Russian Banya Tent: Ritual of Steam, Whisking, and Rebirth A few years ago we received an email from a Russian guy, Alexander Baybarin, who was seeking a cover for a Banya tent. We worked together with him to design it and came up with the right materials so the heat would be held inside. We […]
Russian Banya Tent: Ritual of Steam, Whisking, and Rebirth
A few years ago we received an email from a Russian guy, Alexander Baybarin, who was seeking a cover for a Banya tent. We worked together with him to design it and came up with the right materials so the heat would be held inside. We suggested an Alachigh which he thought was amazing, but we lost touch with him, he maybe used another tent instead. So we put it in the drawer of unrealised/onedaymaybe projects and then we reached into the drawer and this one came out.
The Russian Banya is like a sauna but unlike the dry heat of a Finnish sauna, the Russian banya is an intense, humid steam, or par. It’s a deep-rooted cultural tradition, a social ritual, and a powerful experience of purification and well-being. For centuries, this steam bath has been an integral part of life in Russia, where you emerge feeling, as the saying goes, “washed—born again”
Heart of the Heat: Steam and Humidity
Steam Room (Parilka): This is the core of the Banya. Heat is generated by pouring water over a stove containing heated stones. This creates thick, moist steam, with high humidity levels at temperatures that can be quite high.
“Black” vs. “White” Banyas: Historically, a “black banya” had no chimney, allowing the smoke to fill the room before eventually escaping, blackening the wood and imparting a distinct, primal scent. Modern “white banyas”use chimneys for a cleaner, more comfortable experience.
Banya Hats: Not just for show – It’s a crucial element of the Banya, used to protect your head and hair from the heat, preventing overheating and allowing you to stay in the Banya for longer.
So you enter the Banya….be prepared for a sudden rush of heat.
The Ritual Part: Parenie with a Venik
The most iconic and essential part of the Banya is the ritual known as Parenie (steaming/whisking), which involves the use of a Venik, a bundle of leafy branches, most commonly birch or oak, but sometimes eucalyptus. Beforehand, branches are soaked in hot water to soften the branches and release aromatic, beneficial essential oils.
The Venik Massage is a skilled, vigorous steam massage. Someone in the Banya with some experience will give this to you.
Waft Hot Air: They use the venik to drive the hottest steam down and across your body.
Massage and Exfoliate: The leafy bundles are used to gently massage, tap, and press the skin. This stimulates your blood circulation, exfoliates dead skin cells, and helps release toxins through intense sweating.
The venik ritual is therapeutic, invigorating, and fills the air with a beautiful, natural smell, making the experience totally deep and sensory.
Cold Water Plunge
After the intense heat of the parilka and the parenie ritual, the next step is a sudden, extreme cool-down.
The Social Experience
More than just a method of cleansing, the Banya is a social event.
Then you all eat meal together, cleansed of the body, with clear the minds, and feeling more bonded after the experience.
If you have canvas tents or are thinking of getting some, you need to know something about canvas care as well as looking after tents in general. Some site owners avoid tents because of the maintenance – one should remember that they are tents after all and you can’t just put them up and […]
If you have canvas tents or are thinking of getting some, you need to know something about canvas care as well as looking after tents in general. Some site owners avoid tents because of the maintenance – one should remember that they are tents after all and you can’t just put them up and not think about them when the Weather Gods are playing or let them sit unheated through the winter. If you want something with lower maintenance, best go for something more solid like a hut but personally, I think the romance, beauty and simplicity of nomadic tents, such as tipis and yurts, is well worth the effort.
Looking up in a tipi
So canvas…first I would advise you NOT go for cheap canvas however tempting it seems. A lot of the imported Mongolian yurts are made from a heavy canvas which is made for the dry climate of Mongolia but doesn’t adapt well to damp European climates and the canvas will quickly leak. Our main work is making yurt covers, and have re-covered many a Mongolian yurt barely in its infancy.
Sewing yurt covers
The usual canvas used in the UK is 12oz FWR (flame, water and rot-proofed) poly/cotton, Before 2007 it was cotton that was more popular, but the rot-proofing agent used in the proofing was banned, so a new one was used which was actually water-soluble! It meant that there was a batch of bad canvas around that time and we heard horror stories of canvas rotting after a year. Although a new rot-proofing agent was developed, the industry had moved into poly/cotton as it is more rot-resistant and stronger, with 50% polyester content it’s really a game changer.
It’s hard to say how long canvas lasts as it depends on many factors, so we don’t offer any guarantee on its life, but if looked after, one can expect 5-7 years for a tent left up all year. One consideration in pitching your tents is the choice of location. If pitched under trees, the canvas gets dirty from falling leaves and the run-off from tree sap and this can contribute to it perishing. Trees to be extra careful of are pine and willow. Also, obviously, if pitched in the shade the canvas doesn’t dry out so quickly and generally in the UK, the damp is more damaging than UV (although this summer has challenged that trend!) In hotter climates, such as Southern Europe the UV exposure continent, damages the cotton element of the canvas so it is worth thinking about alternatives to poly/cotton (see below about acrylic canvas).
Our Yurt and tipi garden in Israel
Next …general maintenance… we recommend reproofing the canvas once a year which can greatly increase its longevity. Before reproofing one should clean the canvas with a soft brush and warm water, no soap, no scrubbing, no pressure washing, but as long as you reproof the canvas well it should be OK. Remember that any cleaning will remove some of the proofing. (Obviously, white canvas shows the dirt and mould more than other colours, so many of our customers, when replacing yurt covers are choosing to replace white covers with darker colours, such as sand).
Reproofing is usually done with a paint-on solution when the tent goes up for the season – various products are available, but mostly only contain waterproofing and rotproofing agents. Recently the FWR proofing solution used by the manufacturers themselves has become available. (We can supply this at manufacturers cost). We have heard stories of tent covers being sent to professional cleaners, who have little experience of canvas and come back unproofed and sometimes perished although there are now companies who can clean and reproof for you.
Another consideration in canvas care is if the tents are left standing through the winter, they should be heated at least every few days, usually with a wood-burning stove (or open fire in a tipi) and, if the tents are not being used, they should be taken down when the canvas is bone dry and packed somewhere dry and rodent free. The summer before last we had a mice invasion on our site in Italy and we were surprised to discover that the mice chose to eat through the proofed canvas of the yurts rather than the wool blankets and mattresses inside. No accounting for taste. (Troubleshooting rodents and creepy-crawlies is for another chapter).
More yurt covers
There is a common perception that cottons are more ‘natural’ than synthetic fabrics, but people forget that they are proofed with chemicals. Our customers are choosing to go for acrylic fabrics as an alternative to poly/cotton as, although much more expensive, it is a better investment longterm, it greatly outlasts the poly/cotton as it doesn’t rot and it’s also stronger. The acrylic proofing isn’t in a coating but in the thread itself, thus doesn’t need reproofing the same way. It is a woven fabric so looks almost identical to the poly/cotton, yet feels nicer to touch and stays clean and new looking for much longer.
Acrylic canvas wedding pavillion
We are Spirits Intent, expert makers of nomadic tents and specialists in the canvas side of things, call on us if you need any advice on canvas or need new covers for your structures.
Our spring cover rush has come to a head this week, when we were called to increase the size of the yurt covers from one of the Yurtshire sites: all three yurts were to be extended from 16’6″ to 17′ diameter. The yurt covers we made were perfect but it turned out the frames were […]
Our spring cover rush has come to a head this week, when we were called to increase the size of the yurt covers from one of the Yurtshire sites: all three yurts were to be extended from 16’6″ to 17′ diameter. The yurt covers we made were perfect but it turned out the frames were erected too small when the measurements were taken (we make all our covers from measurements so we usually don’t see the frames), and now needed to grow some to allow for all the furniture. We took our Mercedes camper-Worksop truck, loaded with a sewing machine and all the equipment needed to do the job. And drove through the night to Umberslade farm, home of the lunar festival. 
The three yurts looked so perfect on arrival. 
I was wondering what the owner was thinking, I thought wow what a good job we did, as he was late we thought to ourselves maybe we can just tell him we fixed it when he gets there without doing anything. But being the nice elves we decided to start stretching the yurt covers using some Spirits Intent cover wizardry.
We were somewhat tired from not having slept properly, although driving through the night brought the nomads in us awake. So by the time the owner arrived with some extra covers from one of the other Yurtshire sites, it was getting very clear it is going to be a very long day. We had to get one of the yurts changed while the holiday makers were still using it. So that was the main challenge for lunchtime, they agreed to give us an hour to do so, with some extremely fast roof cover magic we got that done, and when they came back they said they did not even notice the difference (don’t know if we should see it as a compliment). 
It was now mid afternoon and we still had to open two yurt roofs, and extend the walls of both, the weather forcast was for heavy rain in the night, so leaving the yurts roofless was no option. We were sewing for all we were worth, and so when our friend Henry Dowell (fellow yurt maker) came to collect his 32ft cover, we were in stitches, not sure if it’s because we were so devastatingly tired, or that the jokes were actually funny. It was 21-00 pm and we realised we just did a 5 to 9 work day. Totally exhausted we went home into the truck to sleep, the last joke for the night was “it was a really hard day’s work (understatement) just to stretch those yurt covers a few cm”. It was near death by yurt making, we thought it was funny anyhow. In the middle of the night the rain came quite hard.. 
…so at 4 am one of us (not saying who) went out to put the chimney through the star cap. I guess we earned our breakfast. 
And so on departure the three yurts looked lovely (but not very much unlike when we arrived). Tom Sterne (the owner) was fun to work with, and we both agreed the yurts did look better, it was amazing how much difference that extra space did.
It’s that time, once again, when the people wake up from their winter hibernation, look at the daffodils and say, “Crikey it’s spring – better get moving”. For Spirits Intent, and our now sister, Wild Canvas, this means making yurts, tipis, Bushcraft tents and custom covers ready for the season. Much of our work is […]
It’s that time, once again, when the people wake up from their winter hibernation, look at the daffodils and say, “Crikey it’s spring – better get moving”.
For Spirits Intent, and our now sister, Wild Canvas, this means making yurts, tipis, Bushcraft tents and custom covers ready for the season. Much of our work is the sewing side of things, and many have already designed their campsites over the winter, but there’s always a few calls that go : “Hi, just dug my 2 yurt canvases out of the barn, and realise that they have holes in them, and it may rain this year, so we probably need new ones. I know it’s a bit late but is there any chance you can get them done by the end of the week?”
We like challenges and somehow it all happens.
The next delivery of canvas
Swimming in the P V sea. Camp cover for Wild Wise
Sand and Khaki Canvas Mountain
Yurt Canvas and Felt Peak going to Henry Dowell
2 more of those Wild Canvas Baker Tents – ready for the wilds
Been staring at mountains of canvas for some time now…. …which decided us it is time to go to the mountains in canvas (in our larger baker-tent). As you may know we currently live in Wales which happens to be very Wild and beautiful, especially around here. On a Canvas delivery last week we were […]
The Yurt Cover mountain range
Been staring at mountains of canvas for some time now….
Yurt wall ridge
…which decided us it is time to go to the mountains in canvas (in our larger baker-tent). As you may know we currently live in Wales which happens to be very Wild and beautiful, especially around here. On a Canvas delivery last week we were told about the Welsh Robin Hood – Twm Sion Cati so we decided we are going to start exploring at Dinas Hill.
Dinas Hill
His magical cave just happens to be just south of my favourite spot the Llyn brianne reservoir, and we quickly scaled the hill to the cave, and amazingly we found our names on the wall of fame: it is a Welsh secret that anyone who carves their name in that cave becomes…….. (not going yo tell you if you don’t know it already or it would not be a secret).
The Cave wall of fame
It reminded me later on, when came to a waterfall, of the Journey to the Heart of the World by Ian Baker where he goes to seek the illusive mythical waterfall, but to get to it he has to follow a set of directives. The Tibetans believe that the landscape is the body of a goddess and her secret spots are “Beyuls“: (spots that are gateways, some are described like Paradise, some are places in other worlds), but in order to get to the waterfall he had first to go and visit the mountain top, and that also could not be done directly. So circling around Dinas Hill made think about all that, the Body of the Welsh Goddess and her Wild spots. I am a great advocate of the power of the wild, in fact I secretly hope that religion will revert back to the days before gods, when mountains and valleys are where the powers are, powers before they solidified into personifications as mountain gods and goddesses – of rain and thunder) when naturalism was pure and power was pure and nature was pure……. ok enough, breath.
Waterfall
At the top of Devil’s Staircase
At the bottom of Devil’s Staircase
We went through forests and up and down the hills looking for a spot to pitch up that night and and ended up going of the road on one of the most off-road routes in wales: the Strata Florida 4×4 track.
This to me is the best part of Wales, where wild oaks and rough mountains come together, “where wild horses are in the face of the battle”
Wild Horses with face for a battle
It was getting dark, and we realised that our cute little 4×4 just defeated the most 4×4 worthy track and that in fact we don’t feel much for green laning, when with a sigh when we hit the the tarmac again and stopped bouncing. Why people call this fun defeats me with all the burning clutch smell, and fearing for the vehicle anatomy, like worrying about shock absorber bushes etc, , you know that picture of fording a river with your Defender, I mean seriously ?
Baker Tent
So anyhow… we took back to the lake, and,almost dark we quickly pitched up the tent, (the Land Rover Campfire Tent without the Land Rover) and went wooding in the dark and the rain, like good gypsies do.
Baker tent (campfire tent) by the lake
Fire Lit
Gypsy tipping tea
That night was lovely: the wildness of the place and darkness poured colour into my dreams and I felt energised sleeping there by the power of the wilds which was enhanced by fasting the whole day, and walking (and some intense 4x4ing) the Welsh Goddess.
Morning Coffee Yoffi
We woke up early to an amazing misty morning, with canvas banging in the rain and the wind, and our hearts feeing wild. It was like a scene from one of Bill Mason’s documentaries, and a grand victory for the baker Tent, which has proved itself the real tent of the wild. We were recently involved in a heated debate (ok actually it was only me that got heated) about the ups and downs of this fabulous open fire tent, one of our new wild canvas range.
So no more Debate.