USEFUL SITES

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Follow Ash on Twitter and Instagram: @ashbhardwaj the charming city of Grodno and even the Soviet architecture of Minsk, what it’s really like is magnificent. Belarus certainly has legacies of the Soviet Union, but it has moved beyond it.

I went to Ukraine for the same reason. All I knew of the country was the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014 and the troubles in the east ever since. I headed west – to the city of Lviv and the Carpathian Mountains, along Ukraine’s border with Romania.

“You are like the first birds,” said Maks, my guide in the Carpathians, “Returning after a long winter. After 2014, many people stopped coming to Ukraine. But it’s perfectly safe. Let’s hope that more birds follow.”

I’d come to the Carpathians to learn about the Hutsuls, an ethnographic group of pastoral highlanders who have retained their freedom-loving identity. We were walking along a ridge that looked up to Mt Hoverla. Ukraine’s highest peak was hidden by clouds that twisted around crags.

“When outsiders conquered Ukraine, the mountains were hard to control,” said Maks, “So the people here carried on much as before. Even the Soviets couldn’t oppress the mountains like they did the plains. So myths and traditions endure.

“Shepherds still warn of the Mavka: the female ghosts who drag men to the forests. And the Chugaystr, the naked wild man who hunts the Mavka to keep villages safe.”

As we walked past a shepherd’s hut, I saw a thick trident-like mark carved on the door. It was fresh.

“It’s a shamanistic rune,” explained Maks, “It protects you from lightning and evil. The Hutsuls will tell you that all the stories are just there to frighten children, but they’ll still ask a shaman to protect their house with magic.”

Then we met two foresters who invited us into their camp.

That was how I spent an evening drinking moonshine and eating salo (a sort of unfried pork scratching) with six Hutsul foresters in the Carpathians. Over the course of the next few hours I learned how to respond if a Hutsul offers you a drink: you have tell him “I drink to you,” and he will respond, “may God give you health.”

As I continue my travels, I’ll drink to that.