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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