The Covid pandemic kept us out of Ukraine in 2020. Now it's war

 

Kyiv's historic St. Sophia Square

The dates were set -April 6-29, 2020. It was to be a three- week trip for my husband, Tom, and me, starting in Krakow, Poland and ending in Vilnius, Lithuania with stops in Lviv and Kyiv in Ukraine, and Minsk in Belarus.

Pre-purchased tickets on Polrail, the national Polish train line, would take us across the border to Lviv where I'd booked four nights in a boutique hotel, signed up for free two-hour walking tour with a group called Lviv Buddy, planned to go to a performance at the Lviv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and visit the Museum of Pork Fat devoted to salo, the Ukrainian national snack.

We'd scout out a list of restaurants and cafes I researched from home, then would go to Kyiv by bus for Orthodox Easter. I'd arranged an art and food walk with a local guide, a visit to the Chernobyl nuclear site with a group called Solo East, tickets  for a children's musical adapted from the Adventures of Pinocchio and a dinner in the home of a local family through Eatwith.com. We were looking forward to seeing vendor stalls filled with colorful hand-painted Ukrainian easter eggs. There would be elaborate church services and an Easter festival in St. Sophia Square - the historical heart of the city pictured on postcards.

An Easter Monday flight on Belavia Air would take us to Minsk for a three-night stay in the Hotel Monastyrski, a converted monastery. There I had arranged another free walking tour (meet at City Hall near a statue of Voigt-a bronze man holding a key and paper), and made plans to attend the Minsk circus.

Three weeks before we were set to leave Seattle, we had to unravel all these plans due to Covid. Little did I know then that even two years later, we would not be able to recreate this trip in the near future, not due to Covid, but because of war.

The idea of ordinary travelers visiting Belarus ended last year when authorities forced the landing of a commercial aircraft in order to arrest an opposition journalist who was a passenger. International flights and visas were suspended. Covid raged due to low vaccination rates.

The situation, of course, is far worse in Ukraine where the railway cars that once carried tourists to and from Poland are packed with escaping refugees. Closed are the historic opera houses, churches, sophisticated restaurants, hotels and cozy cafes Out of business are the walking tour companies and youth hostels. Russian tanks may soon replace Easter pilgrims on St. Sofia Square.

I know people who look at a map, and seem surprised to see that Ukraine is surrounded by countries more familiar to Western travelers. When we hear the word "refugee," we tend to picture people fleeing from places such as Syria, Africa, Haiti or the Congo. But Ukraine is a first-world country with a bustling economy, historical sites and a thriving arts and culture scene. When you see television footage of Ukrainians lining up to cross the Polish border, picture the same thing happening in the U.S, if for some reason, everyone all the high-tech workers, lawyers, grocery clerks and small business owners had to flee Seattle for Vancouver, Canada. That's the reality of what we see in Kyiv. 

For the past two years, many of us have felt that it was Covid standing in our way of traveling. Now we know there's something more. There are many destinations that had once been open to visitors, but are now closed due to growing control by authoritarian regimes.

My husband and I traveled on our own in Myanmar just five years ago, staying in family-run hotels, taking walking tours with locals and using buses to get around. 

Entrepreneurship was just starting to thrive. Especially memorable was the Ma Ma guesthouse in Mandalay where the owner, Su, welcomed us with fruit juice, and checked us into a spacious double room with a little balcony, good lighting, two beds, a modern bathroom with walk-in shower and CNN. 

A Burmese monk relaxes in a temple in  Myanmar

Dinner that evening on the terrace was a medley of Burmese specialities (Su taught cooking classes)  for $15.50 for the two of us including beer. After a breakfast of eggs, toast, fruit and tea the next morning, Su set us up with taxi drivers for two full days of sightseeing,  one day in the city ($23 for the whole day) and one day outside Mandalay for a trip to three ancient towns ($30). 

Today, the Ma Ma is closed as is most every place that once welcomed travelers following a military coup last year which left thousands dead. Millions are unemployed, food and fuel prices are surging and poverty is rising. Covid-hit health care hard, and banking sectors are verging on collapse.

China is another example of a country that may never be the same for travelers or the people whose livelihoods depending on visitors. Closed off due to Covid for two years, it now exists  under more hard-line authoritarian rule than in 2005 when we met Lily Zhang, 26, a graduate of an ecotourism training program launched in China by the Nature Conservancy.

We had planned an overnight trek to an ecolodge with Lily, but when rain left the trails muddy. I asked her about the possibility of changing plans and instead visiting Baoshan, a fortified town built 700-800 years ago in the Yuan dynasty. It’s home to the Naxi ethnic minority, a tribe with Tibetan roots that’s maintained its own language and cultural traditions.

Lily was the kind of guide you want for a trip like this. She grew up in a Naxi family in a small village about 30 minutes from Lijiang, and spoke the language. It took her just a few hours to arrange a homestay and find a driver for grueling five-hour trip along a 90-mile stretch of road that passes through some of the Yunnan province’s most spectacular scenery. 

Naxi women in Lijiang, China

Lily went on to form her own ecotourism company called Xintuo Ecotourism, focused on empowering local people in Yunnan Province. Her business thrived with Western travelers until the pandemic hit. Her plans were to re-focus her marketing on people living in China. She sounded hopeful during this 2021 interview with an Italian publication. Then the Chinese began blocking Facebook as well as many internet sites. Lily's Facebook page is still up, but her website, ecotourism.com.cn no longer functions. 

There are other examples, some still Covid-related, some not. Gender wars are making life difficult for women in South Korea. The U.S. still limits travel in Cuba where we visited freely just 10 years ago. Turkey's economy has been devastated by greedy economic policies that have fueled inflation, and wiped out the value of the lira. 

So yes. Covid cases are falling. Travel is once again opening up, but not everywhere. For many countries, the barriers are bigger than the pandemic.