Cars, especially in Russia were shaking us sometimes to all sides but living 42 hours on a big boat made me walk the Japanese soil for two more days moving unnecessarily from left to right and feeling a bit dizzy. I was surprised how such a big boat can be so much influenced by the waves. Surrounded by sea and after exploring all corners of the ship Carina and I had lots of time to talk and have tea. Probably we could have spent even more time like this: running around, bathing in a big bathroom with a huge warm bath and 10 showers or just watching the sea and wonder. The time to reflect and read our diaries to one another was a beautiful gift before we would arrive to the land of the Rising Sun and live a different life then the past two months. Many people asked me about our companionship. We lived 24 hours together for two months, sharing food from one plate and sleeping sometimes really close to each other. Something I have never done with anybody before. But our companionship was truly great and with a lot of joy. When in September 2006 we said: `next year we will go together` it was a deep feeling in me that told me Carina was the right person to travel with. The joy of sharing experiences with somebody is indescribable as well is having really a lot of time to get to know somebody very valuable.
When entering China I had a Lonely Planet with at least 80 pages of compact history, written from a Western perspective, in my backpack. But when moving towards Japan I consciously had not searched for any information or travel guide. I must admit that long time ago I developed this prejudice of not liking Japan at all. It did not say me anything; I did not feel like visiting this island. I don’t know why or when this prejudice was formed but I am grateful for Carina who dragged me along to the East. Especially during this travel I have been thinking a lot about how my prejudices came into being and how they proved to be incorrect. My idea of not liking Japan was very much out of place. I liked this country from the moment I was stepping on its soil. I am also extremely happy to experience this place, its culture and nature like a child, without any previous knowledge. So actually I also want to say to those readers who would like to travel like this and enjoy the joy of amazement and discovering, maybe you should not continue. The first things about Japan I learned on the boat. Carina and I are standing on the upper deck when she says: `that guy is Japanese`. I ask `how do you know`. `By the way he walks` she says. I laugh. She explains that this `way` results from sitting on the knees. Second thing I learn are that slippers are very important and that walking with shoes in certain places is simply NOT done! The third thing I learnt was the Japanese way of bathing. The bath is shared. My host mother would later say: `We Japanese, we don’t make the water dirty`. You shower and wash and only then you go into the bath, a small hot swimming pool. We would be sitting there in the middle of the night and would be cleaner then ever.
But what is maybe one of the very present and visible characteristics of Japanese people became visible straight after passing the Chinese border in Qingdao port. A sign told me the ethics of the staff of the port. Things like not to discriminate, be polite, don’t say unfriendly words etc.; which we in Europe of course also expect from staff were just clearly stated. So far I also haven’t seen any Japanese neglecting those rules of courtesy. Sometimes this friendliness would really surprise us, like when we sneaked into the cafeteria of the boat and ate our own food at the table in the corner and the staff, who were preparing the place to open it, would say `Thank you very much` to us.
And so step by step I learn about Japan. I look with my eyes wide open. I received a stamp in my passport stating I am a temporary visitor who has the right to stay till the 2nd of December. Never since the start of our journey had I felt so much freedom. We reached Japan in time for Carina to start her research at the Japanese Foundation for which she got a scholarship. No more `have to be somewhere`s` and for the first time my passport gives me the right to stay in one country for more then 30 days! Japan would be very different for us. Carina`s life would be certain for four months. She has a roof for every night, she has a clear task to accomplish, and she has money and food. I entered Japan without any knowledge, except from the map of Japan I got from Carina in Qingdao, and without any plan. I felt so free and was filled with indescribable joy. Carina could not help it to worry about me or feel guilty that she is walking towards a luxurious life and that I did not know where to go. And of course a certain feeling of sadness was coming over us. Reaching Japan meant we would separate soon. We did not feel tired of traveling together at all.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Many feelings about China
For the first time I had time to read my previous post. Mmm, so little I have written. It feels almost unjust to give China so few words. My mind has been a bit uneasy about this overload of impressions and stories which remained untold. But what to do? Life was too interesting to look into the past or like I did not want to close my eyes when travelling. So much to wonder about! But now I take some time to catch up a bit with China!
China was hot, so hot that the sweat sticks to the skin like a layer of Vaseline. And there was no escape. We would often say `Banya-effect gone`, referring to the clean feeling we had after Russian Banya followed by sweating again and feeling dirty like before. But compared to sauna’s where you can escape into cold water, snow or just fresh air, the Chinese weather was there just to bare it. And so we did. I realise that by now I don’t mind the heat anymore. One friend told me about how you can get used to things or create new habits when you hold on for 21 days. Maybe it is true because just to mention some I got used to chopsticks, heat, uncertainty, mosquito bites and a 20 kilo backpack. The same by the way holds true when you want to get rid of bad habits like being angry, jealous or when you complain a lot.
China was not a developing country if I would make a mathematical conclusion of the China I saw. But of course I saw only a little.
China is soooo big. A population of 1.3 billion living on an area of 9.6 million sq km. Some comparisons: Mongolia has only 2.5 million people on an area of 1.5 million sq km and Russia has 144.5 million people on 17 million sq km. China also clearly has more roads and is not like Siberia. But how to grasp these feelings you get about population density. For example I remember that Tuva republic in Russia has 300 thousand inhabitants but over two million of cattle are running around. To me China did feel `full` after Russia and Mongolia. Maybe this feeling was strengthened by some words of Russian drivers about a forthcoming war in 2008 between China and Russia on land issues. In China this was sometimes confirmed or replied with `Oh, this war is already going on`. And Russia indeed has many unsettled border agreements. China is developing so quickly that indeed it’s need for land, water and energy are increasing rapidly. The population is still growing despite the `one child policy` that was introduced in the end of the seventies. It remains a point of discussion if this policy has helped or not. We were of course curious and found out that this policy is not as simple as it seems. In many areas like the country side where workforce is hardly needed to remain self sufficient more children are allowed. In the urban areas you can buy more children, meaning you pay a lot of money and then you are allowed to have more! Other options to circumvent this policy are giving birth abroad (also costly) or abandon your child. We did not get any precise information on a relation between the policy and the number of orphans.
But back to China’s state as a developing country. Of course I saw poverty, I saw many people living with basics, sharing a toilet with several alleys of the hutongs, sleeping on the streets, collecting bottles or living in a house made of some fabric and a bicycle. Almost one fourth of Beijing’s citizens live in old dwellings in the hutongs and I do not know if I can really say so, but I was lucky to see them. In the center (tourist) area of Beijing there are only a few left. Beijing (who that really is I do not know, some city officials maybe, some businessmen?) wants to be a modern city and as such the hutongs, which feel to me like the real China, are swept aside. Some of them to be rebuild on Beijing’s outskirts. With an area of 16.800 sq km (more than half of Belgium) and a population of 12 million you can start to imagine how far away people are forced to live from their `home`. Every year some 10.000 dwellings are ruthlessly bulldozed and with the Olympics coming in 2008 they might almost completely disappear. Of course I ask: `aren’t there any protest movements?` The answer: `what can you do when you get murdered when you protest!` I wonder if this is the China that I like. How can it be so stupid and sad. What is it to live in a country where you have to be silent? I also think about us as foreigners, what can we do? This feeling of wanting to do something leaves me quickly,... too late, too big enemy to fight ...? But the sad feeling that arose from observing such money-minded inhuman projects remains for a long time with me.
Though from the outside China might look modern, we definitely got a glimpse on some issues like the vast hold Chinese leaders have on the people and the country not being free. The Olympics are all over China. People trying to sell shirts to us: `Souvenir, souvenir, different colours, buy, buy`, many flyers, flags and big advertisements. Many food-products carry the logo while slogans and newspapers proudly announce that with the Olympics China will show its rich culture for the first time to the world. All Chinese are called to be part of it (in a socialist Mao-manner). The concrete marathon and modernisation speed are too visible and hurt my eye. I wonder who wants to see this modern China and what about the experience of so many other countries organising the Olympics and going bankrupt?
But again back to `development`. China is doing very well in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is maybe even the world leader in poverty alleviation. From 490 million people living below poverty line in 1990 it counted only 88 million in 2001. These figures still make me so dizzy, especially when I think of the richness I saw. We traveled for example in amazingly luxurious cars and saw many fancy shops. Unfortunately China is also the country known for the biggest gap between rich and poor. Further away from Beijing and many times when being on the road I did see real poverty and it made me feel very confused to see this from windows of expensive cars, driving on very good roads. In an article of the China Daily I read about how the new UNDP head for China tries to develop a plan to reach the MDGs aligned with the XiaoKang Vision that promotes a society in which people are moderately well off and middle class. At first sight it seems a long way to go! More info on XiaoKang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaokang.
China is so enormous, so complex and mysterious. My time there was an incentive for further investigation. Maybe its history is more attractive to me then its future. I also liked it more to watch a movie like `To Live` (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_live) in an apartment in Beijing on the 21st floor with some real Chinese food then to visit the Summer palace as a tourist. I enjoyed to read sayings of Lao Tse and to get a silk skirt made by a lady on the streets. Observing communism today, its consequences, ruins and deeply rooted structures in very different places like Russia, Mongolia and China gave me lot of `food` for thinking. Reading the book Animal Farm of George Orwell for example while sleeping in the meeting hall of a Chinese police station with `watching` portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are just too different from reading the same book in Antwerp. And maybe just to be clear, we did not do anything wrong to get into that police station near Jining (Shangdong province). We kindly asked to put our tent n their garden but got a meeting hall and a dinner instead. The next morning they arranged a ride for us with a bus to Qingdao (a six hour ride for free). That was maybe also a not too usual ride!
With our initial difficulties of hitchhiking in our mind and after flipping a coin we travelled from Beijing to Xi-an (one of the seven `once capital` cities of China) by train. Also an experience! Frightened by people’s reactions and stories we were prepared for the worst. We bought the cheapest tickets, which means `standing tickets` for 150 Yuan. Already in the bus to the train, standing for one hour was painful, we were about to `stand` for 12 hours! Then it happened to us that we spent 1.5 hour in a Chinese post office to send some packages home and as such we missed our train by 10 minutes. Aaarghhh we think again of worst case scenarios and wait the long ticket line for new ones. Before we realize it we have a ticket for the train two hours later without paying anything. Amazingly easy and our luck does not stop! Standing did not mean to be squeezed like pigs in a wagon without windows; we were simply put in between the seats. I was even more lucky and got on an empty seat. Carina was sitting on her backpack and except from standing up for passengers and food carriages every 5 minutes during the first hours the ride was quite comfortable. Maybe even too comfortable. After our reflections and doubts about this way of traveling, because we also ended up in a youth hostel in Xi-an, we decide to hit the road again. And it went very well, we slept again somewhere in the field/forest along the road and discover the quality of Chinese highway restaurants and facilities. The communication with the drivers goes well enough and two times we end up in a local bus, once when a family takes us with good intentions into the center of Lankou and once when for almost one hour we are surrounded by 60 curious people in the center of Heze where we tried to hitchhike. Places like this where almost no foreigners come were very nice experiences. Also here for example you can eat for 3 Yuan and see true Chinese life. After five people telling us to take a bus we check out how to go to Jining from Heze. 20 Yuan people on the street told us, so we are surprised when the lady at the counter says 75. We say it is too much and leave to check the city map. Before we understand what is happening the lady talks to the bus driver and gives us two tickets for 20 Yuan each. A half-hitchhiked bus? That day was so full, I smiled and enjoyed the views along local small roads.
We arrived sooner then expected in Qingdao where we buy our ticket for Japan. And yes, the boat was called UTOPIA 2. The ladies of the Japanese desk of the travel agency (based in an extremely posh hotel) call a very cheap family hostel mentioned but not recommended by Lonely Planet so we also soon had a roof in this very very western (German) city. We stayed several days here due to health problems. Probably it was the air-conditioning or whatever but first Carina got a severe cold and the second day in Qingdao I got ill as well. With high temperature and great help of our host and neighbours I visit the hospital to treat my flu. The lady of our really small hostel continues to take care of us with healthy porridge, tea, massage and kindness. The hospital though is one of the places where you would stamp China as a developing country but the English speaking nurse took great care of me and also Carina became a nurse. One night at 4 am Carina tells me that the date on our tickets is wrong. We knew the ship was leaving on Thursday but the date showed 30th of August and according to us it should be 31st. We try to calculate but we remain uncertain about the date. The next morning we find out that it is Thursday already. We simply would have missed the boat. Instead of packing Carina went to change the tickets to Saturday 1st so I would be healthier. Though we had to be at the port at 15.30 the ship left only at 1.00 am the 2nd of September. It remained a question to us why the people had to board so soon. By entering a Japanese boat we left China behind us, both with a feeling of returning one day. With 70 rides and 4 trains we reached Qingdao, it took us 40 days!
China was hot, so hot that the sweat sticks to the skin like a layer of Vaseline. And there was no escape. We would often say `Banya-effect gone`, referring to the clean feeling we had after Russian Banya followed by sweating again and feeling dirty like before. But compared to sauna’s where you can escape into cold water, snow or just fresh air, the Chinese weather was there just to bare it. And so we did. I realise that by now I don’t mind the heat anymore. One friend told me about how you can get used to things or create new habits when you hold on for 21 days. Maybe it is true because just to mention some I got used to chopsticks, heat, uncertainty, mosquito bites and a 20 kilo backpack. The same by the way holds true when you want to get rid of bad habits like being angry, jealous or when you complain a lot.
China was not a developing country if I would make a mathematical conclusion of the China I saw. But of course I saw only a little.
China is soooo big. A population of 1.3 billion living on an area of 9.6 million sq km. Some comparisons: Mongolia has only 2.5 million people on an area of 1.5 million sq km and Russia has 144.5 million people on 17 million sq km. China also clearly has more roads and is not like Siberia. But how to grasp these feelings you get about population density. For example I remember that Tuva republic in Russia has 300 thousand inhabitants but over two million of cattle are running around. To me China did feel `full` after Russia and Mongolia. Maybe this feeling was strengthened by some words of Russian drivers about a forthcoming war in 2008 between China and Russia on land issues. In China this was sometimes confirmed or replied with `Oh, this war is already going on`. And Russia indeed has many unsettled border agreements. China is developing so quickly that indeed it’s need for land, water and energy are increasing rapidly. The population is still growing despite the `one child policy` that was introduced in the end of the seventies. It remains a point of discussion if this policy has helped or not. We were of course curious and found out that this policy is not as simple as it seems. In many areas like the country side where workforce is hardly needed to remain self sufficient more children are allowed. In the urban areas you can buy more children, meaning you pay a lot of money and then you are allowed to have more! Other options to circumvent this policy are giving birth abroad (also costly) or abandon your child. We did not get any precise information on a relation between the policy and the number of orphans.
But back to China’s state as a developing country. Of course I saw poverty, I saw many people living with basics, sharing a toilet with several alleys of the hutongs, sleeping on the streets, collecting bottles or living in a house made of some fabric and a bicycle. Almost one fourth of Beijing’s citizens live in old dwellings in the hutongs and I do not know if I can really say so, but I was lucky to see them. In the center (tourist) area of Beijing there are only a few left. Beijing (who that really is I do not know, some city officials maybe, some businessmen?) wants to be a modern city and as such the hutongs, which feel to me like the real China, are swept aside. Some of them to be rebuild on Beijing’s outskirts. With an area of 16.800 sq km (more than half of Belgium) and a population of 12 million you can start to imagine how far away people are forced to live from their `home`. Every year some 10.000 dwellings are ruthlessly bulldozed and with the Olympics coming in 2008 they might almost completely disappear. Of course I ask: `aren’t there any protest movements?` The answer: `what can you do when you get murdered when you protest!` I wonder if this is the China that I like. How can it be so stupid and sad. What is it to live in a country where you have to be silent? I also think about us as foreigners, what can we do? This feeling of wanting to do something leaves me quickly,... too late, too big enemy to fight ...? But the sad feeling that arose from observing such money-minded inhuman projects remains for a long time with me.
Though from the outside China might look modern, we definitely got a glimpse on some issues like the vast hold Chinese leaders have on the people and the country not being free. The Olympics are all over China. People trying to sell shirts to us: `Souvenir, souvenir, different colours, buy, buy`, many flyers, flags and big advertisements. Many food-products carry the logo while slogans and newspapers proudly announce that with the Olympics China will show its rich culture for the first time to the world. All Chinese are called to be part of it (in a socialist Mao-manner). The concrete marathon and modernisation speed are too visible and hurt my eye. I wonder who wants to see this modern China and what about the experience of so many other countries organising the Olympics and going bankrupt?
But again back to `development`. China is doing very well in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is maybe even the world leader in poverty alleviation. From 490 million people living below poverty line in 1990 it counted only 88 million in 2001. These figures still make me so dizzy, especially when I think of the richness I saw. We traveled for example in amazingly luxurious cars and saw many fancy shops. Unfortunately China is also the country known for the biggest gap between rich and poor. Further away from Beijing and many times when being on the road I did see real poverty and it made me feel very confused to see this from windows of expensive cars, driving on very good roads. In an article of the China Daily I read about how the new UNDP head for China tries to develop a plan to reach the MDGs aligned with the XiaoKang Vision that promotes a society in which people are moderately well off and middle class. At first sight it seems a long way to go! More info on XiaoKang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaokang.
China is so enormous, so complex and mysterious. My time there was an incentive for further investigation. Maybe its history is more attractive to me then its future. I also liked it more to watch a movie like `To Live` (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_live) in an apartment in Beijing on the 21st floor with some real Chinese food then to visit the Summer palace as a tourist. I enjoyed to read sayings of Lao Tse and to get a silk skirt made by a lady on the streets. Observing communism today, its consequences, ruins and deeply rooted structures in very different places like Russia, Mongolia and China gave me lot of `food` for thinking. Reading the book Animal Farm of George Orwell for example while sleeping in the meeting hall of a Chinese police station with `watching` portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are just too different from reading the same book in Antwerp. And maybe just to be clear, we did not do anything wrong to get into that police station near Jining (Shangdong province). We kindly asked to put our tent n their garden but got a meeting hall and a dinner instead. The next morning they arranged a ride for us with a bus to Qingdao (a six hour ride for free). That was maybe also a not too usual ride!
With our initial difficulties of hitchhiking in our mind and after flipping a coin we travelled from Beijing to Xi-an (one of the seven `once capital` cities of China) by train. Also an experience! Frightened by people’s reactions and stories we were prepared for the worst. We bought the cheapest tickets, which means `standing tickets` for 150 Yuan. Already in the bus to the train, standing for one hour was painful, we were about to `stand` for 12 hours! Then it happened to us that we spent 1.5 hour in a Chinese post office to send some packages home and as such we missed our train by 10 minutes. Aaarghhh we think again of worst case scenarios and wait the long ticket line for new ones. Before we realize it we have a ticket for the train two hours later without paying anything. Amazingly easy and our luck does not stop! Standing did not mean to be squeezed like pigs in a wagon without windows; we were simply put in between the seats. I was even more lucky and got on an empty seat. Carina was sitting on her backpack and except from standing up for passengers and food carriages every 5 minutes during the first hours the ride was quite comfortable. Maybe even too comfortable. After our reflections and doubts about this way of traveling, because we also ended up in a youth hostel in Xi-an, we decide to hit the road again. And it went very well, we slept again somewhere in the field/forest along the road and discover the quality of Chinese highway restaurants and facilities. The communication with the drivers goes well enough and two times we end up in a local bus, once when a family takes us with good intentions into the center of Lankou and once when for almost one hour we are surrounded by 60 curious people in the center of Heze where we tried to hitchhike. Places like this where almost no foreigners come were very nice experiences. Also here for example you can eat for 3 Yuan and see true Chinese life. After five people telling us to take a bus we check out how to go to Jining from Heze. 20 Yuan people on the street told us, so we are surprised when the lady at the counter says 75. We say it is too much and leave to check the city map. Before we understand what is happening the lady talks to the bus driver and gives us two tickets for 20 Yuan each. A half-hitchhiked bus? That day was so full, I smiled and enjoyed the views along local small roads.
We arrived sooner then expected in Qingdao where we buy our ticket for Japan. And yes, the boat was called UTOPIA 2. The ladies of the Japanese desk of the travel agency (based in an extremely posh hotel) call a very cheap family hostel mentioned but not recommended by Lonely Planet so we also soon had a roof in this very very western (German) city. We stayed several days here due to health problems. Probably it was the air-conditioning or whatever but first Carina got a severe cold and the second day in Qingdao I got ill as well. With high temperature and great help of our host and neighbours I visit the hospital to treat my flu. The lady of our really small hostel continues to take care of us with healthy porridge, tea, massage and kindness. The hospital though is one of the places where you would stamp China as a developing country but the English speaking nurse took great care of me and also Carina became a nurse. One night at 4 am Carina tells me that the date on our tickets is wrong. We knew the ship was leaving on Thursday but the date showed 30th of August and according to us it should be 31st. We try to calculate but we remain uncertain about the date. The next morning we find out that it is Thursday already. We simply would have missed the boat. Instead of packing Carina went to change the tickets to Saturday 1st so I would be healthier. Though we had to be at the port at 15.30 the ship left only at 1.00 am the 2nd of September. It remained a question to us why the people had to board so soon. By entering a Japanese boat we left China behind us, both with a feeling of returning one day. With 70 rides and 4 trains we reached Qingdao, it took us 40 days!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Amazing China
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!
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!
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.
Monday, July 23, 2007
From Europe to Asia
After just a few days of travelling we stayed for a while in the heart of Ukraine. While visiting local libraries for internet facilities we were invited to speak about our trip. About 30 citizens of Cherkasy and a local journalist listened to us posed many questions and started to dream. By train we went to a very small village called Mehedovka were Carina's father grew up to work in the garden, eat peaches and abricots and visited relatives. A real into the field experience. Since we left Cherkasy we left showers and 'normal' toilets behind us. We drove old but very good Soviet bicycles, enjoyed the river and fresh local traditional food. I started to speak my first Russian words.
Leaving a village is a different thing than leaving a city (also not always easy), we walked for four hours with only a few cars, going to the next crossing or field, passing us. Carina's father and aunt were with us and the bikes also helped to carry our backpacks (about 40 kilo all together). Finally we jumped unto and old bus to Zolotonozho and still made it to the big road by the evening. Those days in Ukraine were really lovely. Our last long ride was a Polish man who drove us through the city of Kharkiv, the former capital of Ukraine, a mix of 80 percent lost glory and 20 percent typical modern big city (like all similar shops). The trams and busses I saw there are so old and broken, I even had not seen such things in a tram museum!
On the 17th of July we crossed the Russian border. A Russian family made a big trip through Russia not going straight to their destination Tula by dropping us off in Voronezh. Faces and surroundings kind off touched me. Not the most nice place. But also tiredness grapped me. That morning a dog woke us up in our tent in the fields. After he left we packed our stuff, afraid he would go and get the other dogs of the nearby houses. WE walked towards the road with a beautiful sun. Only for this you would get up even when feeling tired. We were just finishing our breakfast when two people were discussing the weather at the busstop. Carina translated to me that they were wondering if that white cloud would give rain today. I did not understood, I saw only dark grey when I looked behind. Five minutes later a terrible rainstorm embraced us, we luckily timely reached the busstation were we realised it was only 6.15 in the morning. Thank you for waking us dog! Everything would have been really wet and full of mud ...
From then onwards we are fully on the road. We spent the night at the trainstation in Voronezh after encountering a typical Russian thing, many hotels do not take foreigners and it was too late to get out of the city again. No good trains to take us so a minibus brings us early morning out of the city. Ahead of us a huge space ...Russia ...Siberia ...having no idea were we would get that day. With a great 'wash' stop at a river and catching a couple of rides we do get a ride with our first Camaz, Russian truck. A truck we will get to know quite well. The road to Saratov is not the best one ... but Russia becomes more and more beautiful. Thinking about the road to Samara we consider the idea of a taking a train. Our kind driver finds out there is a night train at 22.46 ... Saratov is still far ahead of us at 19.30. With the experience of the previous night we would not like to get again to spend the night at the train station. But nothing is sure on the road. With a short brokedown of the truck we reach Saratov with a smile and portion of adrenaline at 22.15 ...I told Carina before if we do not reach city at 22.15 we should stay before the city to camp. But we got there, it is to say at the border of the city. We jump from the truck into a taxi who understandsa our situation and drives us as quick as possible. Nothiong sure yet! Long ques at the ticket offices ... if there was not a kind lady at the administration desk and we would not have ran through the station we would have missed it ... You can imagine what a joy we felt sitting in our own coupe of a Russian train ... we have beds and would arrive at 8.00 in the morning.
In Samara we use the same technique, taking a bus out of city that would bring us to the road to Ufa which we reach by 18th evening. We passed through the muslim republic Tatarstan which has its own alphabet and ethnic traditions. The driver of our third Camaz is really very kind, going to a far away place in northern Siberia. He had for example been driving in minus 45 degrees, tolds us a lot about his different life experiences and stories of the road. We slowly get into the tough but interesting life of truck drivers. He is almost a hero when helping to pull out a new bus that went off the road and caused a hilarious view on two rows of cars crossing the field instead of waiting. We camp next to his truck and wake up early to drive with him a full day to Kurgan. We cross the Ural mountains, the statue that marks the border between Europe and Asia to end up near the first Siberian city. Here we met for the first time two other travellers coming from the student city Tomsk, we camp with them in the fields accross a large truck stop called the Siberian gate. All the places we stop for coffee or to eat are kind of similar, we definitely are a rarity among the truck drivers audience. Also toilets become, let's say more and more 'Russian'. Stopping for food or a drink starts to depend on the drivers, we start to live like them ...which for example also means to live according to their time. Some continue to live at Moscow time others adjust to local time. And we? I don't know, time became an uncertainty and something that does not really matters. We crossed some time zones without knowing, others that are on the map seem not to exist in reality.
I am writing now from Novosibirsk but have to go, how I get here will be for later ... so many thoughts ... and only more new experiences will come on top ...
Leaving a village is a different thing than leaving a city (also not always easy), we walked for four hours with only a few cars, going to the next crossing or field, passing us. Carina's father and aunt were with us and the bikes also helped to carry our backpacks (about 40 kilo all together). Finally we jumped unto and old bus to Zolotonozho and still made it to the big road by the evening. Those days in Ukraine were really lovely. Our last long ride was a Polish man who drove us through the city of Kharkiv, the former capital of Ukraine, a mix of 80 percent lost glory and 20 percent typical modern big city (like all similar shops). The trams and busses I saw there are so old and broken, I even had not seen such things in a tram museum!
On the 17th of July we crossed the Russian border. A Russian family made a big trip through Russia not going straight to their destination Tula by dropping us off in Voronezh. Faces and surroundings kind off touched me. Not the most nice place. But also tiredness grapped me. That morning a dog woke us up in our tent in the fields. After he left we packed our stuff, afraid he would go and get the other dogs of the nearby houses. WE walked towards the road with a beautiful sun. Only for this you would get up even when feeling tired. We were just finishing our breakfast when two people were discussing the weather at the busstop. Carina translated to me that they were wondering if that white cloud would give rain today. I did not understood, I saw only dark grey when I looked behind. Five minutes later a terrible rainstorm embraced us, we luckily timely reached the busstation were we realised it was only 6.15 in the morning. Thank you for waking us dog! Everything would have been really wet and full of mud ...
From then onwards we are fully on the road. We spent the night at the trainstation in Voronezh after encountering a typical Russian thing, many hotels do not take foreigners and it was too late to get out of the city again. No good trains to take us so a minibus brings us early morning out of the city. Ahead of us a huge space ...Russia ...Siberia ...having no idea were we would get that day. With a great 'wash' stop at a river and catching a couple of rides we do get a ride with our first Camaz, Russian truck. A truck we will get to know quite well. The road to Saratov is not the best one ... but Russia becomes more and more beautiful. Thinking about the road to Samara we consider the idea of a taking a train. Our kind driver finds out there is a night train at 22.46 ... Saratov is still far ahead of us at 19.30. With the experience of the previous night we would not like to get again to spend the night at the train station. But nothing is sure on the road. With a short brokedown of the truck we reach Saratov with a smile and portion of adrenaline at 22.15 ...I told Carina before if we do not reach city at 22.15 we should stay before the city to camp. But we got there, it is to say at the border of the city. We jump from the truck into a taxi who understandsa our situation and drives us as quick as possible. Nothiong sure yet! Long ques at the ticket offices ... if there was not a kind lady at the administration desk and we would not have ran through the station we would have missed it ... You can imagine what a joy we felt sitting in our own coupe of a Russian train ... we have beds and would arrive at 8.00 in the morning.
In Samara we use the same technique, taking a bus out of city that would bring us to the road to Ufa which we reach by 18th evening. We passed through the muslim republic Tatarstan which has its own alphabet and ethnic traditions. The driver of our third Camaz is really very kind, going to a far away place in northern Siberia. He had for example been driving in minus 45 degrees, tolds us a lot about his different life experiences and stories of the road. We slowly get into the tough but interesting life of truck drivers. He is almost a hero when helping to pull out a new bus that went off the road and caused a hilarious view on two rows of cars crossing the field instead of waiting. We camp next to his truck and wake up early to drive with him a full day to Kurgan. We cross the Ural mountains, the statue that marks the border between Europe and Asia to end up near the first Siberian city. Here we met for the first time two other travellers coming from the student city Tomsk, we camp with them in the fields accross a large truck stop called the Siberian gate. All the places we stop for coffee or to eat are kind of similar, we definitely are a rarity among the truck drivers audience. Also toilets become, let's say more and more 'Russian'. Stopping for food or a drink starts to depend on the drivers, we start to live like them ...which for example also means to live according to their time. Some continue to live at Moscow time others adjust to local time. And we? I don't know, time became an uncertainty and something that does not really matters. We crossed some time zones without knowing, others that are on the map seem not to exist in reality.
I am writing now from Novosibirsk but have to go, how I get here will be for later ... so many thoughts ... and only more new experiences will come on top ...
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