Join our journey to the new edge of Europe

Ash Bhardwaj takes a fresh look at the intriguing countries that border Russia

Having my passport scanned in a gazebo was a novel experience, but this was an unusual border crossing. I thanked the Polish border guard, walked to the middle of the lock, and stopped to take a photo of the red-andwhite Polish border post facing the red-and-green Belarusian one. Then I continued through a gate and found myself in Belarus.

I’d discovered that, as of last year, kayakers and cyclists could enter Belarus via the Augustow Canal. Delighted by the novelty of this process, I abandoned plans to take the train to Minsk, and decided to walk.

Belarus – aka “Europe’s last dictatorship” – is renowned for being sensitive about its borders. But here, on the canal, I couldn’t find the one thing I needed: a Belarusian border guard. I wandered into a low pre-fab building and called out. A few minutes later a man in uniform appeared.

After some entertaining Google translations – “You are taking your feet to Grodno?! You have swallowed too much of the English vodka!” – Sergei, the border guard, sent me on my way.

“Welcome to Belarus,” he said, with a big thumbs-up.

Belarus was the seventh of 10 countries that I was visiting on my journey along the eastern edge of Europe. Most were part of the Soviet Union prior to its collapse in 1991 and have since moved into the Western sphere of influence.

My interest in the region was piqued during a visit to Estonia. As an Army Reserve Officer in The 7th Battalion The Rifles, I took part in a multinational training exercise there in 2017. It was part of a mission to bolster Nato defences and send a message to Moscow, following the annexation of Crimea.

In Estonia, I got a vivid sense of how indigenous communities had been split by political borders and of how the infrastructure of the Cold War was still being played out. I wanted to find out more – about all those countries bordering Russia in the new “Edgelands” of Europe.

My route got longer until it stretched 5,000 miles (8,000 km) from Arctic Norway, through Finland, Baltic Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad (also part of Russia), Poland, Belarus and Ukraine to Clockwise from top: Alexander’s Cathedral in Narva, Estonia; traditional costume at the midsummer festival in Jurmala, Latvia; Ash on the road; aerial view of Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery, Ukraine Moldova. Some of these countries are popular tourist destinations; others are barely known outside their borders.

Geopolitics and current affairs would be the background context to my trip. I wanted to learn new things and shatter preconceptions about rarely visited places.

Belarus was a place about which I knew nothing. Sergei, the border guard, had set the standard for a country that, belying a rather bleak, authoritarian reputation, sets new standards for friendliness. In every bar and restaurant staff and customers wanted to chat about where I was from and ask why I had come to Belarus.

“To see what it’s really like,” I would reply.

And from the rolling countryside,

A SIGHT TO BEHOLD