June 7, 2012
Priest and traveler Feodor Konyukhov will start a new large-scale voyage.
"I crossed the Atlantic Ocean in an oar boat ten years ago. I felt myself reproachfully that I had to cross the Pacific Ocean. But the Atlantic Ocean is three thousand miles, while the Pacific Ocean is eight miles. We need another boat, bigger and more powerful. I told my friends from the Chelyabinsk Region about my dream and they supported me," Father Feodor was quoted as saying by the Chelyabinsk edition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
He intends to leave Chili and reach Australia in 160-180 days.
"No one has ever done it, a thousand islands will be on my way, and there will be temptation to stop and land. There's no time to think in the sea, you always need to row. That's why I wrote so short a diary when I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean. And beside food and a water distiller I will take the Gospels and fishing rods to my new trip. It's nice and useful to do some fishing," the priest said.
Not long ago, he climbed Mount Everest from the north, from the side of Tibet.
"There are no thoughts on the top, where they can come from if your blood gets dense from oxygen starvation, you don't feel hands and legs, to say nothing about your head. I always prayed to St. Nicholas, I said: 'Nicholas, pull me up!' And he pulled me to the top. I lost eight kilos for the trip, my beard was rubbed from the oxygen mask. But it's nothing if compared to what can happen. Everest takes mountain climbers every year. This year, it's been eleven people," Father Feodor said.
According to him, it is not only physically hard to climb Mount Everest.
"I'm thin and I don't have muscles. No one saw me working out with weights. But they saw me praying all night long. And only with God's help I do what I do. I don't have physical, moral and intellectual abilities to cross the ocean alone or to reach the pole. All this is possible only with God. I dig in snow a small icon of St. Nicholas in Tibet. We've recently sent a similar icon to the International Space Station. The icon makes 16 turns around the Earth each day and protects us," the traveler said.