![](\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%20189.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n…which, if you choose the right spot, can include the sight of early salmon leaping a waterfall.\u00a0 I never saw this when I camped as an army cadet in the Brecon Beacons.<\/p>\n Secondly, camping in Sakhalin involves driving 4WDs laden down with copius amounts of “kit” which is to be shown off shamelessly to your male companions.\u00a0 Americans are welcome as they have a habit of bringing along eye-boggling amounts of kit purchased from the USA for a fraction of what it would cost you in Sakhalin, assuming you could even buy it here.\u00a0 Hi-tec electronic gadgetry from Japan is also popular, at least with the blokes.\u00a0 Upon arrival at the campsite, all kit is dragged from the cars, unpacked, and assembled willy-nilly around a huge fire which consumes a small forest worth of logs throughout the night.<\/p>\n Thirdly, camping in Sakhalin is forbidden unless all involved (Egyptians excluded) get totally hammered on beer, vodka, coffee mixed with Baileys and Glava, all three in succession, or anything\u00a0else you fancy.\u00a0\u00a0The drinking is interrupted for\u00a0half an hour or so whilst everyone gathers around the barbecue and\u00a0throws on pile after pile of meat, most of which goes uneaten because the Russian Army never showed up to eat its portion.\u00a0\u00a0With everyone fed, the drinking continues and the singing begins.\u00a0 Usually somebody talentless and tuneless\u00a0gets out a guitar and\u00a0does a fine job of keeping the bears at bay.\u00a0\u00a0Once a suitable late hour has been reached, fetching firewood involves going more than a hundred metres into dark forest, and everyone is\u00a0plastered, those\u00a0brave souls with tents\u00a0crawl (or in the case of the Americans, stroll and head for the east wing) into their\u00a0nylon pods and fall into a drunken coma.\u00a0 Those who\u00a0lack a tent or are too chicken to use it cheat their way through the camping experience by sleeping in the back of their Toyotas.\u00a0 Next time I’m gonna be leaving tin openers\u00a0with pots of honey around the campsite.<\/p>\n Finally, camping in Sakhalin, like most seemingly mundane\u00a0activities in Russia,\u00a0often presents bizarre spectacles which would go sadly unseen were we to sit in dingy bars, crumbling apartments, or\u00a0remain in the UK.\u00a0 On our last camping trip a car inexplicably burst into flames on the opposite side of the valley, producing a column of thick smoke.\u00a0 The bewildered occupants would normally have been rueing the loss of their car and contemplating how to get home again…\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n …had their\u00a0blazing chariot not set fire to the entire hillside, causing the driver and his passenger to attempt to stamp out the flames with their sneaker-clad feet.\u00a0 As the picture below shows, they were not successful.\u00a0 This made for a fine afternoon’s entertainment for those, i.e. us, watching from a comfortable distance.<\/p>\n But the fun wasn’t yet over!\u00a0 Just as we were packing up to leave, for no apparent reason a minibus owned and operated by a Korean seaweed harvester opted to drive across a river rather than simply take the road, and unsurprisingly got stuck.\u00a0 For our entertainment he rammed the opposite bank a few times without success, before his mate turned up in a jeep to winch him out.<\/p>\n All in all, a fine weekend camping in Sakhalin.\u00a0 May those to come\u00a0be as entertaining and bear-free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The weather in Sakhalin is warming up nicely, the evenings are still getting longer, the bears are hungry and out in force…which means only one thing: camping season. Camping in Sakhalin is worthwhile for several reasons.\u00a0 Firstly, there is the … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n