“Interview” is caving club “Pod RB” initiative dedicated to discussions with cavers from all around the world. What they share about their life above and under the ground, their caving experience, stories, dreams and future plans you can find in the following lines…
Tell us more about yourself in terms of your cave interests. How did it all start?
When I was 14, my parents and I were on a hike in the Crimea, where they had just opened the tourist cave Mramornaya for visiting , I was very surprised that it was possible to explore such unusual places. In the autumn, I enrolled in a children’s cave club at the Palace of the Pioneers, where at that time the legendary Soviet speleologist Tamara Ivanovna Krapivnikova was teaching. I liked it very much , there we mainly explored the horizontal labyrinths of the caves of Western Ukraine and after I finished school I came across a seminar of the Ukrainian Speleological Association of Karabi-Yayla and so my vertical speleology started.
As for work, I’ve done all sorts of things. I have an economic education, but my main rule is that the work does not interfere with speleology. To this day, I have lived in four countries, I worked as a photographer, a journalist, a guide, a manager, I had my own company producing clothes and equipment for cavers …
Since 2015, I have been actively organizing trips around the world, in the mountains and not only.