I'm back in the USSR.
Well Russia, actually, but let's not quibble over details. And what a difference 10 years has made! I last came here in 1994 and the country was a sharp contrast between abject communist-induced poverty and the ridiculous wealth of the Mercedes-driving, gun-wielding mafiosos.
Times have changed. A decade later, one can still find the two extremes, but the emergence of a large, prosperous middle class is undeniable. And the appearance of Western-style supermarkets that now replace the stereotypical Soviet lines to dark, uninviting bread shops, milk shops, vegetable shops, etc (all in different locations, of course), is a massive improvement that reflects only part of the amazing social change this country has undergone in the last decade.
My flight to Moscow was remarkably uneventful. Arriving in the early afternoon with a nine hour time zone differential, I somehow ended up that evening on a private party boat on the Moscow river, blaring music and downing vodka a stone's throw away from the Kremlin and St. Basil's cathedral. I waved, but I don't think Putin saw me.
The next day I got my first taste of Air Siberia, one of Russia's new domestic airlines. The planes are designed by Russian dwarves, which means that by the end of the six hour flight to Irkutsk in Siberia (another 5 time zones east, for a total of 14) my knees were actually bruised from the seat in front of me. And when the guy in front of me reclined his seat (sadistic bastard that he was), I felt quite literally like the meat in a Russian airplane seat sandwich.
My first day in Siberia, that great land of vast steppes, forests, tundra, long daylight in the summer and unforgiving cold in the winter, involved long hypodermic needles and my buttocks. This seems to be a recurring theme in my vacations lately, and it's an alarming trend that I'm not particularly keen on continuing.
The problem is ticks. Siberia is full of them, and many carry the encephalitis disease, which can cause serious brain damage. I had checked on a vaccination in the United States prior to the trip but the specialist at the hospital, after checking with the national Center for Disease Control, told me the vaccine was not yet approved in the country and would have to be administered in Russia. So a nice long needle in each cheek it was for me, administered in a local "clinic" (which frankly would have made a great movie set for an impromptu KGB interrogation/torture room) by a Russian nurse whose voice sounded more like a bark than anything else. The joys of walking around with two fully bruised buttocks are too numerous to mention.
The original plan was to spend a few days around Lake Baikal, then travel eastward using the trans-Siberian railway until reaching the eastern coast of Siberia in the seedy port town of Vladivostok. But something happened to that plan, and that something is Olkhon Island.
Actually, I didn't even want to go there. It barely merits a paragraph in my Lonely Planet guidebook (my traveler's bible wherever I go), and even that one paragraph didn't quite make it sound appealing: it starts with "If you put spiritual calm over physical comfort..." and then blah blah blah about being "one of five global poles of shamanic energy," whatever that means. In my mind, this was translating as: severe boredom in the middle of Nowhere, Siberia.
But Leila was quite intrigued with the whole shamanic energy thing, so we compromised and I reluctantly agreed to visit there for 24 hours. Famous last words.
I was right about one thing: Olkhon really is in the middle of nowhere. Some dissidents were actually exiled there in a gulag work camp back in Stalin's time. It took six hours to travel from Irkutsk to the ferry that would take us across a portion of Lake Baikal to the island, and every minute we headed north we left civilization further and further behind. God only knows how people travel these dirt roads through vast unending forests of birch trees in the middle of winter.
And then we stepped back in time.
Except for the 4x4 Ladas rumbling through the island village of Khuzir, we entered another era. Small, square wooden houses, most aged by the harsh winters to the point of being almost black. Window frames painted in colorful tones: blues, greens, yellows. Wooden fences enclosing small gardens. Livestock wandering down the few dirt "streets."
No electricity. No telephone. No showers.
What it lacks in amenities, Olkhon makes up for in beauty. I remember seeing this black and white movie from the 30s or 40s called Shangri-La, about a secret paradise in the Himalayas that only few people found and, once there, the people never aged and didn't want to leave. I think I stumbled across the Siberian equivalent.
It's actually quite difficult to explain. Sure, there are beautiful forests, steppes and cliffs jutting up from Lake Baikal, and I'm sure many of the pictures I took will come out well. But they won't explain the feeling of simply being in a place that makes you feel good, the kind of place you immediately feel comfortable in and happy to stay. Maybe it's the whole shamanic energy thing, I don't know.
The island also seems to attract the most eclectic group of travelers of any place I've ever been to. I mean, Siberia in general is a fairly unusual destination to begin with, but those that go even further off the beaten path to a place barely mentioned by guidebooks that's kind of a pain to get to...well, you end up meeting an unusual bunch!
There's the American twenty-something living in Beijing with more stamps in his passport than there are countries in the world. The Swiss entrepreneur who starts and sells companies on a monthly basis. The old German banker who's an endless supply of bad jokes. The French professional comedian. The Swiss couple on a one-year round-the-world journey without ever taking an airplane. The Dutch sisters in search of adventure. The writer from New Zealand. The Russian mafioso and his four concubines. And so on.
Even Nikita, the owner of the friendly canteen where we ate most of our meals has an unusual story: he's the former Soviet ping-pong champion, circa late 1980s.
On the first evening we traveled to the northernmost part of the island, through roads that I never in a million years would have taken my Jeep on (how we managed not to flip the car remains a mystery, but I will never make fun of Russian 4x4s again). The sun set at about 10:00 over the lake, and with the sparkling reflection over the lake waters ahead of the tall cliffs it was one of the most spectacular sunsets I've ever witnessed in my life.
Lake Baikal in Siberia supposedly holds one third of all the world's freshwater and more water than all of the Amercian great lakes combined (this due to its unusual depth of over a mile). It's also bloody cold. I went in for a swim the following day and when I jumped in completely my body was so shocked from the cold that I had to force myself to breathe. Needless to say, I didn't wade around for very long. But later I got enormous satisfaction out of chasing down a couple of Russian girls and tossing them in. Heh, heh!
Now, usually it seems to happen on many of my vacations that I either do something really dumb or meet an unfortunate set of circumstances and end up nearly averting death or disaster. Frankly, this did not happen on this trip.
Or at least, not consciously. On the third evening there was the worst storm in the area's history, with hundreds injured and scores killed in Irkutsk. Big headlines all over Russia.
We watched it with a few new friends from the second story of our wooden hut, one of the tallest structures on the side of the highest hill in the village. No lightning rod, of course. Sheet metal roof. Perhaps that was dangerous. But likely no more so than the 3 bottles of vodka that accompanied us through the storm. Actually, one was a gift to me from some Russians we'd met earlier in the day camping on some remote part of the island. Premierskaya Vodka--I'll be remembering that one!
The day before we reluctantly departed Olkhon, Leila's wish was granted and she met a genuine Siberian shaman. Funky robes, lots of necklaces with shiny things and animal parts, and a split thumb that supposedly is the "eagle claw" mark that is a very high shamanic honor. I listened to him speak for an hour and thought I would die from boredom, but that wasn't so much from what he said as it was that he spoke Russian and then someone else translated into German. I don't understand either.
You may be wondering, since I mentioned earlier that there are no showers on the island, whether everyone there starts to smell after a while. Not quite. They have banyas instead.
These are essentially saunas, and when you want to wash yourself there is a container full of scalding hot water and one of icy cold water. Mixed in the right amount using a large bowl and pitcher, you can dump this water over yourself and achieve cleanliness. Woe to you should you miscalculate on the proportions of hot or cold water, believe me!
The only good thing about leaving the island was looking forward to a meal without fish. I mean, a dead scaly thing for lunch or dinner now and then isn't so bad, but after having it almost every meal my bowels were about ready to declare civil war. Somehow, chickens never made it to Olkhon.
Back in Irkutsk, we did something that would have gotten us sent to a gulag back in Soviet times. We'd seen a place from the highway with a collection of military planes and helicopters around what looked like a deserted airfield and thought it was an open-air military museum. We took several pictures, including some of a very fancy Mig-29. Turns out it was a military base. Oops!
The flight back to Moscow was infinitely better than the flight out. The plane was almost empty, and although it was still designed by Russian dwarves I commend them on their ingenuity in allowing the seats to fold forward flat. So you can sit on your seat and rest your legs extended straight out on the back of the folded seat in front of you. Very cool!
All right, it's 12:30am here not so far from the Kremlin and I've got about 24 hours left in the country. I'll try to make the most of it!
Cheers!
Gabriel
