Thumbs Up for Hitchhikers' Guide

Next time a thieving taxi driver tries to rip you off for five bucks a kilometer, think of Valery Shanin. Russia's king of hitchhikers has traveled from Moscow to Scotland, Transcaucasia, Afghanistan and the Mongolian border, as well as across the United States from coast to coast -- and back -- on a selection of planes, trains and automobiles, all without paying a bean.


After 55,000 free kilometers over the last 12 years, Shanin, 33, is well qualified to write Russia's first manual of hitchhiking, complete with tips on driver psychology, where to catch lifts, visa regulations for America and Europe, and where the impoverished traveler can eat and stay on a budget of 50 cents a day.


To be a successful hitchhiker, a traveler must be ready to depend on the kindness of strangers -- and fend for oneself when the kindness runs out. Shanin once spent six weeks traveling around England on $20. Sympathetic motorists would buy him fish and chips; otherwise he would forage in the woods for nuts and berries and sleep in barns.


As a psychology professor at Moscow University, the irrepressibly cheerful and slightly elfin Shanin has devoted much time to the science of hitchhiking psychology. He even runs a special after-school seminar on hitchhiking for his students.


Drawing on his experiences as a passenger-seat globetrotter, Shanin expounds on the tactics required to spot a potential lift, win the driver's confidence with a sweet smile and persuade him or her to take you where you want to go, or even put you up.


"I have found that there are three types of motorists," he says, as though discussing the diagnoses of various patients. "There are the altruists, who will always take you, the egoists, who will never take you, and the waverers. The first four minutes are the most important. It helps to be a psychologist when you're talking to people, to put them at their ease."


One of the first lessons for budding Russian hitchhikers is the Western sign language for stopping a car: While the classic international gesture is a fist with thumb extended, Russians traditionally use an open palm. The frontispiece of the book is a photograph of the author, helpfully demonstrating the Western pose.


The roadside palm-waver is not a new phenomenon in Russia. In the '60s, the official Soviet Hitchhikers' Association had more than 80,000 members. Drivers were issued special notebooks which the hitchhiker would fill out after every journey. When the book was full, drivers would send them in to a special lottery where they could win new cars, motorcycles, radios and spare parts -- "Wheel of Fortune" meets "Easy Rider."


These days, as any taxi driver will tell you at length, things are different. Although the roads have become more dangerous, Shanin says thumbing a ride is still a good way to travel.


"People say that the country is full of bandits and rapists, but this isn't true at all," said Shanin, who began taking his daughter hitchhiking with him when she was 5 years old. "Of course it's more dangerous than watching TV at home, but more fun."


One of the main problems has been getting visas. "As soon as our own government gave us freedom to travel, foreign governments took it away from us." Obtaining invitations and producing enough cash to satisfy border guards that you aren't going to stay in their countries are the biggest hassles.


"In Western Europe you don't have what we would call proper borders -- no barbed wire or machine guns -- but still the immigration officials don't seem too keen on Russians." Shanin was deported twice from France for not having a visa. "If no visas existed I would have traveled half of the world by now."