THE ROAD - A CONTINUOUS STORY

We said good-bye to Serafim, with whom we had been driving for two days already. Our camping place for that night was the parking near Kurgan called The Gates to Siberia. Noisy but safe: the guard of the parking promised to look after us with his gun.

As Serafim tried to help us with a new ride we saw two backpackers approach.
“Do you know them?” Serafim asked.
“We will!” I said smiling and approached the two.

July 20, 2007
Sid and Romashka were on the ir way hitchhiking from Tomsk to the European side of Russia. Later Sid found a much quieter camping site on a relatively dry clay island in the middle of the swamp across the road.
“So these are the famous Siberian mosquitoes father spoke of,” said Sue. We climbed into our tents leaving the bugs hungry.

“Did you know that a folk music festival in Tuva is about to start in five days? You could easily make it!” said Sid.
I took my headlight and map to find Tuva just by the side of Mongolia in the South of Siberia.
The hitchhikers doubted that we could get a Mongolian visa in Kizyl. The capital was to be so small that it had only two shops “Good 1” and “Good 2”. In the centre was to be a jurta where the shaman lived. It was him we had to ask to find out where that festival took place, explained Sid and Romashka.

Three days of travelling took us to Novosibirsk from where a 30 Euro-24h train ride brought us to Abakan – the capital of Hakassia.

July 25, 2007

It was dawn when the train arrived. Every day of our journey to the east we had to change our time to one hour earlier. “Time has become an uncertainty,” said Sue at one point. In Abakan it was already a 4 hour difference with Moscow time, 5 hour difference with Tallinn time, 6 hour difference with Brussels.

We hitchhiked. “It is going to be a long ride”, said the Kamaz driver Vladimir when we told him of our destination. We spent altogether 15 hours on the road which was just about 400 km long. The truck was so slow we could almost see every plant looking out of the window. Tuva’s paradise landscapes opened to us when the sun was already setting. Hidden behind the Sayani Mountains this land was so much different from the Siberian swamps we had come from – it had steppes, taiga and mountains. As we drove on we saw many people on the sides of the road selling cedar seeds and berries. “They are the forest people,” Vladimir explained, “they come to live in the forest in spring and leave only with the coming of winter. They gather the fruits of the forest and sell them along the road”. Vladimir bought a bucket of blueberries and we drove on.

Kizyl - the capital of Tuva Republic was everything else but a small village. This is to Romashka and Sid: the shop near Vladimir’s home was a number 50! There was no jurta in the centre, but a whole Association of Shamans in a regular block building. The town had also a Mongolian embassy where we received our visas in two hours. Still it was not possible to cross to Mongolia from Tuva. The only international border-crossing point was at Ulan-Ude in Buryatia.

July 26, 2007

The festival was to take place in Chadan – a town 230 km away from Kizyl. A policeman took us half way to another post where he asked his colleagues to help us catch a ride. We tried to refuse to which they replied: “Who do you think is going to catch a ride first?!”
So we sat comfortably in the shade. The traffic was scarce and the lads introduced us to the hashish plants – “the Tuvian currency”. They also told us to cross the Monglian border in any place. There is no border between Tuva and Mongolia, they said.

We reached Chadan before nightfall, put up our tents and suddenly were surrounded by friends of Sid and Romashka. They had heard that two new travellers arrived, one spoke Russian the other didn’t…it was bound to be us, they explained. It appeared that Sid and Romashka had sent a message to them when we had parted.

Everyone was happy to hear of our journey, they laughed hearing how we had known nothing of Tuva and of the festival. “What is the aim of your journey?” Viktor asked. “To become good people,” I answered.


What followed was the three days of music and rest. We got to hear throat singing, see Tuvian wrestling – Huresh, participate in the ceremony at Ustuu-Huree
Buddhist temple and take a glance at a remarkable horse race, where children ride unsaddled horses for 40 km. On the last day I discovered that an Estonian Imre Peemot was living next to our tent. Imre had moved to Finland at the age of 12 and called himself a finno-ugric musician. We spoke Estonian and it felt good. Imre received a prise for his music and made me proud. Sue has now his CD.

To our surprise all events at the festival were free. Our westernised minds received a lesson. We thought of public access to culture in the west where every event comes with an entrance fee. Thus you would have to have money to be a part of culture.
Here we saw children and grown-ups, young and old, rich and poor take part in culture. This was not something to have a price on. Open to everyone, free access…it seemed so right. My respect to the organisers!

Let us forget about politics for a moment. Tuva is not Russia and the Tuvians are not Russians. This is what we saw. The Tuvian people are a nation yearning for freedom. Even though in their passports they are called the Russians – in their songs, in their language and all traditions they are the Tuvians. When I think back of Belarus, which is recognised as a sovereign Republic despite the fact that it is made to look like a Soviet state whose people have forgotten their own language, and compare it to what I saw in Tuva – a Republic in every aspect except the political one, then it seems unfair. The political view on Tuva seems unfair.

July 28, 2007

As we were waiting for the horses to come to the finish line I bought kompot- a non-alcoholic drink made of dry fruit.
“You can sit here,” said Igor - the drummer. I saw him the day before playing on the campsite.

In answer to his question how I came to Ustuu-Huree, I told him our story. “Probably, like all travellers, also I am looking for a place, different from where I come from. I do not like the western world with its materialistic strivings and values,” I said in conclusion.
“I live in such a place,” replied Igor, “If you would like, I could take you there. Call me when you come to Abakan.”
When I introduced Igor to Sue he said that a Belgian Gert from Antwerp is living in his village.

Igor Mohhov, a 44 y-o musician and an artist said that in his community people follow strictly vegetarian, no-smoking, no-alcohol principles. In their everyday people would lead a simple village life but unlike in other places they are given a rich cultural content. The traditional crafts are kept alive, the children are taught to follow in the footsteps of the old masters.

July 30, 2007

We arrived to Minusinsk – a town 20 km East from Abakan a day after the festival and called Igor. We drove in his minibus to Petropavlovka – a village about 70 km away from Kuragino in the South of Krasnoyarsk Oblast.

On our way we stopped for dinner at Igor’s friends. Soup and bread. It is not meat but soya, said Irina – our cheerful hostess. I noticed a photo of a young man.
“Who is it?” I asked pointing at the picture.
“Vissarion,” said Irina, “Do you know him?”
“I have heard of him,” I said.
“What have you heard?” she asked.
“Just the name,” I replied.

It was time to leave. We drove on for another half an hour and came to Igor’s village Petropavlovka. Just from the outside I noticed already a few differences in comparison to other Russian villages we had seen:
-There were many young people on the streets.
-Unlike other villages, this one was not falling apart, but on the contrary many houses were being built.
-People were not poor. We saw almost no old Russian cars in the yards and in the streets.
-The church was built in a different way, the cross on the tower had a circle around it.


“They follow a different religion here”, I said to Sue. Though I had no idea which one – I had never seen such a cross before. I suspected that the man from the picture – Vissarion - had something to do with it.
I tried to remember what I had heard. A messiah born in Siberia… Strangely so, asking Igor, did not give us any answers. The girl Ljuba living with him was also quiet. “Ask Igor,” she said to my question if there was any literature about that place.
“Why do people come to live here?” I asked.
“Because it is Siberia, Siberia is a special place, everyone knows it…”

July 31, 2007

Sue and I were getting anxious. All whom we came to visit acted strangely. I tried to look at ads and leaflets in front of public places, workshops and exhibitions Igor took us. “The Promised Land is what they call this place,” I told Sue after this small research. By the time it was evening we were tired of playing detectives. In the morning Igor introduced us to a German lady Ursula who invited us to visit her later. Perhaps she would have some answers…

We came to what was called the German house and knocked. Ursula opened the door, gave us five photo albums and asked to sit quietly until their meeting was over. We saw many images of Vissarion, dressed in white or red robes preaching to the people.
when their meeting was over and everyone had left Ursula introduced us to Birgit another German lady. “Where are we?” we asked almost immediately.
Birgit went to make dinner as Ursula told us of the place. This is what I understood:

Vissarion, an artist and a saviour is calling people to come to leave the cities of the dead and discover life in new content in Siberia – a land which is going to survive all cataclysms. 30 villages have been built in “The Promiced Land”; all newcomers receive food and shelter from the villagers until they have their own place to stay. The City of the Sun is on top of the hill – the teacher himself lives there. There is no television and no shops, no road goes there. Those who want to visit the city have to make a 7 km pilgrimage to the spot on foot. Every Sunday there is a special bus taking people through taiga to the foot of the hill. All what Igor told us about the village, about craftsmanship and people’s everyday was also true.

When Ursula showed us the reproductions of Vissarion’s paintings, I remembered when I had heard of him. There was an exhibition of his works in the National Library in Tallinn that I had gone to see.

August 1, 2007

Sue met Gert and spoke Dutch. It was nice to see and hear. The role of a translator is not any more new to me, but still it is impossible to translate everything. Sue says she is beginning to understand Russian and she perhaps knows some 50 words of it by now, but needless to say it is not enough to partake in conversations. Now we changed roles. For once I was the one having hard time understanding. Still interestingly so just as Sue said she understood me speaking Russian, I also understood her speaking Dutch. Perhaps it is because she spoke of the stories we had shared.

Gert had also been a traveller until he met his beautiful Moldavian wife Nonna. For three months every year he returns to Belgium to earn money and claims it to be enough to live in Russia. The land he owned in Siberia had cost him about 200 Euro, every year he pays 4 Euro for renting it.

In the evening we went to Gert’s banya – a Russian sauna in the classic version of which one has to wash himself in the extremely hot steam room itself. In winter one would run out of the banya to dive into the snow or a river, in summer you just pour buckets of cold water on yourself to cool down somehow, then go and stand outside.

August 2, 2007

Though the banya experience was worth staying for, we wanted to go. We woke up at 4 AM to catch the bus to Kuragino. Perhaps our friends and families have not gone to sleep yet, we thought, when we are starting the next day already.

The road soon lost its asphalt cover. We soon lost our banya effect. Covered with dust on an empty road we wondered whether the first one to come would be a car or a bear. The drivers said it was nothing to joke about. Bears were frequently seen on that highway.

A hunter took us a 150 km further and told us of one Estonian Paul, whose house was near his hunter’s cabin. Paul had escaped from prison 30 years ago and had been hiding in taiga until that day. I wrote Paul an Estonian postcard and asked the hunter to forward it.

This day was rich in rides and stories. One driver took us to his dacha (summer house), introduced us to his family, fed us, gave us salt and let us take a shower.

The 9th ride of the day - a Kamaz. To our traditional introduction: “Hello, we are hitchhiking around the world, perhaps you could take us in the direction of Irkutsk”, the driver Anatoli, answered: “Around the world, you say…I have travelled around the world too…in a submarine.”

As we throw our bags into the car and climb in ourselves he continued his story.
As a young army officer, at the age of 22, in 1967 Anatoli together with 130 men was appointed to a submarine. Their journey around the world lasted 40 days. Anatoli had four children, two sons he had already buried. The day before his wife adopted two boys – 12 y-o Sergey and 14 y-o Slava. Anatoli’s father was repressed during the reign of Nicholas II to Krasnoyarski Krai. This is how he came here.

August 3, 2007

On the 18th day of our journey we arrived to Nizhneudinsk travelling another 400 km. An artist and a traveller Aleksei Uskov I knew from my last year journey to Japan had just arrived from a hike and was cleaning his gun. He recognised me immediately. We stayed at his place and promised to publish an add of his traveller’s club on this page which you can read in the previous post. Just know that Siberian taiga is not a joke, there are serious dangers.

August 7, 2007

We are in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia and intend to undertake the road to Mongolia tomorrow. My last year's journey across Siberia has helped us again. The Buddhist datsan I had stayed in is providing us with food and shelter. Though the people have changed, everyone is sincerely kind to us.

Today we celebrate one month on the road. In reality we have spent travelling just 21 days, hitchhiked 58 rides and crossed 9940 kilometers in six countries.