Впечатления

Ilko Dimitrov

All his earthly life Gerry was feverishly weaving a canvas–he never stopped doing it–of different continents and religions, of glaciers, deserts, market-places and people. When I saw him on the morning after his death, I realised that the mechanical work was already done. What was lying ahead was another, maybe even more difficult, period of pronouncing all this–in a way that doesn’t affect the entirety.

Vlado Rumenov

I wasn’t a good student.
Towards the end of high school, a new character with incredibly curly hair and also incredibly thick glasses having twelve diopters appeared in the neighboring class. He appeared because he–like me–wasn’t a particularly good student with particularly good conduct. We banded together on the principle “birds of a feather flock together”. Whole nights through we talked over “fundamental questions” and whatnot…
With time, it became clear that besides books, the main interests of Gerry–this is how this “bird of a feather’ was called–were mountains, rocks, and in general, travelling. In the name of travelling he chose the life of an immigrant. Despite narrow means and living on the verge of asceticism, he went everywhere. He only missed getting to Australia.
He was fascinated by the natural philosophy of the Tibetan world, which he was in love with. Several times we travelled for thousands of kilometers there. I usually walked behind him.
His figure and his gait–these slightly crooked legs, emaciated from undernourishment and over-fatigue in the Himalayas that confidently and rhythmically move the path backwards–are engraved on my memory like in a film.
Recently he embarked on the most important, inevitable journey of his life–the last one. He had been looking forward to it for several years. We had discussed it. He was completely prepared and calm.
I see him walking away with these slightly crooked legs emaciated from undernourishment and over-fatigue in the Himalayas that confidently and rhythmically move the path backwards while he approaches the light.
Farewell, Gerry! So long!

Ralitca Stoilova

What Gerry gave me many years ago–although he kept giving it to me throughout his whole life–is the understanding that the human Ego is like an anchor nailing you to a rock, like chains that bind you. If you want to get rid of your Ego, send it behind bars. Don’t let it free! Don’t listen to what it whispers in your ear. It is a demon who–with gentle words–sends you back to the trenches. Trungpa, the Tibetan teacher, says “The loss of the Ego is a fear that we will not be able to anchor ourselves, that we will lose our identity, a horror that there is no solid ground beneath our feet. But when you lose all this you find the freedom.”

Edvin Sugarev

Gerasim Velichkov–Gerry departed from us. He set out along the sky ridge for his most difficult ascent. In the short breaks between his journeys he used to do different things. For example, he translated more than 20 books from English into Bulgarian–from “Knight’s Gambit” by William Faulkner through “The Critic as Artist” by Oscar Wilde to the books of the great mountaineers Joe Tasker and Chris Bonington. He created 18 documentary films, among them: “Chadar— Shadow of Glass,” “To Purify yourself in the Himalayas,” “Kailash—the Axis of Faith,” “A River born from Shiva’s Hair” and “The Mountain Goes to Mohammed”. He wrote a lot of grand travel notes published in “Odyssey” magazine that managed to turn the places you were reading about into part of your inner biography.
First and foremost, however, he was a traveller. All his life Gerry travelled around the world trying to understand how this world exists, how people live in it, what unites them, what distinguishes them, and whether the faith and the religion make them equal or completely different. Maybe that’s why his inner world was as boundless as the one he travelled. This is why we, his friends, don’t want to take a final leave of him but just to wish him a pleasant journey on this highest of his ascents. He should pitch a tent up there on the peak for our wandering souls as well.
I heard you are en route again, Gerry!
And that you are again ahead of us walking uphill along the frozen river that springs straight from the sky. A pleasant journey in the invisible, and don’t forget to leave tracks for all of us who come behind you!
…

Petar Atanasov

Parting from Gerry
On 5th April one of the most distinguished contemporary Bulgarian travellers, Gerasim Velichkov or just Gerry, departed from us. Within the framework of about 20 journeys he had reached the remotest, wildest and most inaccessible–and therefore most attractive–corners of the world.
In 1986, together with Kalina Stoilova, he accomplished the first Bulgarian trekking in Tibet. Then, mostly with Kalina but also with other fellow travellers–among them Nikolai Genov–he continued visiting the world’s landmarks: the Himalayas, Tibet (he was maybe the best Bulgarian expert on Tibet), Karakorum, Pamir, Venezuela. He sailed in a yacht around Cape Horn.
Gerry was a traveler–I don’t know if the expression is correct–of the old school. He wasn’t just a consumer of what the road gave him. He prepared for every journey like nobody else (despite his immense erudition) and set out with open heart and senses in order to penetrate deep into the new surroundings. And it was not by chance that every time he came back he brought a huge amount of “luggage” of meaningful impressions and experiences that he shared–from the perspective of an erudite and knowledgeable person–with everybody who had eyes to see, without showing any sense of superiority or patronizing. He was deeply conscious of the necessity of sharing, without which the adventures and the travelling remain just for one’s own consumption. I don’t know if any other Bulgarian—from those who travel round the world–has ever organised so many photography exhibitions, has shot so many films and has written so many articles about what they have experienced. His last exhibition, “Chadar-Shadow of Glass,” opened on December 2, 2010. During the exhibition in the Architect’s Club in Sofia, six of his films were also shown. Hundreds of friends and other, just inquisitive people came in touch with his work as a photographer and film maker. And several days before, the jury of Banskofilmfest 2010 presided by Michael Brown had awarded him with its Special Prize for Lifelong Achievement.
Gerry was born in 1955. From 1989 to 2005 he lived in the USA. He translated about 20 books—most of them fiction. Among them are the novella “Knight’s Gambit” and many short stories (like “Smoke”, “Monk”, “Hand Upon the Waters”, “An Error in Chemistry”) by William Faulkner, whose works are exceptionally difficult to translate into a foreign language. The translation of “Puppet on Chain” by Alistair MacLean–a classic in the crime fiction genre–is also a work of Gerry’s.
In the mountaineering circles, however, he is best known for the translations of the books “Annapurna South Face” by Chris Bonington (“Meditsina i fizkultura” publishing house, 1982) and “Savage Arena” by Joe Tasker (“Meditsina i fizkultura”, 1989).
Gerry was a modest, gentle and good person. The experience he had gained by travelling had turned him into a wise man. What he has written, filmed and translated will live forever. As he will live forever in our hearts.
Farewell, Gerry. Rest in peace!

Vlado Rumenov

Gerry…

It is not easy to write about people like him. It is not easy because one of the few things he hated was being the center of attention. At the moment he is probably critically peering through his glasses into the display of my laptop.
Life brought us together in high school. We were reading the same books, listening to the same music. Both of us were equally keen on not staying for too long in one place as well as on being out somewhere in nature. He was tempted by the mountains. He was not the kind of people who live to work. On the contrary–he worked to live. And life for him was travelling. Life was a series of journeys which he carefully prepared and during which he met mountains and people–mountains that had given birth to different deities and people who spoke different languages. He got on well with both, mountains and people, and they got on well with him and accepted him.
I accompanied him on two of his journeys. Both of them were in the Himalayas–a geographical term meaning much more than “mountain” despite being the largest one. I think it was his favourite.
We were passing through villages and monasteries. We were passing by peaks, surmounting ridges and overcoming dangers. Some of them were serious, but I knew that as long as Gerry was walking in front of me everything would be all right. And it was.
Recently he embarked on the most important journey of his life–the one to the life beyond. He had been carefully preparing for it for a long time. I have no fears for him. I know that he’ll cope–I see him walking forward…
Good luck, Gerry…

Nikolai Genov

With Gerry on the ice highway CHADAR
For a very long time I and my friend Gerasim Velichkov–whom everybody calls Gerry–had been making plans for one of the Himalayas’ challenges known as Chadar. We had been several times before in the former Tibetan principalities of Ladakh and Zanskar which nowadays belong to the Indian state Jammu and Kashmir. To visit them in winter though, when the tourists have left this fascinating land to its indigenous population, is something quite different. We wanted to live at least two to three months in this savage world looking for an answer to the question: What keeps the local people in a region with the severest conditions one can imagine?
Being much more a polar expedition than a mountain trekking, this adventure had been agitating our imagination for more than three decades, so it was high time we realised it. Chadar is a winter road connecting Ladakh and Zanskar–at the modern-day northern end of India–since the Middle Ages. The road bed runs on the ice of the frozen Kashmir River, Zanskad, and is the only thoroughfare for the stern highlanders when the cold, the snow and the avalanches make the high mountain passes inaccessible.
The night temperature at the time of our passage on the icy Himalayan highway often drops to minus thirty degrees Celsius. We overnight in caves, as the local people call the cavities in the bank hollowed out by the river. Walking here is tiring, difficult and dangerous, especially in the melted sections of the river when you have to go around by scaling the faces of the walls of the canyon. Otherwise you walk all the time on ice that is like glass and not always thick enough. You run a serious risk of falling in a melted section of the river and being engulfed by the stormy current beneath the ice. Because of our pace and the frequent change of the terrain from ice to snow, rocks or sand, it is impossible to use ropes and crampons, as it would take a lot of time and would make the passage interminable. We were supposed to cover a total distance of 300 kilometers (both directions) from the place where the Zanskar flows into the Indus to the small town of Padum. We expected to do it in 15-20 days, depending on the benevolence of the local climate defined as one of the most erratic on earth.
Of course we were also looking for some romance in the adventure, which could bring us back–even for a short time–to the wonderful world of a Tibetan civilization that the Chinese Red Guards had totally destroyed.
While the 20th century has slightly touched Ladakh, one can say that Zanskar lives still in the 19th century. Because of the inaccessibility of their mother land, the ten thousand Zanskarians live rather outside of our time. They don’t care what happens in the rest of the world. Here the global technical revolution is reduced to a stove that burns without smoke, a wind-resistant lantern and a primitive radio with batteries. Only in the once glorious ancient capital, Padum–today a small town with no more than a thousand inhabitants–and in the nearby Karsha, situated at the base of a monastery built into the rocks, there are electric generators. However, they only function 2-3 hours in the evening and actually not every evening. And then–amidst noise and smell of naphtha–the flickering bulb lights up the room as if with a squeak, and the world comes to life. When the electricity stops everybody knows that it is a signal to go to bed.
Zanskar is two rivers and three valleys situated in the remotest corner of a particularly cold region. To the east and to the west of this place–isolated behind high passes–austere minor mountain ridges connect the Zanskar chain with the main Himalayan ridge, making it to look like a hanging garden. Besides The Land of the White Cauldron, they also call it Home of the Black Wolves and Ice Tundra…
Quite logically, I chose Gerry as my companion for several reasons. The first one was that he knew well this part of the world where he had done several wonderful journeys before. Apparently he had set his mind to filming all places in the world with similar charm and beauty. Besides he was a very healthy and intelligent person. The last thing shouldn’t be ignored, especially bearing in mind how the human nervous system gets exhausted through privation and hardships and what unsuspected changes can happen then to one’s character.
Gerry was one of the most travelled Bulgarians. He was either roaming, or “between two trips”. Everything else in his life was subordinate to this goal. He had wandered many times in the Andes; he had sailed in a yacht around Cape Horn; he had toured the island of Borneo and the Spitsbergen archipelago; he had been almost everywhere, but for him this was a trifle on the way to the next destination. There is no other Bulgarian knowing the Himalayas and Tibet as well as Gerry. With some friends he had trekked in the Zanskar Himalaya range as far back as in the 1980s. Many times, with bated breath, I have listened to the story about the snowstorm that came up that summer. Everything became paralysed, and some twenty trekkers managed to find refuge in a small cave, where they spent more than a week. Unfortunately, one of the guides died along with most of the horses…
And so, at 19:45 on January 4, 2007, the two of us, with a mountain of luggage, flew off for India. Without exaggerating, Gerry and I knew for sure that we would be the first Bulgarians to walk on Chadar.