Madventures/Blog

1. What exactly the phrase “Travelers can’t afford to be atheists” means to you? What is your relationship with religion?

TUNNA: I don’t belong to any church whatsoever and I was raised as an Atheist. Nowadays I’m kinda syncretistic, I believe there’s absolutely some bigger energies and powers than just us. It’s not necessarily an old man sitting on a cloud or a guy with an elephant’s head. Every religion is aiming for the same goal – to make people love each other and to respect one another.

The more you travel the more you understand how important it is for people to have something to believe in. Faith gives you hope and without hope you’ve got nothing. And I’m not talking about organized religion here, especially not the church.

I also understand Marx’s thesis that religion is opium for the people. I’ve seen enough suppressed poor people who are not rising to demand their basic rights as human beings because the church has lured them not to do so: be humble and you will get to paradise or higher cast in the next life.

Religion can be used and is used very efficiently to suppress people. It’s a great tool of exploitation for the greed and those in power.

Faith is in your heart and religion is in the church. Faith gives people hope. And world is just too unfair place to live in without hope.

As I travel it’s also very much about respecting the local traditions and customs. I want to honor the things people consider as holy. And to be honest when I have to pour the rest of the moonshine for the ancestors in Togo or do the morning Puja before I climb the mountain in the Himalayas I do so because I believe that it really matters and has some significance for both myself and the culture I visit.

And Madventures-wise, I really want to make it sure that all the winds will be blowing on our side!

RIKU: It’s not at all easy to answer this one in short. My personal attitude towards religion and spirituality is very ambivalent.

At times I admire some religious teachings or the inner peace some religious people seem to have achieved. Then again I fear many fanatics, but most of all I loath the corruption very often present in religious systems. Myself, I’m not a believer nor an atheist.

When traveling in the third world, you can’t help noticing how strongly religion and spirituality are usually present in the everyday life of the people. It’s very different from the modern materialism we Westerners are mostly used to.

Many times I’ve been wondering what kind of effect it has to a person, if you e.g. pray five times a day with your neighbors or do the morning pooja at 5 am at a local temple every day before going to work. Of course it might be often that it’s just another ritual of that particular culture, or many of the faithful may just simply think of their own business while they reluctantly fulfill this task. But still, the fact is they are systematically dealing with issues like life and death or sins and virtues on a daily basis. Believing comforts many people there – and it also keeps up structures of oppression.

A traveler can’t afford to be an atheist? Well, of course it was Tunna who said that in the show but I’m down with that. For me, it means that mostly in the locations we travel, religion is always omnipresent. On their turf, I can’t just simply deny it.

If I wish to understand them better and maybe learn something from them, I’d better be open for everything – that includes religion, too.

2. Thomas is about to visit St. Petersburg and wants to ride a recon vehicle like you guys did it in the episode. How can he do it?

TUNNA: I think it’s better Riku answers this – I don’t remember the exact details.

RIKU: As we said in that episode, everything is possible in Russia if you cough up enough

moolah. You’ll find many companies by simply googling something like “driving

Soviet tanks and shooting Kalashnikovs in St Petersburg”.

3. You will time travel. Where, when and why?

RIKU: Finland, Iron Age.

Why? Finland was one of the last strongholds of animism in Europe, and I believe that still has some impact on us. Most of all I’d want to witness a ceremony for hunted bear, as I guess it was one of the most important rituals.

I’d love to hear how the music and singing were like, to have a sauna and probably get drunk and beaten later. And if I forgot to mention, it should be in summer.

TUNNA: I would get a Tibetan Rinpoche with me. We would travel to the late Paleolithic era to give people some true wisdoms from Buddha.

Maybe this would change history and make the world today a lot more peaceful and different than it is now.

On the same trip I’d like to give high five to a Neanderthal dude, another human species that coexisted with our human race. Give it a thought, another human species coexisting with us only 20000 years ago…

4. Tell us a little bit about your tattoos, Riku? Do you have any, Tunna? If not, would you like one?

TUNNA: Riku got his while doing time in Russian jail. For me tattoos are so last year, I’m into extreme body modification. Maybe an extra arm or something…

RIKU: One of my tattoos is a knight, or actually a lancer.

I took it as a reward when I got in the University to study journalism. And that’s what I became after studies, a freelancer.

Then there’s one by my friend Ässä, with my motto, the words Ignis Artis Aeturnus in it. Those wise words are from a tombstone in a Helsinki graveyard…

And then of course there’s the sak yant, the protection tattoo made by a monk in a temple we filmed in in Thailand. Let’s see if there’s more some day…

5. Best thing about this very day is…?

TUNNA: It’s 4:20 at the moment and I bought plane tickets to Mother India an hour ago!

RIKU: It’s Friday, for God’s sake, and so far we are alive!