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.
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.
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.
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.
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.