Dmitrov

Yet another story to illustrate that guidebooks don’t contain everything.

Dmitrov (Дмитров/द्मीत्रोव) is a town on the northern outskirts of Moscow and close to the Sheremetyevo airport from where I was scheduled to fly out to Mumbai. This town was not in Lonely Planet guidebook and so I didn’t know about it at all. When my friend Evgeny suggested this place he had heard, I was delighted.

Me: “What’s there?”
Evgeny: “I don’t really know.”
Me: “Super, lets go!”

We drove there and, to my surprise, Dmitrov turned out to be a cute little town – with a high embankment around the Kremlin and statue of a giant with whom I battled fiercely.

I had fun time here:

• First, walking on top of the embankment and watching the church in the shallow trough was quite a change in scenery; very different from other towns I had been to.
• Second, trying hard to find a restaurant to eat until we saw that the only restaurant in the town that was open was, guess what, Mc Donalds. PS: people still love eating there, but obviously, we refused!
• Third, walking in the market, the go-to place for groceries, meat, clothing, shoes, kitchenware, hardware, art, flowers, tea and what not.
• Fourth, eating a shwarma in Russia, which I never wanted to try, but I am glad I did.
• Fifth, haggling and buying trinkets. I have the Matryoshka dolls, big maces (my dad was terrified because mother kept it!) and other random stuff. I can’t believe I left it to the last day to buy these souvenirs!
• Sixth, eating my last treat of sweet cheese. I don’t know what its called in Russian, but for some reason I called it Wonnderbar.
• Seventh, I bravely fought a huge warrior as seen in the image below. Clearly I survived to tell you the tale. PS: The statue is that of Yury Dolgoruky, the founder of Dmitrov and Moscow.

PS: I had entered this picture into @foxnomad’s cheesiest photo contest

To conclude, I’m really thankful to my friend Evgeny for driving me here, and this is just another instance of the wonderful things you discover that aren’t in guidebooks (it can’t possibly list everything). What’s the next big resource? Are travel blogs taking over?