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I hiked in the Carpathians with my Ukrainian friend Sergei and his friend Sergei. We met in the village of Volovets and started our backpacking tour from there. The Carpathians in Ukraine are easy on the foot but finding decent water can be a problem up there in fall. Camping when time to camp - no "camping sites" and starting a nice campfire at the campsite was the routine. The weather was nice - indeed it was a bit too warm for me in the everlasting sunshine through the day but temperatures dropped below O° C during the night. The mountains are fully vegetated and with fields of bilberries (or similar) and other species of eatable berries. At lower altitudes, well below tree line apple trees of various species grow. Green apples, red apples, big apples, small apples. Most certainly strange surroundings for an Icelander. 

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I had downloaded some tracks from Wikiloc. Sergei had good maps - which is needed as there are hardly any markers along the way. A well visible trail, most of the time - but not all the time. Consequently, don't go without reliable information about the trail. If you want to have first-hand experience of backpacking in the Ukrainian part of the Carpathians - or have a mixture of cultural visit and some hiking feel free to contact Larissa at http://www.threedaystrip.com/

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I got a second chance to backpack in the Carpathians in spring 2017 - arriving in Kiev on 25th April and leaving Ukraine 7th May.  After the necessary stop in Kiev we took the night train to Ivano-Frankivsk to catch a bus further out to catch yet another bus to take us to the staring point of the hike, close to Ilma village. We walked on the mountain ridge as in the hills and to the top of some mountains like Gorgan Iljemsky, Perenki and Mencelik. 

 

There had been unusually much of snowing and there was quite some snow as we got higher in the mountains. Actually, snow covered the trail for quite some distances and broken trees, crossing the trail made the hiking much slower than one would expect. Anyway, we were four for the first three days but then Henning, a Danish gentleman decided to return to his family. So - again I was walking with my friends, Sergei and Sergei. We spent 8 days on the tour. As we were there on public holidays, much more of backpackers were up there than I would have expected. Life is full of nice surprises.

 

The weather was nice, most of the time but the last two days the "nice" only lasted until just after noon, when the skies opened up and started pouring incredibly fierce rain down on us with thunders and lightnings, lasting for a couple hours. 

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