My memories from Crimea Eco-camp

Last summer I was in a beautiful Eco-Camp in Crimea, attending a yoga workshop with the famous teacher Doug Swenson. I was the only non russian speaker in all camp and I had great time there. I really loved Kiev too and Ukraine in general, so what’s happening in these days is making me really sad. I had this draft post in my dashboard since then and I never had time to finish it.. I will not do it now, but I will just publish to honour and with hope of bringing peace to this country and their people.

Even if the wild urbanization is unfortunately changing its shape quickly, Kiev is still of one most green and beautiful cities you can find. But after spending one week in an Eco Camp, I can barely tolerate its pollution.

You can appreciate fully something only when you have taken some distance from it. (Master Cloudio)

After one day in the Eco Camp the fantastic views of Crimea mountains, the super clean air, the absence of polluting noises, the healthy food, the general calm, the nature sometimes not comfortable (why there are so many wasps around?), but always..natural, have become the normality.

Sleeping in a tent, wake up in the morning and peeing on the grass: priceless.

In an Eco Camp you need to be prepared to give up of some comfort you normally don’t want to renounce, but at the end of the day you can easily can. at least for a week or two.

Surely, I’d like to have my toilette, as being sure that wasps, spiders and ants don’t visit my tent or my luggage, but you soon realize that all this little living creatures are not so harmful.

I am the only foreigner in “a russian world” and so the language barrier and their natural suspicion make hard for me to have any talk to anyone. Before come here I planned to be in mouna, silence, for a few days, and it js just naturally happening even if I discarded the idea before arriving.

But I can see the ice protecting the people around me melting everyday very quickly, and after 8 days, at the moment of leaving, I feel hard to detach from the beautiful souls I spent time with.

Take Olea for instance: she gave up a successful career a fashion manager and is now living in Eco Camp on and off. I met her at the reception where she works and I ask her help to book me a train ticket to Kiev, as I can’t find any availability on-line. She find me the ticket, she asks me how long I’m going to be in Kiev and if  know anyone. Niet, my reply. So she call a friend and make sure I have company and someone to call for any assistance..

Or Sacha & Dacha, the young couple from Kharkov with a gorgeous one year old daughter, Alyssa, who take people around on excursion.. The always smiling Vitaly from Belarus, Tatiana and Sergey from Moscow, every day more friendly and caring despite speak English for them is almost as hard for me to learn some Russian..

I arrive an Kiev after an overnight train, with 2 sad local men addicted to smoking, that were snoring loudly. My body refuse the new environment and produce catarrh and vomiting feeling to reject all the pollution I am taking.

I arrive in Kiev the day before Independence day, and 36 hours later I can’t stand the mass of smokers, drunk or just empty people, whose energy is depressing and overwhelming.

Yes, I am tired and crabby, at the end of this trip, but every time I come back to the “so-called civilization” after spending some time in places like the Eco Camp, I keep wondering when I will finally take courage and make a place like this, not just a holiday destination, but home.

Until few days ago I considered coming back to the Eco Camp next summer and almost surely it will not be possible now.Whatever will happen there, I just hope there will be peace