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| "Sacre Bleur!" |
Sunday, August 19, 2012
12. PANTS
Monday, August 6, 2012
11. WATER, AND OTHER RUNNY THINGS
Squatting in the not-quite-long enough grass between the ancient, rusted railway line and the cliffs over the world's deepest lake, praying that the ominous rumbling I could hear was only my diseased stomach and not the approach of the daily train carrying hordes of camera-wielding tourists hanging from the windows, pestered by the continuous Siberian drizzle, I looked out over the lake, unchanged in millions of years, and thought: what am I doing here?
I suppose I was always heading to this point, but it didn't feel any more normal when it arrived. We got off the train in Irkutsk: "the Paris of Siberia", they used to call it - presumably referring to the state of the toilets - and felt we both needed some nature. Lake Baikal was one of the key milestones of our journey, something we've both longed to see, and after the millions in the cities and the miles in the trains, it was beginning to take on the status of a promised land.
Siberian cities are odd. Russian men, for instance, retain a taste for fashions that might be considered more than a little bit camp in the West - camouflage fatigues, sailors hats - and combined with the huge number of construction workers, ubiquitous police officers, traditionally dressed Buryat people, and an almost universal fondness for big moustaches, it makes the whole place look like a giant Village People tribute act. I've never been comfortable with gay disco, so off we went for the near-solitude of a hike around the Circumbaikal Railway. It was originally built as a branch off the main Trans-Siberian line at the start of the 20th Century, but nowadays is used mainly to transport tourists who have the sense not to want to see the lake on foot. Not us, though: we'll walk it.
We started off in Khultuk: I don't know if it would be fair to call it a one-horse town, because the only horses I saw were in tins in the local grocery shop. If you put all the tins' contents together they might tot up to a single horse, I suppose, although probably lacking any of the nice bits: a horse with 18 hooves, 25 testicles, 13 eyeballs, two arseholes, enough hair for seven tails, no rump or flank, and more shins than legs. I think I bet on such a creature to win last year's Cheltenham Gold Cup, but that doesn't mean I want to eat it. The local smoked fish was a treat, though, as was the beer. It was to be the last for a while.
87km, five days, a fair bit of rain, a lot of diarrhoea, about a millions steps on railway sleepers, and dozens of long, dank, dark tunnels later, we were in Listvyanka, "the Russian Riviera". The problem was the scenery hadn't much changed along the way: although the distance we'd covered is discernable on a picture of Baikal taken from space, it's actually a pretty tiny part of the lake's whole expanse, so we'd not seen a fraction of the wonderful diversity of nature that surrounds this geological phenomenon blah blah blah... I just wanted a beer and a proper toilet, actually, but Mari likes that sort of wilderness stuff, so next it was off to Olkhon Island for more hiking, camping, marching, general deprivation and inconvenience. She's going to kill me when she reads this, by the way, so I hope somebody's enjoying reading it. I'm quite enjoying writing it, as it happens. Hello Mari, love you!
Anyway - Olkhon Island. A bum-numbing six-hour minibus trip and ferry crossing from Irkutsk. For the first part of it our driver, who looked unnervingly like Peter Schmeichel, was driving like the bloke out of Vanishing Point, but about three hours into it the tarmac ran out and the journey became more akin to travelling on a BMX bike - except the progress was slower. To be fair we were probably covering quite a lot of distance if you include the sickening sideways lurches, leaps into the air, twists to avoid potholes and so on, but the actual forward motion was minimal. Impossible to read a book, with all that juddering and shaking, so there was more time to enjoy staring at the interminable Siberian countryside.
For the hideously uncompromising "modern economic and military powerhouse" image presented by Russia's western face in Moscow, it's incredible how the vast majority of the land is still a place of abject backwardness and poverty. Out here, you can see how people quite literally scrape a living off the land: they sit by the site of the roadside with weak flowers and buckets of tiny berries, waiting all day on the hope that a driver will stop and buy some for coppers. We saw dozens of them, as well as one bloke just dancing - dancing, I say - who I presume must have become utterly demented by the sheer endlessness of it all. Really, I think when it comes to the point that you're dancing alone without music by the side of a near-deserted road in the Siberian wilderness, and you're not even dressed as one of the Village People, it would be kinder just to shoot him, but I'm not sure if they still do that sort of thing out here. Maybe not. I'd probably have been shot for first-degree cowardice in Altai if they did.
Anyway, we made it to Olkhon Island. From Khuzir, the island's dusty main settlement - which looks a bit like the Wild West with backpackers - our plan was to head to the North, where there are forests and hills. Instead, for reasons neither of us could really articulate, we headed to the South, where there is only shoreline and flatland. Camping in the mist on the deserted, rocky coast, after all our miles on trains, buses, boats, and foot, it felt like we'd reached the end of the world, or at least the end of Russia. In reality we'd done nothing of the sort; it stretches on for two thousand more miles like this, to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. But we've seen enough of it, and next we'll take a sharp right to Mongolia and deeper into Asia. I sense that soon I will look back on my Lake Baikal toilet experiences with greater fondness than I have suggested here...
I suppose I was always heading to this point, but it didn't feel any more normal when it arrived. We got off the train in Irkutsk: "the Paris of Siberia", they used to call it - presumably referring to the state of the toilets - and felt we both needed some nature. Lake Baikal was one of the key milestones of our journey, something we've both longed to see, and after the millions in the cities and the miles in the trains, it was beginning to take on the status of a promised land.
Siberian cities are odd. Russian men, for instance, retain a taste for fashions that might be considered more than a little bit camp in the West - camouflage fatigues, sailors hats - and combined with the huge number of construction workers, ubiquitous police officers, traditionally dressed Buryat people, and an almost universal fondness for big moustaches, it makes the whole place look like a giant Village People tribute act. I've never been comfortable with gay disco, so off we went for the near-solitude of a hike around the Circumbaikal Railway. It was originally built as a branch off the main Trans-Siberian line at the start of the 20th Century, but nowadays is used mainly to transport tourists who have the sense not to want to see the lake on foot. Not us, though: we'll walk it.
We started off in Khultuk: I don't know if it would be fair to call it a one-horse town, because the only horses I saw were in tins in the local grocery shop. If you put all the tins' contents together they might tot up to a single horse, I suppose, although probably lacking any of the nice bits: a horse with 18 hooves, 25 testicles, 13 eyeballs, two arseholes, enough hair for seven tails, no rump or flank, and more shins than legs. I think I bet on such a creature to win last year's Cheltenham Gold Cup, but that doesn't mean I want to eat it. The local smoked fish was a treat, though, as was the beer. It was to be the last for a while.
87km, five days, a fair bit of rain, a lot of diarrhoea, about a millions steps on railway sleepers, and dozens of long, dank, dark tunnels later, we were in Listvyanka, "the Russian Riviera". The problem was the scenery hadn't much changed along the way: although the distance we'd covered is discernable on a picture of Baikal taken from space, it's actually a pretty tiny part of the lake's whole expanse, so we'd not seen a fraction of the wonderful diversity of nature that surrounds this geological phenomenon blah blah blah... I just wanted a beer and a proper toilet, actually, but Mari likes that sort of wilderness stuff, so next it was off to Olkhon Island for more hiking, camping, marching, general deprivation and inconvenience. She's going to kill me when she reads this, by the way, so I hope somebody's enjoying reading it. I'm quite enjoying writing it, as it happens. Hello Mari, love you!
Anyway - Olkhon Island. A bum-numbing six-hour minibus trip and ferry crossing from Irkutsk. For the first part of it our driver, who looked unnervingly like Peter Schmeichel, was driving like the bloke out of Vanishing Point, but about three hours into it the tarmac ran out and the journey became more akin to travelling on a BMX bike - except the progress was slower. To be fair we were probably covering quite a lot of distance if you include the sickening sideways lurches, leaps into the air, twists to avoid potholes and so on, but the actual forward motion was minimal. Impossible to read a book, with all that juddering and shaking, so there was more time to enjoy staring at the interminable Siberian countryside.
For the hideously uncompromising "modern economic and military powerhouse" image presented by Russia's western face in Moscow, it's incredible how the vast majority of the land is still a place of abject backwardness and poverty. Out here, you can see how people quite literally scrape a living off the land: they sit by the site of the roadside with weak flowers and buckets of tiny berries, waiting all day on the hope that a driver will stop and buy some for coppers. We saw dozens of them, as well as one bloke just dancing - dancing, I say - who I presume must have become utterly demented by the sheer endlessness of it all. Really, I think when it comes to the point that you're dancing alone without music by the side of a near-deserted road in the Siberian wilderness, and you're not even dressed as one of the Village People, it would be kinder just to shoot him, but I'm not sure if they still do that sort of thing out here. Maybe not. I'd probably have been shot for first-degree cowardice in Altai if they did.
Anyway, we made it to Olkhon Island. From Khuzir, the island's dusty main settlement - which looks a bit like the Wild West with backpackers - our plan was to head to the North, where there are forests and hills. Instead, for reasons neither of us could really articulate, we headed to the South, where there is only shoreline and flatland. Camping in the mist on the deserted, rocky coast, after all our miles on trains, buses, boats, and foot, it felt like we'd reached the end of the world, or at least the end of Russia. In reality we'd done nothing of the sort; it stretches on for two thousand more miles like this, to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. But we've seen enough of it, and next we'll take a sharp right to Mongolia and deeper into Asia. I sense that soon I will look back on my Lake Baikal toilet experiences with greater fondness than I have suggested here...
10. UZBEKI BALLS
The third-class bunk carriages of Trans-Siberian trains are packed, top-to-bottom, refugee style, with the migrants who beetle in their millions across the former Soviet republics in search of work, family, homes. Crammed tight in amongst them, we seem to be the only people who are here for a laugh. It's often no laughing matter.
Last night the train wormed its way through the coal-blackened heartland of industrial Russia - mining towns, steelworks, former Gulag settlements, nuclear waste reprocessing facilities, all the highlights really - growing fat on a cargo of grimy, shirtless men and blank-faced women who sprawl slug-like on their bunks. The carriage feels soaked in booze and sweat. I woke up with the sun burning white as a welding torch in my eyes, head and limbs aching. Four steelworkers bound for Achinsk were bunked across the aisle. One had spent the night screeching from his bed, like a man tormented by hallucinations, that the train was too hot. Funnily enough, this did nothing to actually cool it down.
They got off and were replaced by two men from Uzbekistan who wanted to talk to us. Mari translated, as always. I grinned and nodded. They were heading to Irkutsk, to work as welders. The younger of them spread out what I took to be sweets on the table. Keen to show willing, I popped one in my mouth and regretted it bitterly, instantly: it was about the size and shape of a squash ball, but not as tasty. Hard like chalk, but with a bitter, incredibly salty flavour. Maybe it's not even edible, I thought, maybe he was trying to give us some soap - we must stink by now. It was too late to warn Mari - she'd had the sense to bite off a tiny section, then smuggled the rest into her pocket. Next he offered them to two Frenchmen: one hid his away, the other took a bite and hurried off in the direction of the toilet.
Conversation dried out. The young Uzbek took to staring morosely out of the window. At first I thought maybe he was depressed because nobody liked his salty balls, but later he showed us pictures of his wife. He also showed us his wedding video on the mobile phone - not a highlights package, I think, the whole thing - which looked like great fun. Lots of singing and dancing. No balls in sight.
On the subject of his balls, he said they would turn hard later and become impossible to swallow, so he advised us to enjoy them now. And he assured us they tasted better with beer. But still no takers. He had what looked to me like a solid brick of uncut Ryvita on the table as well, but he wasn't sharing that, thank God. Time rattled, slowly, like the train.
Eventually, we creaked away from the rotting shipwreck of a city that is Krasnoyarsk, over the 1km-wide Yenesei river, and into the wider expanse of Eastern Siberia. The forests again fell away into massive steppes, split by rivers twice the size of the Thames that barely register a crack on our map of Russia. Inside, the train is dry and hot. Some unthinkable distance ahead of us our destination, Lake Baikal, opens up like a huge blue eye in the blankness of Siberia: the oldest and deepest lake in the world, big enough to cover the whole Earth in a 20cm-deep puddle or, if every other supply disappeared, keep humanity in fresh drinking water for 40 years. Unless that Uzbek keeps peddling his balls, in which we could probably drink the whole thing dry in a couple of minutes. I look out of the window too, licking chalky remnants from my teeth, and try to keep thinking about the lake.
Last night the train wormed its way through the coal-blackened heartland of industrial Russia - mining towns, steelworks, former Gulag settlements, nuclear waste reprocessing facilities, all the highlights really - growing fat on a cargo of grimy, shirtless men and blank-faced women who sprawl slug-like on their bunks. The carriage feels soaked in booze and sweat. I woke up with the sun burning white as a welding torch in my eyes, head and limbs aching. Four steelworkers bound for Achinsk were bunked across the aisle. One had spent the night screeching from his bed, like a man tormented by hallucinations, that the train was too hot. Funnily enough, this did nothing to actually cool it down.
They got off and were replaced by two men from Uzbekistan who wanted to talk to us. Mari translated, as always. I grinned and nodded. They were heading to Irkutsk, to work as welders. The younger of them spread out what I took to be sweets on the table. Keen to show willing, I popped one in my mouth and regretted it bitterly, instantly: it was about the size and shape of a squash ball, but not as tasty. Hard like chalk, but with a bitter, incredibly salty flavour. Maybe it's not even edible, I thought, maybe he was trying to give us some soap - we must stink by now. It was too late to warn Mari - she'd had the sense to bite off a tiny section, then smuggled the rest into her pocket. Next he offered them to two Frenchmen: one hid his away, the other took a bite and hurried off in the direction of the toilet.
Conversation dried out. The young Uzbek took to staring morosely out of the window. At first I thought maybe he was depressed because nobody liked his salty balls, but later he showed us pictures of his wife. He also showed us his wedding video on the mobile phone - not a highlights package, I think, the whole thing - which looked like great fun. Lots of singing and dancing. No balls in sight.
On the subject of his balls, he said they would turn hard later and become impossible to swallow, so he advised us to enjoy them now. And he assured us they tasted better with beer. But still no takers. He had what looked to me like a solid brick of uncut Ryvita on the table as well, but he wasn't sharing that, thank God. Time rattled, slowly, like the train.
Eventually, we creaked away from the rotting shipwreck of a city that is Krasnoyarsk, over the 1km-wide Yenesei river, and into the wider expanse of Eastern Siberia. The forests again fell away into massive steppes, split by rivers twice the size of the Thames that barely register a crack on our map of Russia. Inside, the train is dry and hot. Some unthinkable distance ahead of us our destination, Lake Baikal, opens up like a huge blue eye in the blankness of Siberia: the oldest and deepest lake in the world, big enough to cover the whole Earth in a 20cm-deep puddle or, if every other supply disappeared, keep humanity in fresh drinking water for 40 years. Unless that Uzbek keeps peddling his balls, in which we could probably drink the whole thing dry in a couple of minutes. I look out of the window too, licking chalky remnants from my teeth, and try to keep thinking about the lake.
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