Chapter 5: Heading back East

 

The fiasco of obtaining a Russian visa

 

When I left Chita in July 2005, I had watched the summer green of Zabaikalye’s uninhabited hills pass beneath the plane and wondered whether I would ever again see this fascinating place. During my final week in Chita I had been overwhelmed by the number of people who had asked, with genuine feeling, for me to return. Until that point I had been planning to take up an offer of an internship in Tbilisi, Georgia for the autumn but given that it was unpaid and that kidnapping Westerners was considered a lucrative business in the remoter areas of Georgia, I had my reservations.

 

When my father met me at Heathrow he commented on my gaunt frame and how my accent, previously a mix of Derbyshire tinged with my parents’ southern tones, had now become much less pronounced. Arriving home, I switched on the goggle box to find a documentary about Oasis, which I watched with relish owing simply to the fact that it was in English, and marvelling that at last ITV were broadcasting something I found worth watching.

 

I had heard tales of travellers returning home from less affluent countries to England to be overwhelmed with the abundance of material choice and convenience of Western living. I had expected a touch of this feeling but it did not happen- I simply found the relative orderliness and ease of the UK to be too familiar. Settling into the routine of British life again was not a problem- rather, dealing with the absence of mental stimulation and challenge involved in achieving even the most mundane task in Russia, was. It seemed nothing had changed in the six months since my departure- the soaps that offer mental anaesthesia to the masses still featured the same faces, and driving a car still seemed like second nature. When one lives a routine existence, six months can pass by in a flash, but my half year in Chita had involved so many new experiences that looking back, it seemed like a much longer period of my life.

 

During the summer I did a little IT tutoring in my home town of Chesterfield, all the time debating my future. It had been cheaper to buy a return ticket from Moscow to London than to purchase a single. I thus held a ticket for the Russian capital, dated 25th August. The trouble was, Brits requiring visas for Russia, if I wanted to go back I would have to set the visa application process at the start of August. Georgia had dropped visa requirements for British workers. Three choices lay before me: seek a job in Blighty, risk Tbilisi or go back to Chita.

 

The first of these options I quickly dismissed, being bored of Britain within a couple of days of returning. Deciding the Tbilisi internship would be the best for my future career, I emailed to start arranging my place there. I continued to email friends in Chita and it was clear they had not forgotten me and wanted me to return. I had had an intense relationship with a Russian girl during my final weeks in Siberia, but she had unceremoniously ditched me shortly before my departure. To my surprise, she sent a string of emails declaring how she could not live without me. Weighing it all up one day whilst sitting eating lunch and watching the ducks in Chesterfield, I reversed my decision. Georgia could wait- I wanted more Chita. I immediately felt much more comfortable with my decision.

 

The problem now was twofold- I needed work in Chita, and a visa. I mailed my old university and they apologetically informed me that they had already taken on a foreign teacher for September. I completely understood this as I had not told them I was returning until it was too late. A day or two later, one of my ex-students mailed to inform me that she had applied for a job at Chita State University, the biggest of the city’s higher education institutions, known locally as ‘Politen’. She had been interviewed by Andrei Bukin, the head of International Department- a chap whom I had met during a drunken farewell meal for Joelle, a French teacher at my institute. My former student had mentioned that I was seeking a job in Chita and Andrei had casually remarked that his uni would gladly employ me. From there Andrei and I agreed that I would come to work at Politen, concentrating on teaching politics. This suited me as I had found the actual teaching of English quite dull, though communication with the students had been a joy. I had one concern- the flat occupied by their previous foreign teacher, Ying Ling, seemed like a place an old man had recently died in: grubby, poorly decorated and generally run down. Ying Ling was convinced the bedroom, which had no bed but merely a mattress, was haunted, and had slept on a sofa propped up by Soviet books which had collapsed sometime during the Brezhnev era. The noisy alcoholic neighbours did not help either. Andrei promised proper accommodation, such as I had enjoyed at the pedagogical uni, and so I accepted the job offer.

 

I arranged to stay with Inna’s family whilst my accommodation was being readied, and was ditched in a one-line email by the girl who a month earlier had been mailing to beg me to return. Being cast aside like a used toy hit me hard for three days or so, but I soon bounced back and resolved to enjoy my second stint in Siberia every bit as much as the first.

 

To arrange a working visa in Russia, the employer must issue an invitation which must be sent in original to a Russian embassy or consulate outside Russia, which will then (eventually, hopefully) issue the visa. The invitation was to be issued by the Chita authorities, a process which could take up to a month, and to post the invitation overland (originals only, remember!) would take a further three to four weeks. I simply did not have this sort of time before my flight on 25th August and so concocted a plan which would allow me to enter Russia on that date rather than to ditch my expensive ticket. The plan went like so:

 

1)       Pay a company in London twenty quid to issue (within 24 hours) a tourist invitation from a Moscow travel agency

2)       Post my tourist visa application, complete with tourist invitation and reams of supporting paperwork, to the Russian embassy in London

3)       Visit London in person to collect visa, given the gross inefficiency demonstrated by said embassy in posting back my visa on previous occasion

4)       Fly to Moscow, take an internal flight to Ulan Ude and hop on an overnight train to Chita

5)       Collect work invitation from Politen in person, taking a look at future accommodation and leaving Chita immediately in a huff if it was in same condition as Ying Ling’s old abode

6)       All being well, take a train to Ulan Ude and there obtain a Mongolian visa

7)       Apply for a Russian works visa in Ulan Bator, using my works visa invitation (in the original!) and reams of supporting documentation

8)       Travel back to Chita and spend the academic year generally enjoying myself

 

Simple, eh? Entirely legal, too, though somewhat complex when compared to a plan to teach English somewhere in the European Union, which would go something like:

 

1)       Go to country and start work

 

For some reason, when ringing the Russian consulate in Edinburgh, I had always encountered polite and helpful staff. Ringing the Embassy in London, however, usually meant an indefinitely ringing phone that was never answered and, on rare occasions, a terse exchange with a surly and reluctant worker. I managed to gain confirmation that my visa had been issued and was waiting for collection any weekday between 11am and 1pm and, on the Monday before my departure, took the train into a very rainy London to collect my visa.

 

Arriving at Paddington Station around 11am, I scanned the map for Kensington Palace Gardens and, beneath an umbrella lent by my grandmother (I usually just settle for a woolly Chesterfield Football Club hat but that day it was really pelting), began the short walk through this plush part of London. Kensington Palace Gardens, which lies near Hyde Park, is a row of impressive Victorian and Georgian properties which house embassies from all corners of the globe. Outside one (and only one) of these was an enormous queue stretching far down the pavement with sodden and frustrated people waiting for processing. Sod’s law dictated that this was indeed the diplomatic representation of the Russian Federation in Britain. Joining the back of the queue, I began to chat with the other queuers and found that many had been waiting for four or five hours. The queue was moving, but only because two people were admitted through the compound gates every half hour or so. Weighing things up, I decided to wait since I had nowt better to do, and began explaining what I knew of the visa application process to some of those waiting. One had naively decided to pop along and sort out his visa that day. After all, he had an invitation in his hand for a business trip. His face dropped as I explained that his options were either to pay a hundred quid plus for same-day service, in the unlikely event that the Embassy could be bothered to provide it, or to wait a few weeks whilst going through the normal process. All the while, enterprising Russian agents trawled the queue with promises that for a small fee they could use their contacts to expedite quicker processing. Capitalism, Russian style.

 

At 1pm, four or so people having entered the compound during my wait, a Russian emerged from the Embassy. He tersely informed the twenty-plus people still waiting for ‘service’ that the Embassy was now closed and that they should come back another time. As he locked the gates and went back inside, outraged disbelief swept the queue. Alas, this seemed to be their first encounter with Russian bureaucracy, in which the individual is an annoyance rather than a customer. Many gestured rudely at the compound security cameras as they stormed away, the private Russian agents picked over the remainder like vultures with promises of help, and after a few minutes I found myself alone outside the Embassy. I had encountered Russian bureaucracy before, I had time on my hands, I knew my visa was in there somewhere and I was going to get it. I pressed the button on the intercom and responded to the rude “What do you want?” with a polite “I have come for my visa” in both English and bad Russian. I was told to bugger off. I tried again, politely, and was told to bugger off again. Fine, I thought. The chap at the other end seemed like a typical Russian bureaucrat- unwilling to get off his fat arse and help a stranger but, I guessed, the type who would go to the ends of the earth to help a friend, as most Russians would. If I kept politely enquiring, I reasoned, this twerp would give me my visa just to get rid of me- after all, it was sitting in the Embassy ready for collection. I then spied a sign directing those who had applied for visas by post to visit the basement of the Embassy. I pushed the intercom again and patiently said, “I have come to collect my postal visa”. Postal, it seemed, was the magic word, and within seconds the fat apparatchik had come to the gate, shepherded me up into the grandiose building and told me to take a seat. Within a couple of minutes, my visa was in my hand, signed and stamped.

 

As I walked around Hyde Park in the pouring rain, I smiled quietly at how knowing a little of dealing with Russian bureaucracy had helped me to a small triumph. Perversely, my brush with these attitudes had reminded me of Russia so plainly that, perhaps more than ever, I could not wait to fly back East.

 

Back to Chita

 

I took an airport taxi to Heathrow in the early hours of the morning, driven by a friendly young Asian chap who claimed to speak fluent Polish; despite his never having visited Poland, his girlfriend was from there. The flight to Moscow passed off without drama and I boarded an internal flight to Ulan Ude. I had only caught a glimpse of Ulan Ude from the train before this point, and was impressed by its apparently awesome size as we touched down. Surely, I thought, this city was only supposed to be the same size as Chita? I waited for people to grab their hand luggage and alight, but nobody moved. Regular announcements had been made in Russian far too fast for me to catch, and I wondered why we were now sitting on the tarmac in the middle of the apron, no sign of a terminal or a transfer bus. A few people left the plane to smoke fags outside in the blazing heat, but it was clear they were not leaving the vicinity of the plane. An hour or so later, we took off again, flew the short distance across Lake Baikal and landed in Ulan Ude. I figured out what had happened: we had made an unscheduled stop in Irkutsk, though I knew not why. One cheap ten-hour platzkart train journey later and I arrived in Chita as midnight approached. I stood outside the ornate station in the late summer warmth and gazed lovingly around, glad to be back in this different world I thought I had left for good only seven weeks or so earlier. I grabbed a Lada cab, laden with my bulky luggage and knowing that hauling it up the bumpy main road to Inna Makedonska’s family’s flat would take hours and perhaps kill me.

 

In Chita, the usual practice with hailing taxis is to knock on the driver’s window, tell him your destination, haggle a little over the price and then either walk away or hop in. Not once did a driver try to charge me more than the agreed price, and fares did not seem to depend upon whether the taxi was a shiny new Toyota or a wrecked old Moskvich. On this occasion I did not know Inna’s exact address, though I knew how to find her block, so I said to the driver “Ulitsa Leningradskaya, blizhko bolshoi novaya zdana s Kitaiski rabotniki”, which translates as “Leningrad Street, near the big new building with all the Chinese workers”, and features appalling grammar and a touch of Russian slang. He dropped me off and tried to charge an extortionate 150 roubles (three quid) for the short ride. I asked if he was overcharging because I was foreign and gave him 120 roubles as that was all I had left in my pocket. To be fair to him, the taxis at the station had always vastly overcharged local and visitor alike, and had I not been laden with luggage I would have done the usual and walked a hundred yards around the corner where taxis suddenly became magically cheaper.

 

I knocked on the Makedonski family door, sweating and delirious with tiredness, and was greeted with joy by her two young daughters. Inna and her husband Artur had been partying and soon returned, but the warm welcome from this wonderful family made me feel thoroughly pleased to be in Chita once more.

 

I spent a week or so living with the family Makedonski, being made to feel right at home, eating Inna’s superb Russo-Ukrainian fare, playing card games in English with their 11-year-old daughter Tina and at one point poisoning myself by drinking some dodgy, cloudy homebrew that Artur had fetched from an apartment block in the middle of town with a sly “Don’t tell Inna where I got this from”. The weather was still warm as I padded the dusty streets, renewing acquaintances. One evening I sat with former students on a bench outside the post office near Lenin Square, and invited my old friend Raya to join us. As she turned up to find us drinking beer and chewing the cud she commented with a wry smile that it seemed nothing had changed.

 

I visited Politen to collect my invitation and sign my contract of work. Alas, my accommodation was not ready, though I was assured that it was being prepared with nothing but the best, new fittings for their foreign guest. I decided to accept their word and, invitation very safely stowed, booked my train ticket to Ulan Ude.

 

I had printed off details of Ulan Ude hotels from the web and on my first morning in the capital of Buryatia- one of Russia’s 89 internal regions- I walked around to find most of them closed, outrageously expensive or simply unwilling to show the patience necessary to let a foreigner who did not speak fluent Russian book a room. I did, however, see the giant head of Lenin in the main square- the largest bust of Lenin on the globe and apparently a source of civic pride to the city during Soviet times. His eyes had been sculpted with an Asiatic tinge in order to appeal to the city’s numerous Buryat inhabitants, descendants of a Mongolian people. Unable to find the Mongolian consulate, and sweating in the hot sun as I was carrying a full backpack and wearing a heavy leather jacket, I wandered into a local office which claimed to be a travel agency. I was pleasantly surprised by their bright and helpful service, and though they spoke no English, they were able to issue me a Mongolian visa by the end of the day. I spent the night in a cheap hotel near Ulan Ude station, frequented by Chinese traders and prostitutes, and took an early train for Ulan Bator the next day.

 

Third class (platzkart) train tickets are not available for cross-border journeys and so I travelled second class (kupe), sleeping alone in a compartment which usually held four. Waking from my slumber as we approached the Russo-Mongolian border, I groggily ventured out of my compartment and, to my astonishment heard English voices speaking. It turned out that the carriage was full of Europeans and Americans travelling from Moscow to Ulan Bator via the Trans-Siberian route. I chatted with a few, grateful for the opportunity to speak fluently and to exchange travelling tales. At Naushki, just inside the Russian border, the train made its scheduled stop for five or six hours. During this time the Russian customs officials boarded, soldiers checking under the carriage floors for contraband and Westerners being hassled for not having the correct stamps on their entry cards. At one point I found myself light-heartedly haranguing a Brighton and Hove Albion fan from the train window about an incident that happened between his club and mine in 2001 as he wandered down the train platform. The absurdity of the conversation, given the setting, was not lost on me. Gathering a small band of Brits together, we set off for a wander around Naushki, a tiny town centred on a main street with the usual Russian array of decaying Khruschevki and tumbledown wooden huts. Naushki must see a steady stream of confused Westerners during the summer months as they wait to cross the border, but it seemed that numbers were insufficient to merit tourist provision as yet. In one of the two shops, a gang of cheeky ten-year-olds demanded ten roubles for us to be allowed to exit. I’d imagine most Western travellers give this chap a rouble or two, or politely wait for him to get bored and hassle the next visitor, but I took the approach I believed a Russian would take and barged wordlessly past him. Not the sort of thing I would do to a ten-year-old in Britain, but it did not harm the little runt in the slightest and he looked well-clothed and sufficiently fed, so I doubt he was begging from necessity. Revelling in my role as the only Brit possessed of even a little Russian, by asking around we found our way to a fly-blown wooden café that, naturally, betrayed no signs of being a café from the outside. We ordered a cheap and tasty meal of borsch, tea, bread and kotleti, and conversed with some friendly Mongolians who extended an early welcome to their country. Hours later, the train finally rolled onwards and past barbed wire fences into a no-man’s-land lined by watchtowers atop bare hills.

 

Ulan Bator

 

I delighted in viewing the ‘Монголия’ border sign and, after proceeding past a small Mongolian army post where a soldier was walking between tall, scrubby bushes carrying water from a well, arrived in Sukh-Bataar. After visas had been checked by the Mongolian officials, money-changers flooded the carriage. I had a few roubles to exchange and soon had four or five changers in my compartment, eager to do business. I thought myself smart as I conducted a mini Dutch auction between them and obtained what I thought was a decent rate of exchange. My British travelling companions were more cautious and opted to try the bank at the station. I followed them in, surprised to find it open as it looked abandoned, and was brought swiftly to earth as I realised that the bank’s rate was better than that I’d negotiated on the train. Not to worry. A quick glance at the trashy clothes, cans of Western pop and familiar branded chocolate bars being hawked by a few traders on the platform and it was off into Sukhbataar to grab a meal during the two hours or so during which the train was due to wait on the Mongolian side of the border. Sukhbataar is one of the bigger towns in Mongolia, but since Mongolia is mostly sparsely-populated steppe and desert, this is not saying much. The town boasts a few Soviet-style blocks of flats, a dusty boulevard down which knackered imported Japanese cars careen and, even in August, barely any grass. A few of us Brits gathered in a small restaurant for a couple of Korean beers and a decently-garnished cutlet which, compared to the fare we’d later find in rural Mongolia, was decidedly gourmet. The service was friendly, signifying that we had left Russia behind.

 

As we arrived in the early morning cold of Ulan Bator the next day, I did not know where I would stay, where the Russian embassy was, or indeed anything much. Two of the English train travellers were being picked up by a chap from a hostel in the city, their places booked via the web at four dollars per night. Duncan, a self-effacing Londoner, was travelling with his girlfriend Alex after they had both finished a stint teaching English in Japan. I tagged along with them and booked in, the staff friendly and the location ideal- on ‘Friendship Avenue’, one of the main roads of the city, and a few paces along from the Russian embassy. We wandered around the central Sukhbataar Square, flanked by imposing communist-era governmental buildings and empty at that early hour, and by 9am I was waiting outside the metal gates of the large Russian compound. At 9am precisely the gate swung open and in swept the disorderly queue of Mongolians who had been waiting on the street. I barged my way to the reception desk and a pleasant Russian woman asked where I was from, gave me some visa application forms and told me to come back at 2pm when non-Mongolians were processed. That afternoon, I duly waited with the other foreigners outside the Russian Embassy and as the steel gate swung open precisely on the hour, I marched in and grabbed another application form. I must admit that I had had to use the first Russian visa application form in rather an unexpected way, having found the toilets in the State Department Store sans papier. The irony of this unavoidable action did not escape me. I took my place in the queue to see the Russian diplomat, who was open for business between 2pm and 3pm. And not a moment longer. I was fourth or fifth in the queue and, having seen how things worked in London, knew that at exactly 3pm the shutters would come down and everybody hitherto unprocessed would be booted out pronto. On the wall was a price list: same-day visa processing was outrageously expensive, and the cheapest option- priced at around fifty dollars- was to wait ten working days for documents to be issued. I resolved to take the cheapest option, reasoning that the money I would save would more than cover a few days in Mongolia and that I had no deadline for returning to Chita. Mongolia seemed a fascinating place in which to get stranded for a while. As the clock ticked toward 3pm I began to fret about not making the day’s cut. There was only one diplomat on duty, despite the fact that plenty of other Russian officials were wandering around the huge compound, and despite there being other unoccupied counters. His tendency to nonchalantly bugger off for a cup of tea or a leisurely chat with the woman at the desk behind him did no favours for the nerves. A Mongolian agent rushed in at about 2.45pm, asked the German chap who was behind me in the queue if she could go ahead of him, and he foolishly acquiesced. She asked me the same question and I refused, not on the grounds of British queuing principles but because I knew that if I was not seen by 3pm, I was screwed until the next day. I explained this to the German chap and he promptly began arguing with the woman in order to regain his place in the queue. With about ten minutes to spare, I made it. The diplomat handed me a sheaf of documents and ordered me to go to the cashier’s desk and pay for my visa. In dollars. I had expected to be able to pay in Mongolian Togrog since the visa price list was printed in both Togrog and dollars, and roubles were also forbidden, so I rushed across the street to a money changer and belted back to the cashier, the exact advertised dollar amount in hand. It turned out that the actual price charged was a couple of dollars greater than that shown on the price list and, with the cashier about to shut up shop, I was high and dry. To my eternal gratitude, an English engineer who had been queuing behind me and had seen the whole fiasco unfold simply gave me five dollars. I offered to pay her back in Togrog but she refused. A simple act of kindness which saved me an awful lot of messing about, and I hope somebody does the same for her one day.

 

That evening I dined on a wonderful local meat dish with Duncan and Alex, sitting on a wooden terrace overlooking a quiet Buddhist monastery in the city centre with ornately- carved gabled roofs, the mountains which enclose Ulan Bator standing grandly in the background. ‘UB’ is hemmed in by these high peaks, a valley full to bursting with around a million souls- over a third of the country’s inhabitants. The centre bustles with Mongolians and plentiful foreigners among gleaming new high-rises and modern shops set in communist-era blocks. On every corner stands a person, masked against traffic fumes, holding a radio telephone from where passers-by can (and often do) make calls, land lines being thin on the ground in Mongolia. Quite whom they call, given that everybody else seems to be using these street-hawker phones, I have no idea. Presumably mobile technology will soon put an end to this practice anyway- the sight of Mongolian workers laying a high-spec communications cable across the desert of western Mongolia a few days later was testament to the coming of the internet age, and UB already boasted internet cafes galore. A fascinating feature of UB is that one can walk a block from the busy main roads and see suburbs consisting of yurts- the traditional nomad tent dwellings- each plonked on an enclosed plot surrounded by wooden fences and usually boasting satellite dishes incongruously atop their off-white domes. In these suburbs, through which Westerners are told not to wander at night, one frequently sees livestock being herded across busy roads around which motorists career crazily, horns constantly pipping. UB is apparently outgrowing its valley, hence the government’s plans to relocate the capital to Kharkhorin, Ghenghis Khan’s ancient capital. Ghenghis (or Chingis, as he is known in his homeland) is the man in Mongolia, and everything is named after him- Chingis Beer, Chingis Hotels, Chingis Bars, Chingis toilet paper. Probably. A large part of the population claim descent from Chingis, and genetic studies indeed suggest that around 8% of the males in central Asia- 0.5% of the men in the world- share a Y-chromosomal lineage. That this rampaging, conquering, murdering madman is still such an icon to such a peaceful, hospitable and generally pleasant people is a little baffling, but then old Chingis certainly put this small territory on the map. Indeed, his hordes would apparently have conquered land further west than the Hungarian plain had it not been for Mongolian custom which dictated that the hordes should ride home to elect a successor when Chingis finally fell off his perch.

 

It is easy to imagine the desolate place that Ulan Bator must have been during the communist era, Mongolia being known as the sixteenth Republic of the USSR and little more than an economic colony servicing the Soviet Union in exchange for military protection against neighbouring China. However nowadays, with an explosion of colourful advertising and the locals’ taste for foreign fashions, the city seems vibrant. UB is renowned in Western culture as one of those back-of-beyond places, yet as a major destination for backpackers, most of whom speak English, it seemed a cosmopolitan joy in comparison to Chita. Every day I would meet new Westerners, all seeming the kind of engaging people I liked to meet and none of whom fitted the more negative aspects of the interrailing-student stereotype that often rang true around western European cities. After all, if a backpacker had made it this far, they must have had a little nous and commitment about them. I had only to sit in a café or my hostel for a while and I could be sure somebody would willingly strike up a conversation and make plans for an evening around the city as part of an impromptu group. The only downside to my hostel was the presence of four Chinese teenagers, two young girls who seemed pleasant if shy, and two chaps with the manners of adolescent gorillas. They seemed to have travelled to Mongolia in order to spend a couple of weeks inside the hostel, never venturing out, and yammering loudly and clumping around in the middle of the night with such force that I suspected their bodies must be supernaturally dense.

 

Here I was in Ulan Bator with a few days to kill. Duncan and Alex had met up with a Glaswegian fireman named Gordon and a talkative fellow from Hong Kong named Tak, and between them a plan to travel around the rural area to the west of Ulan Bator had been hatched. They invited me along and I gladly agreed, the price of around twenty dollars per day including transport in a Russian all-terrain tabletka truck with a Mongolian driver and camping with all equipment provided. Much as I liked Ulan Bator already, the chance to spend five days sampling life on the steppe was irresistible. The tour operator was a hostel owner named Mr Bolod, a wise and helpful old fellow with good English who apparently has a good name among backpackers. He has the endearing habit of sending personal Christmas greetings to his former customers and, unlike any Russian I have ever met, seems to appreciate that customer service does have a value.

 

The Mongolian Steppe

 

On the first morning of our tour of the rural steppes, we were introduced to our wiry Mongolian driver, Dascar. He spoke good English, with decent Russian too, and apparently did the odd tour for Mr Bolod when not working in his main occupation for one of Mongolia's many mining companies. Dascar turned out to be a diamond of a bloke and a major blessing for us. We stocked up on provisions at the gigantic State Department store, piled into the tabletka- so named because it looks like a tablet perched on its high wheelbase- and headed west.

 

Driving out of the sprawling metropolis took time but once we had passed the traffic control point on the edge of the city, we were into open country. Mongolia is known as the Land of Blue Sky, its landlocked location rendering both night and day largely cloudless. A tarmac road stretched before us with green steppes stretching away on either side, a panorama of rugged hills in the distance. We would often pass Buddhist cairns at the roadside, conical piles of rocks around which one is supposed to walk three times for luck, though most drivers settled for a quick pip of the horn as they flew past. Unsurprisingly, there were few vehicles, and those present were generally sturdy off-roaders- an indication of the roads that were to come. In a supposedly poor nomad country, it was surprising how many of these were new Japanese vehicles. Blue prayer flags are also often seen hanging from branches- another Buddhist custom- though trees are scarce on the steppe. We also marvelled as we pointed out circling eagles to one another, though by the end of the trip we had seen so many that they seemed commonplace.

 

After a few hours we stopped in a small village of crumbling wooden dwellings, standing on the modern road bridge above a clear, wide river and watching herds of horses being shepherded around the fields below. I asked Dascar what the horses were used for, other than transport, and he answered that they could be used for almost anything, including meat. Their milk was an important product too, as we would find out. Mongolia apparently boasts one horse per person and in rural areas the size of ones herd is a decent indication of wealth.

 

Nomad tents, known as gers, were dotted around the landscape and it was in one of these that we spent our first night. Dascar knew a fair few people in these parts but had no qualms about driving up to the ger of a stranger, telling the nomads he had a truckful of clueless tourists and negotiating a meal and a nights kip. Hospitality is well-established on the steppe, and helping strangers is a tradition born of necessity given the distances from any amenities. For two dollars per head we would be welcomed into the family home for a night, fed with meals based wholly on meat and dairy and allowed to lay our sleeping bags around the carpeted floor. Each ger has a small wooden door and a lattice wooden frame, a large stove in the middle providing the focus beneath a vent hole in the crown. Also usual were portable sinks for hand-washing and a dresser on which family photos were proudly displayed. The head of the family would sit cross-legged with his honoured guests at the rear-centre of the ger whilst the woman prepared meals. Dung provided the fuel, wood being scarce on the plains. These dwellings were perfectly warm in summer and had apparently withstood the harsh Mongolian winters for centuries, though many nomads nowadays headed for the towns during the colder months. Some nomads told us that they spent the summers on the steppes and took their gers to the mountains during winter to find sheltered terrain. Putting up a ger apparently takes less than an hour and though a nomad has few possessions, it was surprising how many artifacts they seemed able to pack around their homes. A frothy milk tea was passed around in a communal bowl, apparently slightly salted but in all honesty tasting like hot milk. Lumps of animal meat hung from the gers inner frame. The family were extremely welcoming and patient as we asked daft questions via Dascar. They seemed to have little curiosity as to the ways of the Western world and appeared contented with their timeless lifestyle. Clothes were a mixture of contemporary garb freely available in the towns and traditional long Mongolian robes, heavy and beautifully decorated in rich colours and intricate trims. The man of the house spoke a little Russian and we chatted amiably as he became more and more drunk on airag, the alcoholic fermented horse milk brew so beloved by his countrymen. We declined to join him in a tipple.

 

The next day we left the tarmac main road and headed off into the tracks of the dry steppe. Dascar had travelled thousands of miles to Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia to buy his Russian tabletka van, and its ability to negotiate this rugged terrain, river crossings included, demonstrated why he considered it such a sound investment. He spent most nights kipping in the van, often cooking for himself as we spent evenings being waited upon by nomadic families.

 

We pulled up to a dilapidated hut standing alone on a plain and out ran a few brightly-clothed young kids to greet us. We were ushered into the hut and served freshly-fermented airag. Duncan was brave enough to try first, immediately declaring that it tasted like sick. The hosts indicated that he should down the whole mugful, which he dutifully did, and each of the rest of us then took our turns. To me, airag tasted more like thick, frothy alka-seltzer-water than vomit, and I was able to down a full mug, but declined a second helping. Duncan, meanwhile, had decided the airag was not so bad and was knocking back mug after mug. The hosts handed round milk biscuits which looked tasty but were actually so rock hard that they were impossible to bite into and, grateful as I was for the hospitality, I shan't pretend they were tasty. Driving around the steppe, trays of milk biscuits left baking atop the gers in the summer sun were a common sight. The hosts offered us the chance to buy bottles of airag to take away and we bought a couple out of politeness, Alex also leaving colouring books that were enthusiastically received by the family's kids. Driving onwards, Dascar began tucking into the airag with relish- slightly worrying as it was around 5% alcohol- but he pointed out that he would not drink any when on the main roads as police may be patrolling. It would be four days before we would see a tarmac road again, during which time Dascar would drive with a plastic airag bottle by his gearstick, taking regular sips, though he never seemed drunk and the chances of hitting another vehicle were slim in the wilderness, even if the rugged tracks nearly tipped us over on a couple of hairy occasions.

 

We asked Dascar to find us a place to eat and at the next fly-blown, crumbling wooden village (as in Russia, complete with local on proudly maintained shiny motorbike) he led us into what seemed like an unmarked hut. Inside was a small café with formica tables and one or two grizzly locals. We told Dascar we would eat anything and we ended up with a simple mutton dish which was cheap, wholesome, tasty and most welcome. I was to encounter this dish a few times in the next few days and it seemed odd, given its ubiquity, that it involved pasta as agricultural production, wheat included, is minimal in Mongolia. I reflected on how capitalism had yet to establish firm roots beyond Ulan Bator- tourist traps aside- and how rural Mongolia, even despite the pains of the attempted collectivisation of nomad herds, had proved a stronghold of support for the ruling communist party in the free elections of 1990. After all, nomadic life seemed to have been affected little by communism and one can understand how amidst the upheavals of the early 1990s country people would vote for the apparently more stable option above more radical alternatives emanating from urban centres.

 

As we travelled around Gordon, Tak, Alex, Duncan and I would exchange anecdotes and bombard Dascar with stupid questions, each of which he fielded with good grace. Our frequent and capricious changes of plan never seemed to faze him and whenever we asked if something could be done he would quietly reply “It’s possible” and go about arranging the fulfilment of our whims. Duncan and Alex had been teaching English in Japan and one of his stories struck a chord with me. Many was the time I had been asked a question by a student and been unable to answer, but my policy was to admit that I did not know and to go away and find the answer in time for the next lesson. Duncan was evidently a little more blasé and during a discussion of the Pacific Ocean had informed one of his pupils that the Marianas Trench was ten thousand kilometres deep. The Japanese are usually a polite and not particularly forthcoming bunch in classroom situations but one chap felt moved to put up his hand and comment, as Duncan mimicked, Tha is no possibw'. Caught red-handed, my old son.

 

On our second day we stopped at a clear blue lake. Dascar had clearly been itching to go fishing and he disappeared with his rod, while we picnicked on the lake shore, Duncan immediately smashing a large pot of jam we had bought to last us the week. He was extremely apologetic but none of us were too concerned. The group had been getting on well and here we were in this stunning location, far from the magnified dramas of Western life, with not a care in the world. We visited a tourist centre on the edge of a national park and took welcome showers but were underwhelmed by the artificiality of the tourist gers, specifically constructed for Western visitors with prices to match and lacking any of the authentic touches we had already found by travelling in the company of a local.

 

On the second evening we set up camp in a river valley, Dascar seemingly able to easily pick out the spots in the streams where others had previously driven across. There was not another soul in sight, and having enjoyed Alex’s cooking we wandered to the top of a nearby hill to watch the glorious sunset. The view of the starlit nocturnal sky, Milky Way clearly visible, was stunning, its clarity a reminder of how far we were from the pollution of industrialised society.

 

Waking up under canvas on the Mongolian steppe in summer is to be recommended. After washing with bottled water we headed toward Kharkhorin, Chingis Khans ancient capital. En route we stopped at the ruins of an ancient wall, the setting contrasting sharply with a long line of workers toiling in the afternoon sun to lay a modern communications cable across this timeless wilderness. All part of the plan to shift the capital to Kharkhorin, one assumes. We then stopped at a monument atop a hill down which ran the road to Kharkhorin. Dating from 731AD, the shrine commemorates a Turkish khan in Turkic and Chinese scripts. The Turkish government has been keen to promote the Turkic heritage of the Central Asian states following the end of communism, but I had not yet realised that Turkic culture had had such an influence upon Mongolia. Across the dirt road from the monument stood a large modern hangar filled with archaeological findings from around the site, the whole thing apparently funded by Ankara. The main road into Kharkhorin was at that point a huge construction site populated by large mustachioed Turkish foremen and Mongolians in excavators. Dascar opted to simply drive along the steppe land at its side and into the tiny wooden settlement. There are one or two bits of tarmac and the odd stone building in Kharkhorin but the most impressive thing about the future capital is the huge Buddhist monastery on its edge. I could not help but think of how much this currently unused steppe land would soon be worth, but Dascar assured me that the Mongolian government owned the land and probably would not sell to wildly speculative Western vultures. We joined other tourists drifting around the impressive Buddhist temples, the highlight being a wander through a working temple in which young monks chanted and swayed, shaven heads and purple robes amid prayer books wrapped in splendidly coloured rich fabrics like bars of spiritual bullion.

 

After a hot afternoon in which Gordon washed naked in a clear, fast-flowing river- a liberating experience, he assured us- we spent the night camping high on a hill beside a rare patch of forest. Dascar insisted that pitching our tents on a pass was forbidden by local custom, so we had to camp on slopes rather than the saddle of the hilltop. As our campfire died down we heard rustling in the distance and shone our torches around to see two pairs of eyes eerily peering at us from the pitch black distance. Bears? Wolfs? Lynx? Marmots with big peepers? Dascar casually wandered toward the shining eyes, returning to inform us that it was just a couple of dogs from a settlement down in the valley.

 

The furthest point of our journey had been a waterfall marked prominently on the map, but it proved to be a little more than a trickle. The gorge into which it dribbled suggested that in wetter seasons it was a spectacular sight but late summer was evidently not the right time. Alex had been itching to ride horses so that afternoon we gave it a go. Dascar spotted a ger with a couple of horses tied to a wooden frame outside, drove up and negotiated a cheap spot of riding for us all. I had never ridden anything more challenging than a beach donkey and was largely indifferent as to whether we rode or not but as the others were keen, I willingly gave it a whirl. Two young lads clad in long blue robes and weathered leather boots sat us on traditional, torturously uncomfortable wooden saddles and roped our five horses together in a line. The next three hours or so were among the most painful in my life as the halter attached to Tak's horse scythed into my leg like a rope saw and the wooden saddle repeatedly buffeted my backside. The terrain was bleak but beautiful as the two young nomads tried to impress us with their supreme horsemanship. Of course, this was all second nature to them and there seemed a touch of derision in seeing how badly their guests were faring, but it was all good-natured. They thundered around us as we plodded in a ragged line across tall grass, Duncan having a hard time as he had no reins and was forced to hold onto the front of his saddle. After over an hour’s trekking, during which any bursts of speed increased my pain and were met with loud swearing on my part, we arrived at a deserted lake. The two young lads, after emptying their bladders yards from where we stood (people doing this along the roadsides was a frequent sight- male and female alike) stripped down to their briefs and plunged into the lake. By now the heat of the afternoon had given way to early evening cool and we declined to join them as they swam contentedly, athletically around. Dascar had followed us in his tabletka and, my arse by now killing me, I hoped that the lads would give up on us and drag the horses back home in a tethered convoy whilst we hitched a lift. No such luck.

 

As we rode back across the deserted plain the weather grew colder and the rain began to fall. My choice of a football top as riding attire seemed a mistake as the sky grew darker and clouds closed in. After half an hour or so Duncan realised he had lost his wallet somewhere since the lake. We reluctantly turned back again, searching the scrubby ground whilst shivering and cursing our luck. The two Mongolian horsemen rocketed off into the distance, easily sweeping the land but finding nothing. We reasoned that they had no cause to take the wallet even if they found it as Duncan's credit cards would not be much use this far from Ulan Bator. Eventually we gave up and, three hours or so after departing, rode through shallow streams and tall grass back to the family's two gers. Night was nearly upon us so the family invited us to stay. We paid a couple of dollars each to kip in one of the gers and were fed a decent meal. I recall standing outside and asking if there was a toilet nearby- in Russia rural dwellings usually boast a wooden hut covering a hole in the ground- but Dascar merely gestured merrily and said “Here is the toilet”, pointing at the surrounding empty land.

 

As we sat eating with the family, a nomad friend, robed and silent, pitched up on horseback to share the meal. I have no idea where he came from as there seemed to be no gers for miles around, and I do not even know if the family had met him before, but he was immediately welcomed into the fold. As I ducked out of the ger in the dark of night, I could see flashes of lightning striking the edges of the plain in the far distance, yet the rain had left our little patch of Mongolia. Truly spectacular. The following morning I woke up in the ger to be greeted by the memorable sight of a side of meat dangling directly above my head.

 

Our final full day saw us visit a Buddhist temple perched high on a cliffside and near dunes frequented by camels. We stopped off at some thermal springs to bathe, sitting on the hot rocks waiting for the locals to depart from the two wooden bathhouses. One simply goes in, hangs clothes from a beam, rams a wedge of wood into the plughole of a bath set in the ground and sits waiting for the sulphurous warm water to fill the bath. A really pleasant way to get clean in the sticks. As I returned to the van to retrieve something I saw something I had never witnessed before- a wild snake. It all happened quite quickly as the thin, short fellow saw me and immediately slithered for cover. I was surprised to find myself unruffled as the whole episode had happened so quickly. My companions seemed dubious as to whether I had actually seen the snake until Dascar casually remarked that they were a common sight around these springs which were known locally as Snake Springs.

 

Driving back towards Ulan Bator, we picked up a family of nomads- a grandfather, mother and two children were walking by the road apparently miles from any settlements. We drove them a few miles, communicating cordially via sign language all the way, and dropped them off at their chosen destination- again apparently in the middle of nowhere. Helping fellow travellers is a necessary custom in rural Mongolia, and we soon had another chance to do our bit. Planted in a wide, deep river was a heavy truck, three Mongolians sitting despondently on the bonnet drinking airag. They flagged us down and Dascar obligingly tried to tow their huge rig out of its trap but soon gave up as it became clear the disparity in weight was more likely to damage the tabletka than to shift the lorry. Apologetically, Dascar left the semi-drunk truckers in the river.

 

A highlight of the trip was when we unexpectedly stumbled upon a gathering of people near a tall Buddhist monument, surrounded by new 4x4 vehicles. We asked Dascar what was going on and, shrugging, he suggested we go take a look. It turned out to be a wrestling tournament. Wrestling is hugely popular in Mongolia and the crowds lapped it up as strapping young fellows grappled in the dust. The crowd periodically wrestled each other too and airag was passed around freely in large bowls. One or two of the older spectators had clearly over-indulged and were lying flat out and blotto by the wrestling arena. After each bout the victor would receive a blessing, kneel before the monument, take a milk biscuit, lob a handful of milk biscuits into the crowd and take a huge swig of airag. The atmosphere was light-hearted, the competition apparently none too serious, and the locals seemed happy to welcome a gang of camera-toting Westerners with the minimum of fuss.

 

Returning to the bustle of Ulan Bator, the city seemed a different world. Russian bureaucracy had stranded me in Mongolia yet things had turned out for the best. The wonderful rural Mongolian odyssey had convinced me more than ever that in this region of the world, the best option was to shrug off official obstinance, make the best of whatever opportunities arose and simply enjoy the fascination of living among such warm and genuine people.

 

Return to Russia

 

I spent a pleasant few days relaxing in Ulan Bator and waiting for my Russian works visa to be issued, optimistically dropping by the embassy a day early to check if it was ready but being told to clear off and come back at the precisely specified time. Gordy, Duncan and Alex were still around and so we took a cab to the huge market on the edge of town. Among the usual belts, jeans, sunglasses and trinkets one would find anywhere were stalls full of rich Mongolian fabrics and traditional clothing. I haggled for a Mongolian robe, reasoning that it would make a decent dressing gown, and wandered around with my hands jammed in my pockets as the market had a reputation for pickpockets. Gordy was walking alone at one point and felt a hand in his back pocket, causing him to whirl immediately, grab his wallet from the pocket and shout loudly at his the bandit “You want this? Take it! Go on!” Gordy being a strapping, bald Glaswegian fireman who could look after himself, the crim turned tail and fled.

 

Evenings were spent having cheap and tasty meals in the city’s array of varied restaurants, including my first experience of Korean food, in the company of various Western travellers passing through the city. I opted to travel back to Ulan Ude by bus, given that it was cheaper and took only around twelve hours- much less time than the train which had to halt interminably at the border to change bogeys.

 

On the morning of departure I made my way to the bus stop, outside a hotel buzzing with German pensioners. The coach was modern and spacious enough for the passengers to spread out. We drove north from Ulan Bator and into the vacant green steppe, after a few hours taking a stop in Dahran. The town has a Russian consulate and thus I had considered trying to obtain my visa there, but in hindsight I was glad I had opted for cosmopolitan UB as Dahran was a fly-blown, quiet stop-off for passers-by where I would have had a dull time waiting for a fortnight. We ate in a café which resembled the production-line stolovaya canteens of Russia, communication presenting a challenge but I knew that whatever I ended up with, it would consist largely of mutton and dairy products, and so it came to pass. This was fine as I like meat and dairy: Mongolia would have been difficult otherwise.

 

A couple of hours later I spied a huge Orthodox dome on the horizon. Surely we were not approaching the border already, I thought? Sure enough, the dome turned out to belong to Russian border town Kyakhta’s large wrecked church and, given the flat Mongolian terrain, is visible from many miles away. We passed through the small Mongolian settlement of Altan-Bulag. The web later told me that the local authorities plan to transform Altan-Bulag into a major trading and enterprise zone, and I posted a message wishing them luck, but there is much work to be done before it graduates from being a typical Mongolian wooden-hut and tower-block town. At the Mongolian side of the border, we passengers piled off the bus and dragged our baggage into the reasonably modern customs building. I had a little hassle for lacking a correct exit document but pleaded ignorance and was waved through. A ‘Duty Free Shopping’ slogan adorned a small shop inside the building, but I’d bet I was the only one there who spoke any English, even despite the fact that many of the young people in Ulan Bator had been fluent and English schools abundant in the capital. We piled back into the bus and queued behind an old Moskvich full of Mongolians at the border crossing. The drivers tried to shift the car, which was one of the most beat-up I have ever seen, but it refused to start. Out they piled, trying to push start it into Russia. It coughed to life in a cloud of smoke and a few yards on, conked out again, yards short of the border. The problem was that the car was blocking our way into Russia and after some waving and redirecting from the officials, we were waved onwards through a different channel. As we passed the impressive ‘Russian Federation’ double-eagle crest, I felt excitement at being back in what was to be my home for the coming year. The driver hopped off and came back with a handful of Russian entry cards. These are used as an excuse to hassle foreigners as they leave Russia if they are not one hundred percent in order. They must be stamped at every place of residence within Russia other than that stated on the visa. The driver handed one to every passenger except me, causing me to irately jump off the bus, remonstrating with him in pidgin Russian that without a card I could not get out of Russia, and march to the border hut myself. He protested but I did not understand and, despite help from a passing Mongolian who spoke good English, I was unable to obtain an entry card from the border guards. The driver still trying to make himself understood, I stomped back onto the bus, fuming, thinking that I would have to sort out the entry card in Chita. Upon entering the impressive new Russian border post (though the toilets were still dreadful) it became clear what the driver had been trying to impart. I was immediately presented with an entry card for foreigners, printed in Russian and English, which I filled in and stowed very carefully. It took around an hour for us to pass through Russian customs, bags being searched thoroughly.

 

Kyakhta had historically been a trading post of some importance. The town was founded in 1728 at which time the Treaty of Kyakhta was signed- one of the first between China and a Western nation. Trade between the Chinese territories of Mongolia and Manchuria passed exclusively to Russia via Kyakhta, silk, tea and porcelain moving north in exchange for furs, hides and hardware. In 1860 the entire Russo-Chinese frontier was opened to trade and the town declined thereafter. Today Kyakhta has a distinctly backwater feel, around 20,000 inhabitants apparently involved in textile, lumber and food processing. The decrepit state of the once-huge church, dome still just about intact, was testament to both a more prosperous past and the attitude of the communist authorities toward places of worship.

 

I later bought a tourist map of Buryatia, the autonomous republic in which Kyakhta and Ulan Ude are situated. Buryatia is roughly the size of Germany with fewer than a million residents. Most settlements on the map of the region boasted symbols for one or two tourist amenities but Kyakhta was a relative tourist paradise, boasting:

 

1)       A church (or rather, the shell of a church)

2)       A museum

3)       A petrol station

4)       An hotel

5)       A vehicle repair station

6)       A ‘nourishment point’

7)       A bus station

8)       A post office

 

A mouth-watering array of attractions for any traveller, to be sure. The church was a shell, the museum was probably a few photos in a school somewhere and the less said about Russian hotels and cafes the better, but the post office was probably very pleasant.

 

We took the Kyakhta-Ulan Ude highway northwards, a major Soviet construction which is still in decent nick and traverses one of Russia’s poorest regions. The summer scenery was dramatic, the road winding up and down high hills clothed with trees aplenty and between scattered, dilapidated settlements. Unlike elsewhere I had been in Russia, road signs were printed in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. One memorable sight was a small town built around a large, smoke-belching power station on the edge of a lake- presumably a common sight across Russia and certainly reminiscent of Chita’s own power station district- but where the power was going, given that there were barely any settlements around, I could not guess.

 

We pulled back into Ulan Ude in the early evening, giving me time to book back into the cheap hotel full of Chinese traders and prostitutes near the station. I had chosen a cheap room without a bathroom as the staff assured me I could use a communal shower. The shower turned out to be in an abandoned room and was arguably the most disgusting I have had to use in my life. The following day I took the electrichka- electric train- slightly cheaper and significantly quicker than the overnight trains. As we crossed into Chita oblast my mobile phone signal came back to life, and as I exchanged messages with my Chitinsky friends, it felt good to be approaching home again.