Anna in Ukraine

It’s been a while since I wrote anything for the newsletter. There have happened radical changes in the world which touched me personally and I had to make a decision. And it was not an easy one.

But several weeks after the war against Ukraine started, I decided to stop my continuous motorcycle journey around the world of almost nine years and to come back to Ukraine.

Traveling has been my passion and my lifestyle for many years, and it complied with my values of freedom and sense of adventure. But when the war started, I realized that while my values remained the same but the way I could honor them most was not through traveling but through making a pause in my travels and returning to Ukraine. Because this time my country was defending its freedom, and that’s where I had to be and to contribute.

I was involved in different things including basic military training, volunteering, journalism. But at some point I decided to do what I could do best, meaning traveling around Ukraine and collecting stories of people along my way – stories of how they have been affected by the war, have survived and continued living further.

Traveling Ukraine these days is quite a challenge for many reasons which I wish no one would ever experience in their countries. For example, many smaller roads or sides of the roads are mined so you have to stick only to the main roads, especially if the region was under the occupation. Many bridges, big and small, are destroyed so in order to get to the other side of a river you should make a huge detour if it is possible at all. In quite a few areas which were just liberated there is no signal, no electricity, no connection, and it means that you cannot use online navigation. Moreover, in case when you cannot use the main road due the bridge damaged you have to look for other options. In all these cases I found QV app very helpful.

First of all, I downloaded the map of Ukraine in advance and switched to offline mode while traveling to those areas. In many cases seeing on the map all the road options really saved me and my friends a lot of time looking for a proper route. Very simple way of marking waypoints on the map made it easier to find some spots next time when I was traveling to the same area. As well as seeing POI’s along my route was quite helpful too. Even though I have to confess that some of them, like gas stations or coffee shops, were not operating for obvious reasons. But again seeing where could be the next one was giving more hope that the next one would be open.

So yes, it’s been a while since I wrote anything for the QV newsletter. But I’ve been using QV app almost continuously with satisfaction and ease. It definitely contributed to my view of QV as the app not just for traveling but also for unusual circumstances when the normal navigation wouldn’t work.

I feel that I’m even more motivated to continue working and developing QV because it proved its efficiency in the situation of real necessity.

If you want to learn more about my experience in Ukraine, visit my Instagram or Facebook page.