Weekend Travel Challenge # 3 - Korostyshev - Khotyn - Kamianets-Podilskyi
Canyons and fortresses were my leading direction this weekend.
When you wait for too long, you may not get wherever you want.
That exactly what happened with me. I was delaying buying tickets to one of the most gorgeous waterfalls in Ukraine, thus I adjusted and moved to absolutely different location.
The most surprising though was a fact that it was absolutely awesome. I traveled with 3 girls to Korostyshev, which is a small city in Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine.
This place is pretty original. Due to the massive production of granite, you can find an insane amount of gravestones of different forms and price range. This was weird for me, but that’s how people are making money here.
Anyways, the purpose of our journey was to look at this powerful and fabulous granite canyon.
Ones we did it, we stunned. I don’t have the appropriate words to describe what I felt. A true sense of excitement and a tinge of contentment was spreading throughout my body.
I was taking pictures and then realized that no matter how beautiful a photo can be, being at particular place is 10 times cooler. You just simply cannot substitute real event with a photograph or a video. It will be an approximate version of it but it’s not the same.
After a couple of hours we finished our small trip and came back to Kiev where the train to Kamianets-Podilskyi was waiting for us. One of the girls left, so I was in a company of 2 amazing girls.
A struggle in the road
During your travels you may encounter a pretty common thing, which is a desire to sleep. Oh boy…
Do you know that feeling when you’re really tired but you cannot sleep? That is exactly what we were experiencing the last hours in that train. I have no idea why but it was pretty exhausting for us.
When we got to the city, a rain showed up. It was not the most appealing state of the weather a person can expect. On top of that we needed to take a taxi to go to our hotel (which cost us the price of a hostel).
It was located 22 km from railway station so we had an exceptional experience to ride that distance with an accompaniment of the rain and almost no lights on the road.
My GPS was misbehaving but hopefully we got to our place and finally were able to lay on a nice soft pillow. I was so tired that I felt asleep almost instantly.
A fortress day
This day anticipated a discovery of 2 fortresses so after we had some breakfast, we were moving toward Khotyn direction. After about 2 hours or so, we reached our goal and there you have, a Khotyn’s fortress was just in front our eyes.
What can I say, it was fascinating. The combination of river, fields and countless of trees was a perfect way to emphasize the power and solidity of the fortress.
I haven’t been there before so my brain was releasing a new set of dopamine that made me one of the happiest people in the world, at least for that moment.
It was quite novel type of architecture for me, and I loved it.
After spending several hours in Khotyn, we decided to get back to Kamianets-Podilskyi and check out a second fortress on our list.
To be honest, I’ve already seen it before, thus it didn’t impress me that much. But if I would compare those 2 fortresses, I would say they are equally gorgeous and unique.
What is awesome about this city is that they have canyons too, they are big and astonishingly surprising.
Nevertheless, if you have a chance to visit Kamianets-Podilskyi or Khotyn, definitely do that.
I managed to book tickets at a reasonable price! (Singapore- Hong Kong) I was worried after reading lots of negative reviews but my experience was good Bravofly reviews Here are some details : after I made a booking, I called customer service to make sure of the confirmation process and lead time because my travel date was close from the booking. The operator was polite and explained well(Thank you!).