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.
Towns here are separated by immense stretches of wilderness. Entering them makes you realize how cut off from civilization you are: there is no cell phone reception, Internet, or running water.
The pinpricks of the developed world which shine into this section of Russia are few and far between. After a week on the dirt road, we pass a sign reading 'Hotel Ahead', believing this means we will soon be taking a shower. When the establishment comes into view, we ride into a long dirt lot where a small cafe rests between a mechanic shop and a sprawling junk yard of dilapidated vehicles. The disorder bears an uncanny resemblance to a rural scene from Down East, Maine.
The hotel is merely a one room shack in the rear of the junkyard. Inside there are five beds, a sink, and a stove. A waitress from the cafe leads us inside and demonstrates how to use the sink. The set up consists of a large basin full of water nailed to the wall with a spigot at the bottom that drains into the sink below, allowing one to wash their hands.
"You can fill the basin with more water," she explains, pointing to a large kettle of murky brown water on the stove with a small pale floating in it.
The following morning, I wash my bike shorts in the sink, frequently returning to fill the basin above with more water. The process takes nearly an hour. Suddenly, I notice water leaking from the bottom of the sink around my feet. I open a small door under the sink expecting to see leaky PVC pipes, and, instead discover that the water merely drains into a bucket which is overflowing. In the coming weeks, I discover that these types of sinks abound in Siberia.
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.
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.
