I couldn't prepare for an 'unplanned' trip, I did not choose to start to learn twenty new languages but somehow I felt my mind was more prepared to travel through Russia then for being in China. Such a huge amount of 'new' things. And it goes far beyond just leaving fork and knive behind, which we consiously did in Mongolia! I adapted quickly to at least read the cyrillic alphabet but now at the time of writing being 12 days in China I must admit not to know any of the chinese signs! They have over 10.000 signs if you also take some older ones which are not used frequently anymore. The pinyin, or chinese in our letters, is a bit easier but this comes with four tones which still make correct pronounciation very hard! Our first hitchhiking experiences here also went with some difficulties but with joy as well. At the border town Erlian, an English speaking girl helped us to get some useful sentences on paper and to get to the gas station at the road to Beijing. Sometimes we would feel like an unknown animal in a zoo. In extreme hot weather and only desert surrounding us the local people surely showed interest and were curious about us, but remained far from understanding what is hitchhiking. With spending some money for a ride we conclude our first day in China with sleeping in the desert in our tent. By nine in the morning we would feel already again like being in a dry sauna. Mouth feels dry and almost no need for going to toilet! What we saw? Empty land with some attempt to plant trees. The sand storms from Gobi frequently attack bigger cities southwards like Beijing but desertification goes on ... . The villages we passed were also in strong contrast with Siberian colourful wooden houses or the gers. It felt like passing true history. Old loam houses, all with the same sandy colour and structured in a linear and unsocial pattern. Driving further along some antennas interrupted this dream. Chinese roads were very good compared to Russia but also here many people drove off-road, just on sandy roads next to the good one, this time to circumvent the road tax! The second day we ended up in Jining and again exposed to the help, or attention, of quite many people we managed to get to the right road out of the city, but five hours of unsuccessful hitchhiking brought us to take a bus to Beijing.
Though we are again gifted with time we reached Beijing quite quickly, we did not know at all what to expect but in general you could say we are not so keen on cities ... Walking in Beijing I just had too few eyes and even less place in my mind to absorb what I saw. A whole new world! This city embraced us and probably remains a place to visit. We were extremely lucky to meet with Zhoya, Carina's teacher of Chinese in Tallinn, with whom we stayed. I don't know where or how to start to describe feelings and impressions I had. Wow Wauw Mmmmm. I really like it and again soon my preconceptions became clear and prooved incorrect. First of all I have to say something about the food. To stamp it quickly: "the most rich kitchen I ever met". From donkey, to chicken fingers, famous Peking Duck, to fish that you see alive 5 minutes before it is on your plate, to bugs and spices. There is so much variety and the tastes and ways of eating are so new and different! Copsticks feel already totally naturally to us, but there is much more like the joy of ordering many dishes and sharing everything. Zhoya is a real food lover and introduced us many times to the most wonderful meals. Among the many dishes tried and seen I recognised none of what we in Europe 'know' as Chinese food! It must be said also that the food is really cheap so even we as budget travellers could afford a 'Burgundian' lifestyle. Now that I touched the issue of money though we did feel a change in ourselves. As everything is so cheap we ended up spending quite a lot. But we also became tourists both for the Chinese people (merchands) we became people whom they can charge more (untill Carina became very good in the bargaining 'game') and in our actions like visiting 'costly' tourist attractions. When we yesterday found a place in Xian where the real old tempels and houses where not restored yet, we felt pure joy and confirmed our doubts about the value of tourist attractions. In Beijing there are many of those but the most I liked really just hanging around in the small alleys (hutongs), joining in for some evening dancing on the streets and discovering faces, smiles and smells. We left aside some of the 'have to see's' but we did visit the Great Wall, though with a personal touch! By closing time we hid in the forests next to the wall under a mosquito net and then when the 'coast' was free we climbed a watchtower and slept under an amazing starry sky. We lived a full week in Beijing and the top five moments of immense happiness and satisfaction were probably the tea ceremony offered by Zhoya who graduated from masterclass, the food, the so right-not kitch appearance of chinese architecture and red pawns, the bicycles and the blue sky after four days of smog. Because it is true, you see the smog! And even when temperatures already rose to 36 I was happy to see the sun! It might have been that the four green days, which obligated half of the cars to stay at home, helped a hand but if Beijing will be able to make a real change by summer 2008, when it hosts the Olympic games, remains a question. China is truly amazing, a too crazy and intense experience to put into words!
I was writing now from Xian, a former capital of China, very different to Beijing but also beautiful! Tomorrow we hit the road again!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
A transit through Mongolia
We left Russia with style. In Ulan Ude, capital of Buryatia, my mobile phone being connected to ' Far East' or passing the 'Pacific Bank' already tried to make us aware off where we were. East Asia! After a good time in the temple with making pozi (yes, quite difficult so we mostly helped with dishes) and with some words of Mongolian in our pockets we headed south. After a ride with a small but very quick bus we experienced a new way of hitchhiking. While waiting along the road we did not raise our hands and Carina said " I don't know if hitchhiking works this way, picking out a car you want to go with and wait for it to pass and stop!" Indeed, from that bus we saw a jeep with 'foreigners' (a rarety in Russia) with a mark from Lisboa to Vladivostok and an Italian flag. We wanted to meet them ...though driving slowly they unfortunately passed us. They, because it was a team! A man on a motorcycle and a women alone in the big jeep. We started to hitch when to our surprise the car and motorcycle came our way, ... for gas ... . With a big smile we spoke to the man and then a hitchhiker miracle happened! We got a ride to Mongolia on a motorcycle. We switched several times between the car, driven by Marina, a Ukranian women living and working in Italy, and the motorcycle driven by Antonio, an Italia engineer in his fifties. It was truly great and I think for the first time I understand why people drive motorcycles, because I did not when driving on crowded big roads in Belgium for instance. The smell of the lands, indescribably beautiful, was really nice. We camped with them at the border (which just closed 15 minutes before we arrived), enjoyed Italian food, cheese and even wine. The first place where we met with some camels we stopped and went for a visit to a ger (jurta in Russian) and met with a truly beautiful family. A young couple with four children. The mother was only 25! The wild horses and other herds with their sheperds, the gers in the middle of 'nowhere', the mountains and vallies ... yes, yes ...what a joy. By the evening Antonio and Marina dropped us in the middle of Ulaan Baator, a true capital city. For the first time we strolled the streets with an address of a youth hostel in our hands. The beds, showers, equipped kitchen and plenty of travellers at Golden Gobi were a welcome gift and a surprising experience. After all the Russian I was somehow not prepared to speak suddenly in Spanish, French and English at the same time. The city architecture and the cyrillic used in Mongolia gave a feeling of slow transition to us. A transit to China because due to our transit visa we had little time to explore this vast country. By being in a youth hostel and being bound by limited time we also became different travellers. Mongolia was very cheap but in a way touristic. As a foreigner you can't hire a car for example without a driver (maybe because the roads do not exist) but this means that exploring the country is done by going on a tour, and that is what the travellers do. Some go 5 weeks from one tour to the other. I felt also a bit strange when we entered a national park the second day (by a very full local bus) and saw how nature was covered with hotels or ger-camps. Also here no detailed maps available for exploration on your own. But once we left the village and hotels behind us we had a vally, a cold river and the mountains almost just for us. That day we climed to a random top and camped there with a marvellous view. An encounter with a snake that climbed into Carina's unpacked sleepingbag made us decide to really put up our tent. When we drove back to Ulaan Baator the next day with a french couple we found out that the snake was poisonous! A la limite we managed to buy a trainticket to get into China just before our visa expired for the next night. Out of necessity I saw the Mongolian part of Gobi desert by night. Every time I fell asleep I was dreaming about landscapes and woke up again to look ouside from my train-bed. I saw three trees, some houses, a couple of gers, a sea-like landscape and millions of stars. Disregarding advice to close the window everything was covered with sand by the morning ... and suddenly we were in China! It was hard to believe!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Some impressions on Russia
Russia was for me a place I never even tried to have an image of, Siberia was big and cold. Russians were related to the Antwerp based mafia and its politics which gave an uncomfortable feeling. Halfway the road, while washing myself in one of the beautiful lakes with soft wind from the steppes blowing I said to Carina “I love Siberia”. Though often not being able to understand or to find any logic in what I saw, Russia’s simplicity touched me.
Colourful life?
From Ukraine throughout Russia the wooden village houses are painted in the most beautiful colours. Shaped like art and brightly coloured windows reflect maybe a view on life. If you would take away the colours of the many flowers, fruits, vegetables and houses this land would be very dark and hard. Several times I tried to imagine life in winter here, but I belief I have to come back for that. Though the villages are clearly dying and literally falling apart you see smiling faces and people living their life, making the best of it. My respect for all those millions of Russians living in such hard conditions and keeping their heart warm. One third of Russians is living below poverty line, there is hardly any middle class and the difference between surprisingly new and fancy cities like for example Novosibirsk and deserted village is enormous. Of course everything is very relative, I would not say Russian cities are beautiful, marks of the glory from the past are more visible then any effort for renovation or reconstruction. My conclusion for the life in Russia would be grey. This in vast contrast with my feeling about its nature!
3000 horizons
I can’t count the beautiful views I have seen throughout our journey through Russia. The space was the first thing that caught my eye. I felt I was healing my eyes from the years of working behind the computer. The most beautiful, unfortunately indescribable, places were the road from Kurgan to Omsk where we went around Kazachstan and Tuva Republic which you reach after passing amazingly beautiful mountain road. At that moment I was very thankful we were driving a slow Camaz, giving us the time to see every flower of the ‘botanical garden’. Driving through this huge country which is so diverse felt really right. And especially after taking two trains I appreciate a lot the almost 360 degrees view cars and trucks give you. Sometimes it was like seeing an enormous bouquet of field flowers. The land and not to forget the sky, being different in every other window of the car, sometimes really gave me this feeling that my heart stopped beating. We saw rain kilometers away, like seeing it is raining in Antwerp from our garden in Hove, we saw lightening, rainbows and sunbeams.
On roads, cars and drivers
I was warned about the quality of the roads in Russia but that knowledge was nothing compared to the experience and not to forget the jokes about it. Often a driver would say with some proud that this is the worst road in Russia. And indeed jumping to all sides in the cabin of a Camaz became a very common thing to us. We go to Mongolia before the hardest part from Chita to Vladivostok but drove enough off the road through fields and mud to show our respect to Russian drivers. Ideas for ngo work for improving conditions and facilities for truck drivers crossed my mind. There are certain phenomena which are ‘not seen in Europe’. For example thousands of people buy cars in Japan to earn roughly 5000 dollars in ten days. For the trip through Russia they tape the cars with all possible means, build shields and staple cars one on another. The quality of those cars, which are to be sold as ‘new’ cars, is a question. It did survive but for what invisible cost? We also saw several cars or trucks which missed the road or cars seemingly completely broken from an accident without windows still driving. Next to this misfortune I was often confronted with the enormous skills of Russians to fix cars. We would encounter many bridges to put your car on to repair it, something I believe in Belgium you have to visit a repair center for (and pay). In Russia most of the people know how to repair a car. They help father or the first car or motorcycle they get is like ‘a one way ticket to dacha (summerhouse). Learning by doing and out of necessecity. The stories of truck drivers about driving by minus 50 and cars breaking down also showed the need for helping one another. And the roads which are federal responsibility, well as the saying goes ‘Russians don’t build roads, they build cars that can go everywhere’. We learned a lot about Waz jeeps, Camaz Nefas (a truck for bringing groups into forests through rivers) and my still favourite Lada. Also one advice: don’t trust the signs along the road. We frequently encountered signs that after five minutes drive showed an extra 40 km, or signs about bumps would remain for the road builders know the bumps even though repaired would come back. Russian roads also are a daily venue for many ‘merchands’: children, elderly people, forest people selling all kinds of goods. Carina once told me to start making a list of the things you can buy like fish and kites but shortly after she said so everything became on sale from floating water toys to guns and bicycles. You can also buy checks from men seemingly doing exercises along the road. The road market has a copy-logic, cars close to each other dispose their similar goods often in exact the same way and how it makes a living I don’t know, I hardly saw anyone buying there.
After so many kilometers of Russian road I can only say it did not bore me.
Traveling in time
Something new or different from air-travel is the experience of different time zones. Russia has eleven time zones, we passed several of them. As such time became an uncertainty, confused by differences between maps and realities, drivers using their own time, trains using Moscow time we became travelers through time. In the beginning we felt the loss of time by going to the East. From my observations of the sun some questions arose. Maybe those with mathematical brains are interested to find some answers. When for example ( in more abstract terms) we drove per day 600 km towards the east, let’s say on 50 degrees North, how much hours of sun did we loose along the way? The sun was moving in exact opposite direction then us. Was it maybe that of every hour of sun we only saw half an hour? Time became also visible in the evening when we could see light and sunset in the mirror while the front window would give darkness. We saw sun and moon together.
Stories of the road
Some of our experiences became stories like how I found something I forgot in Belgium. Months ago Carina discovered my Scarabee in Tallinn (a typical blue bug jewel from Egypt), back then she mentioned to take it along as we both got it as gift from our mothers. I forgot mine at home but when I walked into the river Yenisey at the mark of the center of Asia in Kyzyl I found one at my feet. Interesting sign? Or the time we hitched a truck saying we are traveling around the world, the old man behind the wheel would answer “I did the same but in a submarine in 1967 at times of the Cuban crisis”. Was it again a coincidence we were singing Yellow Submarine just before he stopped?
Colourful life?
From Ukraine throughout Russia the wooden village houses are painted in the most beautiful colours. Shaped like art and brightly coloured windows reflect maybe a view on life. If you would take away the colours of the many flowers, fruits, vegetables and houses this land would be very dark and hard. Several times I tried to imagine life in winter here, but I belief I have to come back for that. Though the villages are clearly dying and literally falling apart you see smiling faces and people living their life, making the best of it. My respect for all those millions of Russians living in such hard conditions and keeping their heart warm. One third of Russians is living below poverty line, there is hardly any middle class and the difference between surprisingly new and fancy cities like for example Novosibirsk and deserted village is enormous. Of course everything is very relative, I would not say Russian cities are beautiful, marks of the glory from the past are more visible then any effort for renovation or reconstruction. My conclusion for the life in Russia would be grey. This in vast contrast with my feeling about its nature!
3000 horizons
I can’t count the beautiful views I have seen throughout our journey through Russia. The space was the first thing that caught my eye. I felt I was healing my eyes from the years of working behind the computer. The most beautiful, unfortunately indescribable, places were the road from Kurgan to Omsk where we went around Kazachstan and Tuva Republic which you reach after passing amazingly beautiful mountain road. At that moment I was very thankful we were driving a slow Camaz, giving us the time to see every flower of the ‘botanical garden’. Driving through this huge country which is so diverse felt really right. And especially after taking two trains I appreciate a lot the almost 360 degrees view cars and trucks give you. Sometimes it was like seeing an enormous bouquet of field flowers. The land and not to forget the sky, being different in every other window of the car, sometimes really gave me this feeling that my heart stopped beating. We saw rain kilometers away, like seeing it is raining in Antwerp from our garden in Hove, we saw lightening, rainbows and sunbeams.
On roads, cars and drivers
I was warned about the quality of the roads in Russia but that knowledge was nothing compared to the experience and not to forget the jokes about it. Often a driver would say with some proud that this is the worst road in Russia. And indeed jumping to all sides in the cabin of a Camaz became a very common thing to us. We go to Mongolia before the hardest part from Chita to Vladivostok but drove enough off the road through fields and mud to show our respect to Russian drivers. Ideas for ngo work for improving conditions and facilities for truck drivers crossed my mind. There are certain phenomena which are ‘not seen in Europe’. For example thousands of people buy cars in Japan to earn roughly 5000 dollars in ten days. For the trip through Russia they tape the cars with all possible means, build shields and staple cars one on another. The quality of those cars, which are to be sold as ‘new’ cars, is a question. It did survive but for what invisible cost? We also saw several cars or trucks which missed the road or cars seemingly completely broken from an accident without windows still driving. Next to this misfortune I was often confronted with the enormous skills of Russians to fix cars. We would encounter many bridges to put your car on to repair it, something I believe in Belgium you have to visit a repair center for (and pay). In Russia most of the people know how to repair a car. They help father or the first car or motorcycle they get is like ‘a one way ticket to dacha (summerhouse). Learning by doing and out of necessecity. The stories of truck drivers about driving by minus 50 and cars breaking down also showed the need for helping one another. And the roads which are federal responsibility, well as the saying goes ‘Russians don’t build roads, they build cars that can go everywhere’. We learned a lot about Waz jeeps, Camaz Nefas (a truck for bringing groups into forests through rivers) and my still favourite Lada. Also one advice: don’t trust the signs along the road. We frequently encountered signs that after five minutes drive showed an extra 40 km, or signs about bumps would remain for the road builders know the bumps even though repaired would come back. Russian roads also are a daily venue for many ‘merchands’: children, elderly people, forest people selling all kinds of goods. Carina once told me to start making a list of the things you can buy like fish and kites but shortly after she said so everything became on sale from floating water toys to guns and bicycles. You can also buy checks from men seemingly doing exercises along the road. The road market has a copy-logic, cars close to each other dispose their similar goods often in exact the same way and how it makes a living I don’t know, I hardly saw anyone buying there.
After so many kilometers of Russian road I can only say it did not bore me.
Traveling in time
Something new or different from air-travel is the experience of different time zones. Russia has eleven time zones, we passed several of them. As such time became an uncertainty, confused by differences between maps and realities, drivers using their own time, trains using Moscow time we became travelers through time. In the beginning we felt the loss of time by going to the East. From my observations of the sun some questions arose. Maybe those with mathematical brains are interested to find some answers. When for example ( in more abstract terms) we drove per day 600 km towards the east, let’s say on 50 degrees North, how much hours of sun did we loose along the way? The sun was moving in exact opposite direction then us. Was it maybe that of every hour of sun we only saw half an hour? Time became also visible in the evening when we could see light and sunset in the mirror while the front window would give darkness. We saw sun and moon together.
Stories of the road
Some of our experiences became stories like how I found something I forgot in Belgium. Months ago Carina discovered my Scarabee in Tallinn (a typical blue bug jewel from Egypt), back then she mentioned to take it along as we both got it as gift from our mothers. I forgot mine at home but when I walked into the river Yenisey at the mark of the center of Asia in Kyzyl I found one at my feet. Interesting sign? Or the time we hitched a truck saying we are traveling around the world, the old man behind the wheel would answer “I did the same but in a submarine in 1967 at times of the Cuban crisis”. Was it again a coincidence we were singing Yellow Submarine just before he stopped?
One month of traveling
The sun shines, it is 25 degrees and I sit peacefully behind a computer in the Central Library of Ulan Ude, our last Russian city. It has been such a full month, a month I could never have imagined. Some facts: we reached this place with 56 rides and 3 trains. Based on signs and drivers’ wisdom we calculated that we covered 9940 km in 21 days on the road. Our route went as following: Tallinn, Kaunas, Minsk, Cherkasy, Mehedovka, Khorol, Voronezh, Samara, Ufa, Kurgan, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Abakan, Kyzyl, Chadaan, Kyzyl, Kurgana (Petropavlovka), Khansk, Irkutsk, Ulan Ude. Tomorrow we will head towards Mongolia.
But now back to where I left you last time.
From Novosibirsk we took a 24 hour train south to Abakan, a sideway to an ethnic festival we had heard of in Kurgan. We managed to get a cheap platskart place which means a bed in a wagon with some 60 places, two nights of accommodation and a relative amount of rest and constant free access to hot water for our usual porridge, mash potato and noodles meals. In Abakan we hitch a car early in the morning, again a Camaz, which we load with building materials in a nearby little village. Our search for fresh milk is without results. After crossing the mountains we enter another world, this time next to the enormous statue marking the border with Tuva Republic we also saw some clear other signs of this new place, this new seemingly undiscovered paradise. A natural border of good weather clouds, a drastically changing landscape and the Asian stone drake statues together with the Asian faces of the forest people selling berries show off against the typical Russian Siberian views. Tired but with open eyes we reach Kyzyl late at night and stay at Valody’s place, our kind driver. The joy of the shower and the real beds is great. Next day we manage our business in Kyzyl which meant still trying to get our registration of our immigration done. A true, and continuing, hassle which was without success in Voronezh where some hotels for example simply do not take foreigners. In Kyzyl we are also unsuccessful but the ‘luck’ with our Mongolian visa compensated this. Being so close to Mongolia we were happily surprised that there was a consulate in Kyzyl, which was not the case in Novosibirsk (4th biggest city of Russia). The civil servant even managed to get it done in a couple of hours. But nothing goes just like that! He asked for our gratitude, three times, so not knowing what to do we add some money to our visa costs. He returns it. We ask Valody’s advice. “Too little” he said. When returning to the consulate to pick up the visa we decide to ask how much his gratitude costs, not knowing how to deal with corruption. His embarrassment led to us leaving without paying anything extra but unfortunately we also did not have exactly what we dreamed of. We got a 5 day transit visa and the information that even being so close to Mongolia we had to go via Ulan Ude as Tuva did not have any international border making it not possible to cross for persons from third countries. Anyway very happy having done our ‘business’, we leave from Kyzyl direction festival in the afternoon and drive through marvelous landscape. A taste of Mongolia! When dropped at a road-police post we make some fun with them. They helped us to get a ride to Chadaan, showed us hashes being the currency of Tuva and advising us to cross the border to Mongolia illegally.
The 4 day festival in Ustuu-Huree is really great. We camp along the shores of the river between nice smelling trees and friendly guarded by raptors who come very close to show their beauty. Amongst great people we enjoy the Russian and Tuvian ethnic music. The typical throat singing is truly new and amazing. The feeling of experiencing this ‘exotic’ cultures at the spot itself instead of at Sfinx or Helsinki World Village is great. We were some of the few ‘outsiders’ on this festival. Tuva really impressed us and raised our interest. Already very soon we realized we were witnessing a smooth mix and a clash of two cultures in the same time. The festival contributed to preserve and honouring the Buddhist culture of Tuva which had been repressed by the Soviets. I feel we witness an important part of a strive for independence and cultural identity. A theater play and the speeches accompanying the celebrations clearly ask for tolerance and respect. The music was truly beautiful and I liked the simplicity of the way this free festival was organized. We also witnessed a ceremony of Lama’s at a newly build Stupa, the finish of a horse race of children going 40 km without saddles and a real wrestling competition. The fact that we experienced this with local people instead of tourists made it feel very ‘real’.
After the festival the car of the disaster medicine took us back to Kyzyl, another slow Camaz brought us back close to Abakan. We were on the way to a community of one of the artists we met in Chadaan. The village Petropavlovka was truly strange. Instead of being one of those Siberian villages slowly dying this village was alive, new houses build, young people and esoteric buildings and cultural places. A sharp contrast to other villages where the attempts of the Soviets to create a cultural place is only visible in the form of ruins. That the image of young Jezus-like man had something to do with this strange atmosphere became soon clear but we were left with a feeling of not-understanding until we visited the house of some Germans. The village is the heart of the cult of Vissarion who is writing the last testament and emphasizes the power of survival of Siberians. While many people feel very attracted to this place and person, who gives speeches all over the world, we felt ill at that place. We also met there with Gert from Antwerp who lives there already for seven years. His explanation about the way of living of the village was “we try to reproduce positive energy and we try to filter negative energy”. They live as much as possible from their own gardens and focus on handicrafts. To me it felt a bit like a new version of the Truman Show. However the attention on children’s creativity and time for talking were very nice features of this village. At Gert’s place we also experienced a real Russian banya. After two days we were happy to leave and to continue our travel to the East. This sideway however had more surprises for us. We ended up on empty roads, roads without asphalt through Siberian taiga. With a record amount of cars, some time with Russian railroad workers and playing games on empty crossroads in the middle of nowhere, we reached the main road again in the evening. Russian hospitality which I haven’t mentioned enough brought us into the dacha of a very nice family where we received food, a shower and a very warm welcome. On the way to Kansk we slept in the fields were I experienced the second attack of Siberian mosquitos, luckily the many bites only were itching for a short while. Kansk is a true example of Russian roads! A young soldier decided to help us to get on the road to Irkutsk, also not knowing that the ring around Kansk leads the traffic through unpaved forests roads. Also later on we drive through sandy roads, going from one side of the road to the other. It is absurd to think that this is a highway. Concepts like km/hour or mappy.com seem useless. In the rain we reach to a small town called Nizhneudinsk with a brand new Lada, almost unrecognizable! We stay at a great special place of an artist. Carina had been there last year and also now we got the special travelers house for us. Aleksey is an extreme traveler and guide, going into taiga and rafting on the wild Russian rivers. Again maybe a place to return to! Next day we stop close to Irkutsk and get to cook for the first time on a fire. Mmmmm I enjoy that so much! A big thunderstorm in the morning gave us some extra hours of sleep, hardly needed! We become a bit tired, often leaving very early and making long days but with great feelings of satisfaction. Irkutsk gives us a break from the road where we have access to fruit and milk products and this time also a successful possibility for getting our registration done. Our visit to Tuva continues to lead us. Via a visit to a youth hostel run by a girl we met on the festival we end up at a nice apartment of a friend of hers. Laundry, a shower and a real bed give again great pleasure but it was Natasha’s care and friendly communication which made this stay very nice. With the train we reach Baikal Lake, a lake as big as Belgium. Unfortunately the grey sky covers the mountains and soon it began to rain. With only having touched the water with our feet we decide to go on with our driver to Ulan Ude. After driving through the end of the city and knocking at the door of the male Datsan (Buddhist temple) we reach the only female Datsan in Russia and are warmly welcomed there. We get another place to stay for the night! They could so easily have said no, because it is not a usual place for people to ask for accommodation. After posting this we will go and help them to make Pozi, a traditional Buryat dish.
But now back to where I left you last time.
From Novosibirsk we took a 24 hour train south to Abakan, a sideway to an ethnic festival we had heard of in Kurgan. We managed to get a cheap platskart place which means a bed in a wagon with some 60 places, two nights of accommodation and a relative amount of rest and constant free access to hot water for our usual porridge, mash potato and noodles meals. In Abakan we hitch a car early in the morning, again a Camaz, which we load with building materials in a nearby little village. Our search for fresh milk is without results. After crossing the mountains we enter another world, this time next to the enormous statue marking the border with Tuva Republic we also saw some clear other signs of this new place, this new seemingly undiscovered paradise. A natural border of good weather clouds, a drastically changing landscape and the Asian stone drake statues together with the Asian faces of the forest people selling berries show off against the typical Russian Siberian views. Tired but with open eyes we reach Kyzyl late at night and stay at Valody’s place, our kind driver. The joy of the shower and the real beds is great. Next day we manage our business in Kyzyl which meant still trying to get our registration of our immigration done. A true, and continuing, hassle which was without success in Voronezh where some hotels for example simply do not take foreigners. In Kyzyl we are also unsuccessful but the ‘luck’ with our Mongolian visa compensated this. Being so close to Mongolia we were happily surprised that there was a consulate in Kyzyl, which was not the case in Novosibirsk (4th biggest city of Russia). The civil servant even managed to get it done in a couple of hours. But nothing goes just like that! He asked for our gratitude, three times, so not knowing what to do we add some money to our visa costs. He returns it. We ask Valody’s advice. “Too little” he said. When returning to the consulate to pick up the visa we decide to ask how much his gratitude costs, not knowing how to deal with corruption. His embarrassment led to us leaving without paying anything extra but unfortunately we also did not have exactly what we dreamed of. We got a 5 day transit visa and the information that even being so close to Mongolia we had to go via Ulan Ude as Tuva did not have any international border making it not possible to cross for persons from third countries. Anyway very happy having done our ‘business’, we leave from Kyzyl direction festival in the afternoon and drive through marvelous landscape. A taste of Mongolia! When dropped at a road-police post we make some fun with them. They helped us to get a ride to Chadaan, showed us hashes being the currency of Tuva and advising us to cross the border to Mongolia illegally.
The 4 day festival in Ustuu-Huree is really great. We camp along the shores of the river between nice smelling trees and friendly guarded by raptors who come very close to show their beauty. Amongst great people we enjoy the Russian and Tuvian ethnic music. The typical throat singing is truly new and amazing. The feeling of experiencing this ‘exotic’ cultures at the spot itself instead of at Sfinx or Helsinki World Village is great. We were some of the few ‘outsiders’ on this festival. Tuva really impressed us and raised our interest. Already very soon we realized we were witnessing a smooth mix and a clash of two cultures in the same time. The festival contributed to preserve and honouring the Buddhist culture of Tuva which had been repressed by the Soviets. I feel we witness an important part of a strive for independence and cultural identity. A theater play and the speeches accompanying the celebrations clearly ask for tolerance and respect. The music was truly beautiful and I liked the simplicity of the way this free festival was organized. We also witnessed a ceremony of Lama’s at a newly build Stupa, the finish of a horse race of children going 40 km without saddles and a real wrestling competition. The fact that we experienced this with local people instead of tourists made it feel very ‘real’.
After the festival the car of the disaster medicine took us back to Kyzyl, another slow Camaz brought us back close to Abakan. We were on the way to a community of one of the artists we met in Chadaan. The village Petropavlovka was truly strange. Instead of being one of those Siberian villages slowly dying this village was alive, new houses build, young people and esoteric buildings and cultural places. A sharp contrast to other villages where the attempts of the Soviets to create a cultural place is only visible in the form of ruins. That the image of young Jezus-like man had something to do with this strange atmosphere became soon clear but we were left with a feeling of not-understanding until we visited the house of some Germans. The village is the heart of the cult of Vissarion who is writing the last testament and emphasizes the power of survival of Siberians. While many people feel very attracted to this place and person, who gives speeches all over the world, we felt ill at that place. We also met there with Gert from Antwerp who lives there already for seven years. His explanation about the way of living of the village was “we try to reproduce positive energy and we try to filter negative energy”. They live as much as possible from their own gardens and focus on handicrafts. To me it felt a bit like a new version of the Truman Show. However the attention on children’s creativity and time for talking were very nice features of this village. At Gert’s place we also experienced a real Russian banya. After two days we were happy to leave and to continue our travel to the East. This sideway however had more surprises for us. We ended up on empty roads, roads without asphalt through Siberian taiga. With a record amount of cars, some time with Russian railroad workers and playing games on empty crossroads in the middle of nowhere, we reached the main road again in the evening. Russian hospitality which I haven’t mentioned enough brought us into the dacha of a very nice family where we received food, a shower and a very warm welcome. On the way to Kansk we slept in the fields were I experienced the second attack of Siberian mosquitos, luckily the many bites only were itching for a short while. Kansk is a true example of Russian roads! A young soldier decided to help us to get on the road to Irkutsk, also not knowing that the ring around Kansk leads the traffic through unpaved forests roads. Also later on we drive through sandy roads, going from one side of the road to the other. It is absurd to think that this is a highway. Concepts like km/hour or mappy.com seem useless. In the rain we reach to a small town called Nizhneudinsk with a brand new Lada, almost unrecognizable! We stay at a great special place of an artist. Carina had been there last year and also now we got the special travelers house for us. Aleksey is an extreme traveler and guide, going into taiga and rafting on the wild Russian rivers. Again maybe a place to return to! Next day we stop close to Irkutsk and get to cook for the first time on a fire. Mmmmm I enjoy that so much! A big thunderstorm in the morning gave us some extra hours of sleep, hardly needed! We become a bit tired, often leaving very early and making long days but with great feelings of satisfaction. Irkutsk gives us a break from the road where we have access to fruit and milk products and this time also a successful possibility for getting our registration done. Our visit to Tuva continues to lead us. Via a visit to a youth hostel run by a girl we met on the festival we end up at a nice apartment of a friend of hers. Laundry, a shower and a real bed give again great pleasure but it was Natasha’s care and friendly communication which made this stay very nice. With the train we reach Baikal Lake, a lake as big as Belgium. Unfortunately the grey sky covers the mountains and soon it began to rain. With only having touched the water with our feet we decide to go on with our driver to Ulan Ude. After driving through the end of the city and knocking at the door of the male Datsan (Buddhist temple) we reach the only female Datsan in Russia and are warmly welcomed there. We get another place to stay for the night! They could so easily have said no, because it is not a usual place for people to ask for accommodation. After posting this we will go and help them to make Pozi, a traditional Buryat dish.
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