was sent by providence to warn you. Do know, lonely wanderer, that for everything you have done: traveling around the globe, books, photo exhibitions... you will be severely punished in old age! Nobody will give you even a mug of water…» — «Go away, depressive nerd bore.. — I interrupted the feathered one, — you utter banal phrases!»
 * Once, when I was a teenager, with a backpack behind my shoulders, in shabby clothes and a hat with wide fields, went down from the highest, as it seemed to me, Crimean mountains, to where in the lowlands rural children grazed a flock of sheep. The shepherd boys surrounded me from all sides, mistaking for a wanderer and started asking... I told them about the world trip, African cannibals, described aborigines traditions and much more. The chappies listened as enchanted, opening their mouths from amazement: they have never been beyond the neighboring village. However, the fifteen-year-old narrator in those days was not yet a traveler, I deceived them... and I also deceived you: this story is fiction.
 * Woke up in the morning. Outside the window is a dull landscape of a small city where people live like moles in burrows. An ordinary day, everything as always. But the ghost of doubt still loomed in consciousness, not wanting to disappear with the first cry of the roosters. For the sake of what I wandered and suffered for six months: starved in Papua New Guinea, slept on the sidewalk in the company of Indonesian homeless people, shaking from cold at night in China? After all, I will not be awarded a chocolate medal and a material allowance as for an international tramp will not be appointed. Who makes me do this? Maybe my own stupidity? But no, this is her sister — conscience. And I got back to work.
 * Any route, be it Africa, Asia, or the islands of Oceania, I go twice: the first time in reality, the second — when I write about it. Everything that happened: adventures, joys, problems — live now in my memoirs, travel notes, in the imagination of those who have read my books and articles. It will stay when I am gone into the world of shadows.
 * The teacher asked wards what the meaning of life was. They began to put forward versions. Only the failing student, sitting at the last desk, was silent, staring stupidly down. When the noise subsided a little, the teacher turned to him: «What do you think about this?» — «I do not think about what is not...» — answered dunce.
 * Now I am truly rich, and this treasure will not be able to take away from me either the villains in the dark alleys or the ubiquitous tax authorities: a semi-annual expedition of one participant, which included nine countries and seven islands, significantly supplemented the baggage of knowledge obtained in previous wanderings. Spiritual wealth is more expensive than diamonds.
 * The celestial omen shone the mind. The gate of the azure vault unfolded, among the clouds, in the halo of sunlight appeared the Lord, Hanuman the Most High. «I trust you with a responsible mission... — annunciate holy God — from this day forget about comfort and coziness, leave your whims and desires... Your Ego is gone, you do not belong to yourself, taking a vow to serve the muses. From now on, you are the wind of the Sudanese deserts, the fog of the New Guinean Mountains, the heat of Kenyan night and the tropical rain of the Indonesian archipelago...»
 * Native penates. Semi-annual trip behind. Woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat: it seemed as if there was money for the next travelling and the hour came. Mentally howled in horror: «Orderlies, give me an injection of selfishnessI, don't want, tired! » A moment later, returning from the ghostly drowse to dull reality, as if the ice swimmer from the «February heat» club, diving from an ice crust into a hole, remembered that there were no funds yet and, therefore, a trip was impossible. This is the joy of a soldier looking closely at a small hole from a bullet (a second ago whistled over the ear) in the wall of the trench: it means that there is still time and you can again go on the attack, fight with the remnants of philistine, selfishness and laziness, who, like a tiny pygmy, lodged inside me.
 * Paradise in which there is no way to leave territory — hell for a traveler.

Afghan prisoner (ru: Афганский арестант)

 * Dedicated to eccentrics, madmen, residents of the Far North — heroes of Russian anecdotes, as well as to all those who died while climbing Mount Everest. (Dedication of the book)
 * Waking up early in the morning, I was seriously scared, deciding that my company had gone to the military training — therefore, I will receive a scolding from the senior in rank for oversleeping. Crawled under the bed for footcloths and at that moment... remembered that I was not in the army now. No, this is not a barracks, but a room in a Georgian hotel, costing five euro’s per bed per day. Delighted with the return of his memory, crossed himself mentally and, having dressed, went out onto the balcony that adorned the facade of the building. (About the hotel at the bus station in Tbilisi)
 * I was about to go to bed when the commandant knocked on the door again. He brought a plastic bottle with a cut-off top, explaining by sign language that it was «parasha» (chamber pot — Aut.). Thanking the kind man, turned to the wall, trying to fall asleep. I almost succeeded: got to the waiting room of the land of dreams, when an armed convoy suddenly appeared. (About stay in the Kubul prison)

Tribes of Kenya (photo exhibition)
Each of my works is a small window in the wall of the exhibition hall, through which you can see a piece of Africa.

Through the keyhole of time (an exhibition of artifacts)
My artifact collection, on a global scale of archaeological studies of the cultural heritage of historical Russia — negligible; it does not open the door to our past, but only allows glance at him fleetingly, as if through a keyhole.

Press interview quotes

 * A trip without a camera to the African tribes for me is the same as giving a person who has lost both legs the boots he once dreamed of.
 * Money is a kind of paintings, they can be framed, hung on the wall, and this will also be an exhibition.
 * Anecdote from the photographer. Once a certain airline decided to conduct an advertising campaign: on the central streets of Simferopol, agents offered passers-by air tickets to Mongolia for 10% of the real cost. Of the 1,350 respondents, only one person expressed a desire to go to the land of the steppes — a homeless person at the station, but, unfortunately, he had neither a passport nor money.
 * Death will come for me somewhere in the African jungle. I hope the negatives will be handed over to their homeland, and someone will make a posthumous exhibition. But another option is also possible: my photographic films will be hung on a palm tree by the native people, celebrating some local holiday, and they will smash coconuts with my camera.
 * It is better to watch TV when it is switched off — that is, in the traditional way, but by pulling the plug out of the socket. One of the advantages of the alternative is electricity saving; in addition — the use of this method does not pose a threat to eyesight.