In Search of the Zoobr

The zoobr. Known as the Wisent or European Bison in English. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia

I have indeed, praise be to God, attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the Earth, and I have attained this honour.
— Ibn Battuta

…and in the modern world, where lengthy journeys to previously unheard of lands are no longer possible, we lesser travellers have to make do.

In the 4.30 p.m. November twilight, the surface of the Mukhavets, a little river in western Belarus, had become a varnished brown strip of reflection. Birch, twisted willow and spongy rotting leaves were imaged upon its surface. I wonder: do you think the great explorers of ages past found a quiet place to partake of contemplation, before their setting out?

Zoobr – the largest of the European mammals. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia

Of Europe's largest mammal I knew little and being in the city of Brest there seemed nothing for it, but to find out. To the north, I'd read, was the wilderness which straddled the Polish border and in it, in small numbers, was what the locals called the zoobr.

Ibn Battuta's first journey in 1325 lasted twenty-one years. Marco Polo travelled for twenty-four years from 1271 and the Muslim Hui navigator Zheng He, from Yunnan, accomplished seven voyages within twenty-eight years from 1405. It might be that I had just a day in hand to find the zoobr, but there'd need to be an expedition.

The island in the Mukhavets is a place of reverence for Belarusians. It is the site of Brest Fortress where two Soviet regiments stood their ground when the Nazis attacked in 1941. They faced five hundred canons, six hundred bombs and lasted a month before the fort was lost, at the start of an occupation that would claim one in four Belarusian lives. At the island's centre an eternal flame burns, watched over by a massive stone head sculpture called 'Valour.'

Zheng He was well-prepared. It is said he had over three hundred ships. By contrast, the following day, in search of the zoobr, would find me rather more like Ibn Battuta, who left his Moroccan home, alone. Do you think the great explorers of ages past went to bed early on the night before their departures?

The village of Kamyanyets, Belarus. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia

A model Soviet city, Brest had wide, clean boulevards with older painted stone cottages and towering unsightly blocks. It was in one of the latter I was staying, a monumental hotel of sparse décor.

On the morning of the grand expedition the preparations were tiring and endless, or at least they would have been had it been several hundred years earlier. In the twenty-first century I could not match the magnitude of Marco Polo's preparations, no doubt, when he set off for China. But I did pack my things and check out of the hotel, before walking to the bus station wholly unaided.

And just as Marco Polo once met the various tribes of Central Asia, I met a taxi tout who sought a hefty fee for a private voyage to the forest. Zheng He might have had his fleet but Ibn Battuta went under his own steam and I followed that example. Yet, the taxi driver could help. I was having trouble making the bus ticket seller understand my intended destination, the village by the forest called Kamenjuki. I was able to seize the taxi driver's enthusiasm. He pronounced it for me. Do you think the great explorers overcame various difficulties with the help of locals? I'd say they did.

But then, looking at my ticket, I noticed that it said Kamyanyets, in Cyrillic. It was the expedition's second dilemma: to hope I was not going somewhere entirely different. Yet, there was nobody to fill in the gaps on the maps for Zheng He, surely, on his way to Bengal's Sonargaon. So I boarded the bus.

(left)A November afternoon in Kamenjuki, Belarus. (right) The Eternal Flame, Brest Fortress. Photos: Andrew Eagle

An hour on my imaginarily blistered and sore feet later I burst from the vehicle, spent and flailing: or I would have had I rather travelled on foot and by camel. Indeed it was Kamyanyets: but fortunately Kamenjuki was a short bus ride further, about eighteen kilometres. I could almost smell the zoobr from there, Marco Polo's China.

A good explorer half-hour later I'd arrived in Kamenjuki. Ibn Battuta once sought assistance in the mountains of Kamaru, from the followers of Shah Jalal, in order to find him in Sylhet. I asked a girl from the bus where the forest was. She vitally pointed up the road. After a huge, ten minute trek to the edge of the forest, my expedition started in earnest.

It was icy. I had to negotiate a snowy bridge over a frozen stream, but I persevered, adjusting my scarf on the way. If the cold got in, I knew, all might be lost.

I entered the forest, Belavezhskaja Puscha: 1300 square kilometres of primeval, virgin forest, the last such stand in Europe. Pine and birch, the canopy closed around me. I relied on my natural instincts to hold my direction, watching the sun, feeling the wind, noting the way moss grew on the tree trunks. And following the road.

Suddenly something stirred. Could it be the ferocious, mysterious zoobr I sought? I clutched my camera and trod carefully. The pine needles were damp and quietened my stride. But it was only a family of wild boar.

It would be another good ten minutes of arduous hiking before the first zoobr set eyes on me. In fact it was a small herd led by a large male. He was enormous, easily as big as five miniature horses, with horns like the devil himself, a rugged woolly brown coat, legs as thick as saplings, and huge flaring nostrils.

The 'Valour' Monument, Brest Fortress. Photo: Andrew Eagle

I wonder what Zheng He thought when he reached Africa and saw his first giraffe. He captured one and took it back to China. I thought not to capture a zoobr, except on film. Nor did I set up a trilingual stele to mark the occasion as Zheng He did upon arriving in Sri Lanka.

Zheng He was said to walk like a tiger. He didn't stray from violence when he was threatened. Faced with a zoobr flaring its nostrils, there was nothing to do but flare my nostrils right back. One shouldn't let large wild animals sense one's fear, or so it might be. The beast took four lumbering steps towards me. We stood eye to eye, and if he charged, what would have happened?

When Marco Polo crossed the Pamirs he found a mountain sheep which ultimately took his name: the Marco Polo sheep was described in 1271. But the zoobr had its name, in Russian, and in English it is called the European bison or wisent.

It could have crushed me without a second thought. But I held my ground, given that I've never heard of anyone suffering death by zoobr and am rarely first at anything; given that the danger was somewhat reduced by the well-constructed wire fence between us. Well, there was no point randomly scouring the forest when a few zoobrs had been confined to a pen for easy observation. Okay, so it wasn't quite like the great explorers but in the twenty-first century, one has to make do.

The expedition successful, zoobr sighted, I returned late afternoon to Brest, and on to Minsk. I didn't take back the riches that Zheng He did, from his voyages, or even the spiritual fulfilment and new wisdom Ibn Battuta found, but it had been a nice day.

And at the least I didn't suffer Marco Polo's fate. Upon his return he found Venice at war with Genoa. He was captured and narrated the tales of his journey to a fellow inmate, in jail. I have the luxury of writing on a laptop, at home.