Due to a brutal hangover, most of my third day in Novi Sad, Serbia, was spent laying on a couch, eyes half-shut, half-staring at my computer screen, vowing never to drink rakija again. Something productive did come out of this lazy day, though, as I read the blog of the Rainbow Snowball Caravan and found that they were in Serbia. Originally I had intended to spend only a few days in Serbia and then continue on to Romania and Ukraine, but the magic of traveling without plans is that I was able to pack up my bag and instead hitchhike towards Vodopad Bigar, a small hidden waterfall next to a monastery in southeast Serbia. Following the instructions on hitchwiki, I ran across the fairly empty motorway, jumped the barrier in the middle, and stood on the shoulder to catch a ride as cars whizzed by at 70+ mph. I felt incredibly sketchy doing this, but everyone else seemed to think it was perfectly normal. There wasn’t much traffic since the road came from Hungary and the border had recently been closed due to the refugee situation, but soon enough I was in a car with a Bulgarian man who insisted on taking me out to lunch at his favorite Serbian restaurant and then drove me an extra 30 miles to the waterfall since there wasn’t any traffic on the small back road.
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| Too many possibilities |
To paraphrase from the Who Are We section of the blog, the Rainbow Snowball Caravan is a group of travelers who began at the local Rainbow Gathering in Wales and decided to travel together to the European Rainbow Gathering in Lithuania. I met many of these travelers at the Lithuania gathering, which is where I began to follow their blog. At this Rainbow, there was a lot of interest in continuing the caravan towards the World Rainbow Gathering in Egypt this winter. The Jonesberries, a family who have been traveling for over 30 years (check out their website, they’re really awesome), graciously allowed around 15 dirty, smelly, but amazing hippies to pile into their camper-truck and the caravan slowly made its way from Lithuania to Serbia, where I joined them. The vision for the caravan was to travel as a flowing group, with people joining and departing as they wish, traveling with no plan but following the heart to determine the next destination, and living free of the confines of money by sleeping in tents or whatever space was offered, traveling by hitchhiking/walking/biking/any means possible, eating food that would otherwise be thrown away by bakeries or grocery stores and scavenging fruit from trees, and playing music on the streets to make money when necessary.
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| The Jonesberries truck, transporter of hippies |
I’ve written a little bit about rainbow gatherings and the rainbow family in past posts, but for those who didn’t read them, I’ll do my best to quickly explain these inexplicable occurrences here. The rainbow family is open to anyone who wants to participate, and consists of everybody who attends rainbow gatherings or has any association with the rainbow, generally with the goal of spreading positive energy throughout the world, living peacefully and harmoniously with other people and nature, living non-commercially, and sharing with everybody. Rainbow gatherings are held in most parts of the world, normally lasting one month from new moon to new moon. They usually take place far out in the forest/desert/mountains and hundreds or even thousands of people make their way to the gathering location with tents and sleeping bags to live communally for the length of their stay. Meals are cooked over a fire and eaten together in a big food circle and workshops are held daily (e.g., yoga, meditation, tantra, contact, slackline, music, etc). It’s a fascinating occurrence because there is no leadership, there is no cost to attend, all of the location scouting, set up, cooking, and cleaning is done by volunteers, the location and timing is spread mainly by word of mouth, and all of the food and equipment is purchased with donations. In essence, the Rainbow is a chaotic-yet-functional anarchy with utopian visions and may be as close as one can find to a utopian reality. Its biggest problem that I noticed is that too many uneducated hippies show up with the glamorized idea of living off the land but don’t actually understand what it means to leave no trace, so the place ends up a lot dirtier than it began. This is the vision statement of the European Rainbow Family of Living Light:
“The European Rainbow Family of Living Light warmly invites all brothers and sisters from all places of Mother Earth to join together in the celebration of the beauty of life.We recognize the need for gentleness, kindness and to be in service so that in this way we raise the vibration of unconditional love which we give to ourselves, each other and to this paradise on which we live, Mother Earth.We recognize that we are one, that the divine consciousness is in each of us and our vision is to fully feed and live this one love and one consciousness as a family.We recognize that these are times of great change, both globally and individually. We are seeking enlightenment and to reconnect with ancient traditions. We come together with the vision of the rainbow in our hearts, creating infinite possibilities to manifest heaven on Earth. We trust in love.”– Consensed in 2013 with the understanding that it needs to be updated and changed as the family grows and changes.
If this still makes no sense to you, the only way to really get to know what the Rainbow is, is to attend gatherings and decide what it means to you. In the meantime, you can check out these links to an article about the rainbow family, a book about Rainbow Gatherings written by a British brother, the Rainbow Gathering wikipedia page, and the Rainbow Family wikipedia page. Anyhow, the snowball caravan traveled Rainbow style, meaning we pooled our money in the “magic hat” (which, admittedly, was very little, but money isn’t important when you live Rainbow style) and cooked, ate, bathed, shat, meditated, and lived together, singing Rainbow songs around the fire every night and being constantly surrounded by an excess of smiles, hugs, and profound thoughts about energy and unity.
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| The camp site in Southeastern Serbia |
When I first arrived after getting a bit lost in the forest, I was greeted with shouts of “welcome home!” and hugs from everybody. The people in the caravan were amazing; the easiest people to become friends with, the most open and accepting, positive-spirited people I came across. As the week passed by, I found myself skinny dipping in the waterfall several times a day, running barefoot up to the top of densely forested mountains, and getting to know all of my new friends and their stories of how they ended up there. It was a wild mix of people from all over the world, including several musicians, dozens of dreadlocks, a baby girl and her parents, the Jonesberries family with the truck, a few people who decided to take a vow of silence to try out nonverbal communication for a while, a guy who didn’t believe in borders so he traveled without a passport, and a girl who had eradicated money from her life and had been traveling for the last 11 months without spending a single penny.
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| Most of the caravan by our campsite at Vodopad Bigar |
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| Puppy heaven at an eco village in Kalna, Serbia |
Weronika showed up a few days after me. She had left her home in Poland with no money and very few belongings other than her guitar and incredible musical talent, but that was all she needed to travel. One morning, after I had been camping with the caravan at the waterfall for about a week, Weronika and I took refuge from the pouring rain in my tent and began talking about what would come next in our travels. She had to get back to Poland in a few weeks because her passport was about to expire and I had to get to London soon to see my family. With these time deadlines impending on us, we both wanted to move faster and we were looking for a different sort of travel experience; we wanted to make friends with the local people and learn about their culture and their lives and try to live the way they live. This would be impossible to do in such a large, disorganized group full of different visions of what would come next, so we decided to head out on our own and travel together for the next couple weeks. Armed with a tent, a guitar, some warm clothes, practiced fire-making skills, about $50, and smiles, we had everything we needed to survive the next three weeks. Within moments of standing on the road, a car had pulled over for us and the guy in the passenger seat handed beers back to us as a welcome to their vehicle. The next few weeks would be a whirlwind of adventure, meeting some of the most friendly and generous people on the planet, eating an absurd amount of homemade cheese, drinking fresh goat milk and moonshine (separately), and experiencing the rural Balkan lifestyle that we never knew existed.
