"All Aboard!" 07/25/2009
My ears ring from the shrill cry of a two-year-old girl screaming next to my bunk bed. Outside my window, the world whirls by in a dreary haze. Dark rain clouds obscure the sky and drench the earth below. On a day like this, I'm grateful to be under cover, not outside on my bicycle.  Young Russian Boy In The Military On Board The Trans-Siberian Railroad In A Cramped Second Class Sleeper Car Buying train tickets in Siberia can be stressful because all train schedules are listed on Moscow time regardless of what part of Russia you are in. The experience can be baffling while traveling in the Asian part of Russia; Bada is in the same time zone as Indonesia, six hours ahead of Moscow in Europe. Here, you must count ahead six hours to know what time your train leaves.Today, we are taking the 4PM train to Chita, but the woman at the ticket counter tells me that it leaves at 10AM. Traveling is hard enough without having to operate on a train schedule synchronized with a time zone thousands of miles away on a different continent. When our train arrives, I scurry through the rain and step up the steep stairs into the eighth passenger car. A woman in a blue uniform takes my ticket and leads me inside. The train is divided into two sections: a long hallway leads down the right side of the train, and the left side is filled with small sleeper cars. Most of the cars on the Trans-Siberian are sleeper's because the distances which people travel often last several days or more. The woman hands me a package of blankets and opens the door for me. Inside, a Russian man rests fast asleep above a mother, grandmother, a two-year-old girl, and an infant boy who share the bottom bunks. There is no ladder to the upper bunk, so I take advantage of my height and hoist myself up. The train soon moves forward and I stare out the window at the passing countryside. This is my first ride aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad yet I feel like it has been part of my life for months now. Before starting this trip, I studied Russian for a month at a small university in Vladivostok, Russia on the Pacific Coast. Each night, I would listen as the trains roared past my dormitory clanking along the tracks and rounding the city's icy horseshoe bay. The famous train traverses nearly 6,000 miles from Moscow to its ending point in Vladivostok. By train the trip lasts a grueling ten days; by bicycle it will take us nearly 5 months. Construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad was begun in 1891 and completed in 1913. Before the railroad's existence, the inhabitants of Siberia chiefly transported goods by rivers. Waterways were frozen for half of the year allowing horse drawn sleds to be pulled over the ice from village to village. The completion of the railroad allowed Europeans to settle this remote part of Asia in great numbers and spawned the creation of businesses, like the sawmill in Bada, in this remote part of the planet. Today, the well-known railroad has captured the imaginations of traveler's all over the world. The train allows one to travel by rail from Moscow to Beijing. The Trans-Siberian is one of the only overland links connecting the old world of Europe with the distant mystery of inner Asia.  The Trans-Siberian Rolls Across 6,000 Miles, Eight Time Zones, And Two Continents From Moscow To Beijing The majority of the Federal Highway we cycle across Russia runs parallel to the railroad. For months, the resounding rhythm's of boxcar's rolling over the tracks has lulled me to sleep in my tent at night. Conductor's often wave at us as the trains roll by. I have been following the railroad for so long I sometimes wonder if any of them recognize me. On my bike, I pass the time by imagining who the distant figures in the train are and where they are going. Today, sitting in a cramped sleeper car with two screaming children, I'm not so curious anymore. In Chita, we pass several days waiting to see a doctor who prescribes Ellery with more antibiotics and new medication for his stomach. When he feels better, we take the train back to Bada. The day we leave it is a sweltering 82 degrees. The trains are designed to keep passenger's warm during freezing winters. I break into a sweat as I enter the car. On the return voyage, we have purchased cheaper second class seats. I am once again in an upper bunk. This one is smaller; there is not enough room for me to stretch out my legs and I must lay with my feet tucked in so they do not stick out into the aisle. It is so hot that I must lay completely motionless; if I move at all, the heat becomes unbearable. Six hours later, the train pulls into Bada and I am happy to get off, to hop back on my bicycle in the open breeze the next day. "Do you work here?" A woman who works on the train asks. She must assume I am in the Peace Corps. "Just traveling," I answer. The train comes to the halt and the door swings open. I step out of the car onto the platform below. My brief experience of how most people travel in Russia has come to an end. From here we continue on bicycle.  Lend Me A Welder 07/04/2009
On a hot early summer afternoon in Russia, we push our bicycles into an expanse of grassland near a roadside cafe and set up our tents. In the distance, rising mountains ring the outskirts of Chita, the eastern Siberian city where we have just rested after cycling the first 2,000 miles of our trip. We left Chita so late in the day that we decide to stop at the city limits. Earlier, I wasn't sure we would make it out of the city.  Igor's Son Serves Hot Tea From The Samovar We eat in a cramped shack with scarcely enough room for Igor and I to sit down across from each hunched over a small table sitting on little stools. "Yect, yect!" he demands. "Eat, eat!" With bare hands, we devour large pieces of meat and raw onions together. Soon, Igor reveals a small bottle of vodka and several glasses so filthy they might double as ash trays. He pours us each a drink. "Do people from Azerbaijan live in the U.S. too?" he asks. "People from everywhere in the world live in my country," I reply. A silence ensues while I formulate a question to revive the conversation. "Did you come to Russia alone?" I ask. "My brother and I brought our families here eight years ago," he explains, then pauses, pointing to one of the ubiquitous gravestones adorning the sides of Russian roads marking where people have died in automobile accidents. "My brother died in a drunk driving accident there last year," he says, index finger outstretched toward the roadway. I stop eating, both out of respect for his loss, and to not appear gluttonous in front of the feast before us. "Yect, yect!" he yells again commandingly. We eat until the food is gone. The people of Siberia are known for their hospitality. The inhabitants of this harsh landscape must endure long and bitterly cold winters subsisting off few resources. Perhaps it is the difficulty of life here which inspires people to help passersby.  Igor Tends The Woodfire Before Roasting A Shashlik Feast The following day, we cycle sixty miles and make camp in a field behind a truck stop with a small hotel. That evening, I meet a jolly man named Nikolai. His face projects a permaneant beaming smile; he talks in Russian with lively and passionate inflections, as if he were a native speaker of Italian. He is very excited to meet an American. "I want to show you where I work," he says compulsively. Nikolai keeps a giant coal stove burning throughout the night which heats the nearby hotel's water. He leads me to a small shed adjacent to the cafe. The smell of smoke wafts outside as he opens the door. Inside, chunks of coal and old tools cover the shed floor. Atop a small table rests a hotplate and large broken shard of mirror leaning against the wall. Nikolai opens another door inside the shed, revealing a smoke filled room where coal burns in a stove that he fills with a shovel. Coal abounds in the mountains of this part of Russia; below me, the fire glows like a dragon's nostrils. "How do you make money to travel," Nikolai asks. "I worked very hard, for a long time," I respond. "I work hard too, but I have never left the mountains surrounding my village," he remarks casually. "I only have extra money for these," he admits, pointing to a lonely pack of cigarettes on the table. In Russia, even brand name cigarettes, like Camel and Marlborough, rarely cost more than $1. The next day, we learn that my bike has broken in the same place as Ellery's. We wheel it to a mechanic shop by the truckstop. A rough-looking man with serpentine figures tattoed on his arms clumsily attempts to reweld the eyelet onto my bike frame. I tell him that I can fix the bike in Chita, but a formidable combination of Siberian friendliness and mechanic's pride overtakes him, and he continues trying to fix the bike. His work makes me nervous. Having a broken bicycle on an eight month bike trip feels like being entrusted with the care of a sick child: nothing but the best medical care will suffice. "It is hard to watch somebody you love go under the knife, isn't it?" Ellery says jokingly. The mechanic sloppily succeeds in welding the eyelet onto the frame and charges us nothing. We gratefully say our thanks, and, so as not to offend him, ride just up the road, and hitchhike back to Chita to have Alex reweld the bike properly. When we return, the young couple offers to fix my bike, take us to dinner, and drive us back to the truck stop. When the bike is fixed, we go out to eat at the best Shashlik place in town with their family. The table is heaped with steaming plates of meat, cucumbers, small flat tortillas, and cheese. Victoria's brother-in-law makes sure everyone's beer glass remains full. As we drive along the highway that evening, the details of the landscape I pedaled past a day ago, the cafe we camped near, Igor's red baseball hat atop his head bending over the samovar, and his brother's grave, meaninglessly zoom past the car window. While driving, images of small villages look like distant scenes captured in oil paintings. Traveling by car in a foreign land suddenly seems like wandering through a museum full of famous paintings without understanding the artists intentions. The feeling and significance of what you are seeing is lost.  Nikolai And Myself, He Feeds The Fire With Shovelfuls Of Coal From The Pile Pictured Behind Us On the way back, Victoria tells us about her experiences in the U.S. "I went abroad after the fall of the Soviet Union," she said. "Back then, we had frequent power outages in Russia, so we kept candles throughout our house. When I arrived at my host family's home in Texas, I noticed that they had candles too, and I thought they had the same electricy problems in America. Later, I realized they were just decorations," she relates. "You know, America is very comfortable," she suddenly utters. In many ways, her statement is true. As they drop us off, I wonder if maybe it is the lack of comforts in Siberia which makes people here reach out to one another. Here, smiles, compassion for strangers, and friendliness often make up for the lack of material comforts. Two days later, the bolt connecting Ellery's rear rack breaks and we cannot pry the broken end out to replace it. A mechanic in a small town hacks off the old eyelet, and welds a nut onto the frame for a new bolt to screw into. His work proves highly functional. My previous experience with mechanics has conditioned me to think that he will charge for the work, although I know he will not. Still, I wonder if he will ask. The mechanic just smiles.  Posing For Photos With Local Auto Mechanics Turned Impromtu Bicycle Welders, Far Eastern Siberia, Russia A Trickle in the Backwater 07/04/2009
For nearly 1,500 miles, almost half the distance across the United States, we have been following roadsigns towards a city called Chita through an out-of-the-way section of Russia. For nearly five hundred miles we have been cycling along a section of the Russian Federal Highway that turns into a rugged dirt road winding over steep mountains. The quality of the road is so bad, we often cover little more than 350 miles in a week. Over a month has passed since we have rode on pavement for an entire day.  In Small Siberian Villages Indoor Plumbing And Running Water Are Nonexistent Concepts There is no shower, so that afternoon, we look at our map for future grooming possibilities. We find that in two days of riding, we will come close to Magadachee, one of the largest towns we will enter before Chita, and a place where we might find running water. Sitting in the cafe, we strike up a conversation with a local. "You can find anything you want in Magadachee," he confirms, as if it were a great international metropolis. Magadachee lies a ways off the Federal Highway. As we get close, we take a short cut on a back road to save time. The dirt road quickly turns into muddy ruts overgrown with bushes. Eventually, it peters out into marshland. We use an old log to push our bikes over a small river. I slap mosquitoes and brush ticks off my legs. Soon, the road improves and we reach Magadachee at dusk. A young boy leads us to two hotels. "We don't have any water," the receptionist at the first hotel informs us. "We only have cold water," says the stern woman at the second one. She charges us $50 for one night, an outrageous price by rural Siberian standards. We pay, content with the idea that we can wash off a week's worth of sweat and dust caked onto our bodies. If the hotel we were riding towards were an oasis in the forest, as we enter the room, I realize it was merely a mirage that disappears as you touch it. I walk into the bathroom and notice that the toilet seat is broken in two and has merely been placed atop the toilet for show; as I brush up beside it in the cramped room, it falls apart and crashes onto the floor. There is no shower either, just a bathtub and a bucket. On the bedside table, we find an electric kettle covered in rust. We use it to boil pot after pot of water until there is enough to mix with cold water and give yourself a sponge bath. As I haul a bucket of steaming water into the bathroom, I recall a Literary Theory class I took in college. In the course, we studied the work of Ferdinand Saussure, the famous Swiss linguist. Saussure articulated a simple way of explaining how humans interpret written language in their minds by proposing that each time we read or hear a word, such as sink, there is a specific image, or idea, of what a sink is that appears in our minds. As I stand in a bathtub in Magadachee, Russia pouring lukewarm water over my head, I begin to see how the words I use to describe the physical objects in the world around me here no longer signify the same things as they once did. In Siberia, a sink is no longer a sink, and a hotel is not necessarily a comfortable place to rest.  Nearing The End Of Over 500 Miles Of Remote Off Road As we continue towards Chita, I begin adapting to this part of the world by unconsciously redefining how I perceive it. When I enter a roadside cafe, I quickly wash my hands in a sink which drains into a bucket to conserve water. These sinks seem normal to me now; I have forgotten what living with running water is like. After three weeks, the dirt road we have been cycling along meets asphalt, meaning that we have entered the outskirts of civilization again. Two days later, as we enter Chita, the stoplights, sidewalks, and young girl's in high heels and makeup we pass give me a strange sense of culture shock. In our hotel bathroom, I stand in wonder as I turn on a faucet and hot water runs out. I was initially excited to travel through remote sections of Russia to explore undeveloped regions of the world, and, in part, escape the developed world I come from. Paved roads, ATM machines, and indoor plumbing are the building blocks which construct the idea which the word civilization signifies in my head. I take a hot shower in Chita and think about the makeshift sinks I've used for so long in small Siberian villages; they are the perfect example of how civilization, as we think of it in the developed world, has trickled into the backwater of Russia. In far-flung Russian villages, we didn't entirely escape civilization I suddenly realize, we were just surfing along its edges. Russian cities can also force one to redefine the world around you. To me, urban environments are areas where one can sample a smorgasbord of abundant modern conveniences. In Chita, a city of over 300,000 people, we find just one laundry mat which is closed for a holiday weekend. Desperate, we give our clothes to a five star hotel that agrees to wash them. When we return the next day, we find our bike shorts have been professionally dry cleaned. The hotel charges us $120. Being in a city can also mean something different in Russia. I find that reentering civilization can sometimes be harder than leaving it.  City Celebration, Lenin Square, Chita, Eastern Russia  Statue of Lenin Overlooking The Center of Chita |
RSS Feed