Sania Sagitova, Who Hitchhiked Around the World
When Sania Sagitova retired at 55, she decided to travel. Alone. With no money. By hitchhiking. By 69, she already traveled to around 40 countries.
The first time Sania Sagitova walked out onto the highway and put her thumb up wasn’t for fun, it was out of desperation. She needed to get her sick child from Ufa to Moscow for immediate treatment, but didn’t have enough money for a ticket. The journey was a success: her child recovered. 18 years later, having retired, Sagitova decided to devote the majority of her free time to traveling by hitchhiking.
“I learned the systems of hitchhiking through a process of trial and error,“ she explains. “At first, I would dress in bright colors, wear sunglasses, put on lipstick — to stand out and attract attention. After a while, I realized that dressing like this is not practical and not always safe. Hitchhiking is an extreme travel style, even an extreme sport, and it has its own rules. I figured them out and began to follow them. Now, I always wear a bright yellow jacket, dark pants, and reliable shoes.“
Sagitova travels alone partially because there aren’t many who could keep up with her pace. She once made a bet with her girlfriends to see who would get from Ufa to Moscow faster. Her friends got on the train. Sania walked out onto the highway. Hopping from car to car throughout the ride, Sania got to moscow in just 22 hours. Her girlfriends´ train arrived right on schedule: 28 hours after departing Ufa.
Sania Sagitova brings along a diary, a camera, and a voice recorder to record everything interesting. Apart from a change of clothes and shoes, she always brings traditional souvenirs from Bashkir, honey (Sagitova is a beekeeper by trade), a Bashkir flag, and an insulin shot: Sania Sagitova has diabetes.
“The doctors have diagnosed me with tons of ailments but I just don’t pay much attention to them because if you start nursing your illnesses, they start to get insubordinate. At one point, the doctors suggested that I file for disability — but I didn’t get around to it. What kind of a disabled person am I if I hitchhike around the world without taking any breaks?!”
In 14 years of travel, Sania Sagitova has visited around 40 countries, and nearly every region in Russia — all the way to Kamchatka. She’s swam in the Persian Gulf, looked down into the Avachinsky Volcano, walked the Mongolian steppes, the streets of Paris and Nice. All in all, Sagitova has hitchhiked over 120,000 kilometers, or three times the distance around the world.
Sagitova applies for all the visas herself. In preparing for a trip, she runs around from consulate to consulate, showing them clips of travel articles that she´s written for Ufa newspapers. “The Yemeni ambassador once came out of his office to tell me in person: ´Ms. Sania, we will give you a visa for free, just please write about our country.’”
She hasn’t had any problems with finding places to sleep while on the road. There are always people who are willing to provide shelter. Once, while traveling in Macedonia, Sagitova walked into a roadside cafe and, hearing fun local music, couldn’t help herself and began to dance. The cafe owners as well as the other customers became interested in this strange guest and, after hearing her story, offered her dinner and a place for the night.
“In the East, it´s really easy. If you cross through the front door and say hello, you are already a guest. In Mongolia, I was once traveling on foot for over a week. You walk and walk in the sun, no one else in sight, just me alone. Every once in a while, you see a yurt or two. You walk into the yurt, say hello to the owners, sit down cross-legged. And, they start bringing you all sorts of treats, without asking anything, then they show you to your bed,“ she says.
Once, in Germany, someone tried to mug Sagitova. The driver drove us off the autobahn into the woods and started to demand money.
“I told him that I don’t have any money,“ she recalls. “Then he started searching my pockets, emptying my pack… nothing!“ He threw my pack out of the car, pushed me out too and drove off. So, I had to walk out of that forest.“
Sagitova got so used to riding around in cars that last year, at 68, she took her driver’s test and, for the first time in her life, got her driver’s license.
“When you are a hitchhiking, anything can happen to the driver,“ she explains. “You need to know how to grab the wheel at the right moment, use the emergency brake, or tell the driver about a road sign that he missed.“
Now, Sania Sagitova is learning Spanish — next year she is planning a trip around Latin America.
