Advertisement
Published: March 28th 2008
Buddhist monastery
Go inside for creepy statue of Dali LamaWe knew there were two things in store for us on the overnight train trip from Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia to Ulan Ude in Russia: another tedious border crossing and bugger all sleep. We were correct on both counts. We also met our first Provodnista and Provodnik - the Russian cabin attendants, female and male respectively. They did not speak much English but they did their best to give us whatever information we needed. At any rate, their English way surpassed our non-existent Russian language skills so we were grateful for their efforts. Our readings had alerted us to the fact that there would be no dining cart on this train so we had stocked up on travel food before boarding and were all set for 28+ hours on the rails.
Our train pulled out of Ulaan Baatar at 7.45pm, rolling through more beautiful scenery of mostly snow covered flat lands as the little remaining light faded into darkness. We were very lucky this time to have a cabin to ourselves, something we could not hope to have at a warmer time of year. Before long we were visited by a lady from one
Dress up time
How to make a couple of tourists feel silly! Amazing what you will do after a few glasses of the local liqueur (45% alcohol!) of the other cabins. She spoke no English and looked Mongolian so we assumed she was a Buryat - close relatives of the Mongolians who long ago gave up their nomadic lifestyle and settled in eastern Siberia. The odd thing about her visit was that she entered our cabin waving what appeared to be a large frozen Fritz! (For our non South Australian readers it was basically a big tube of processed meat) She spoke to us in an unknown language and gestured at our little table with her Fritz but we had no idea what she was on about. She placed the Fritz on the table along the window which we thought was odd - was this a gift? We hadn't read about this in any guide books! Then she picked up a packet of our Mongolian cakes and placed them on top of the Fritz. That's when our collective pennies dropped. "No no no" we both said as Lee shoved the chilly Fritz back into her hands. This was something we had heard about after all - the local business people trying to sneak cheap goodies across the border without declaring them. She wanted us to be her
The Ivolginsk Datsan
Just a couple of the buildings on this impressive site. Fritz mules! Not long after we sent our sausage smuggler on her way, another lady stopped at our door. She seemed very happy to have found us, said a few foreign words, giggled a bit and disappeared only to return a few minutes later wanting to hang a jacket on one of our empty coat hooks. Of course we were wise to this caper by now and politely asked her to go hang out elsewhere.
With the help of our Provodnista we determined we would be stopping at the Mongolian border town of Suche Bator at about 4am so we set an alarm and bunked down. At Suche Bator the Provodnik told us we could have 20 minutes to get off the train, use the toilets on the platform etc, then return for the passport checks. On our way to the toilets we met a gentleman offering to exchange Mongolian currency for Russian and, as his rate was reasonable, we agreed. He wasn't interested in the small stuff so we ended up with 50 Tugruks as 'souvenirs' which is worth literally almost nothing. When we returned from the toilets we found there was only one little carriage in the
Old Believers museum
Front gates of the museum have been carved and painted in traditional fashion. whole station - fortunately it was ours! We re-boarded what was left of our train and shortly were visited by the customs officers who disappeared with our passports. Some hours later after another sleep, the return of our passports and the reconnection of our carriage to a loco and other carriages we were on our way. Of course our journey was stopped once again a couple of hours later at Naushky for the Russian customs check where a young man with steely blue eyes inspected our passports and then requested insistently "Leave the compartment please". Of course we did so where upon a dumpy woman in green overalls and army boots went in and poked her torch into every nook & cranny. We nick named her 'The sniffer dog'. Of course we had hidden our drugs, booze and frozen fritz too well for her to find and we were cleared to return. Some more hours passed where nothing much seemed to happen and then we were finally on our way into Russia proper. All up - just under 11 hours for the border crossing and customs & immigration checks.
We were met at the train station by our guide,
Russian Orthodox Church
No fancy onion domes here! Inside are the 16th century icons & books. Svetlana, and our driver, who turned out to be her husband, who took us to the first home stay of our trip. We arrived at a rather dingy looking apartment block which was about 8 stories of dirty grey featureless square concrete. The car park was all mud scattered with various cars in no particular arrangement that we could see and we entered through a large green steel door into a stairwell that was all concrete and steel and crud! Needless to say we began to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into here. On the 3rd level our hostess, Valeria, was waiting at her door for us & we were shown in and immediately asked to remove our shoes. This, we have since discovered, is basically standard practice in Russia (at least at this time of year) presumably because of the wet/snowy weather. Much to our relief we found the 'apartment' (flat) to be quite nice and comfortable and clean although quite tiny. Valeria had enough English for simple conversations which made the delicious meals she cooked for us even more enjoyable.
Our first full day in Ulan Ude (pronounced Oolan Ooday and meaning 'Red river') we spent
visiting a small Datsan - a monastery of Tibetan Buddhism. As all religion was banned in Russia during Soviet rule, many churches, temples, monasteries, including this one were destroyed. This one was rebuilt after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and was visited and blessed by the Dali Lama in 1991 and there is a somewhat life-like and rather off-putting effigy of him sitting at the head of the worship area in the temple. The monastery is situated by the foot hills and near a small Buryat village with beautiful views of the tranquil surrounds. We then visited another, somewhat larger, Buryat village where we dropped into the home of a local lady, Galia, for lunch. We were warmly welcomed and shown inside the small wooden home which is very traditional and a style which completely dominates rural villages throughout Siberia and beyond. Along with our host and guides we enjoyed a delightful lunch, much conversation and many laughs. The food consisted of salad, pickles, bread and a special home made Buryats 'cheese' followed by a soup with beef & pasta. Then came the dumplings, the preparation of which was not quite complete as part of the fun was to be
Scenery from the Ulan Ude country side
Not your stereo-typical view of Russia! trying our hand at making them. Galia had already made the meat mixture and showed us how to press the meat into the pastry and pinch around the top to close up the dumpling leaving a neat little hole. She made it look so easy and yet the tourist versions didn't come out quite so pretty, often having a slightly mangled look and a gaping maw! It didn't matter though as they were all delicious - even though Lee failed at the special technique of sucking out the gravy and ended up with it all down his arm and on the table cloth! We finished off the meal with jam filled cookies and a traditional liqueur that was constantly refilled before our glasses could be emptied. After this a brief photo session with us dressed up in traditional Buryat costumes kept our guides and host amused for a while before it was time to return to the city.
That afternoon we had our first adventure in trying to find a Russian internet cafe. Our guide suggested the post office and our guidebook had the same info so we set off. We slipped and slid our way around the snowy and icy streets following the dubious directions we had received and eventually found it somewhere completely different. Inside we asked a man in a booth about the availability of internet but even without any English it was quite obvious he had never heard of this thing and loudly sent us on our way. Back out on the street we remembered a sign that we though said "Cyber..." something or other...! We thought perhaps it could be internet related so we went in. Turned out to be a hotel and instead of an internet connection we found a friendly receptionist who gave us directions in (broken) English to a local-ish place. She also wrote down the location so we could ask someone if we got lost. Which we did! You usually expect to be merely pointed in the general direction of what you are looking for when you ask a local for help but when we asked a couple of policemen - who looked more like combat troopers - they had a quick chat in Russian then asked us to follow them. Well, if we didn't already stand out in our bright winter jackets & hiking boots (which already drew enough stares from the black & brown clad locals) we certainly looked foreign being marched through a pedestrian mall street by a couple of storm troopers! That old familiar "oh shit, where are we being taken now?" feeling started churning up again when we were led down a side street and then downstairs into an unmarked building. Then suddenly we were inside a room full of nerds and computers and thanking our friendly but intimidating guides for their help. And it was here that we finally sorted out the virus that had infected our little notebook computer. What a relief!
That evening, after a nice meal with our host we skidded our way to a quiet little cafe and discovered that the locals have a passion for extremely rich & sweet hot chocolate and completely bizarre TV game shows. Who would have thought?
For our next day a visit to another larger Buddhist monastery was on the itinerary as well as to an Old Believer village, church and museum. The Ivolginsk Datsan (monastery) has been playing a critical role in the re-emergence of Buddhism here since the fall of the Soviet Union and is one of only 2 Buddhist schools in Russia. On the site are several temples, school buildings and residences for the lamas and several new temples are under construction. There is even a tree which is said to be a descendant of the tree under which Buddha first gained enlightenment. It is very sacred and grows inside a climate controlled glass walled building as the tree is from India and would otherwise never survive in Siberia.
Onto the Old Believer village. Way back in time - the 16th or 17th century we think - the rulers of Russia decided to make changes to officially practiced religion. There were of course people who objected to this and who steadfastly persisted with the old traditions of their faith. The folks at the top decided this was not tolerable and these people, who had become known as the 'Old Believers' were banished to Siberia. Here they struggled, adapted, survived and eventually flourished and still exist today with the same faith from back then. We visited one of the larger villages where we stopped at a local cafe for lunch. Salad, beef & potato stew, bread, tea & pancakes - quite traditional. After lunch we visited the local priest who has his church on one side of the road and his own little museum on the other where he houses his personal collection of historical artifacts from the lives of the Old Believers since they arrived here. We thought it was cold outside but inside the old building it was absolutely freezing! He enthusiastically showed us old home made items - everything from kitchen equipment to shoe making gear to saddles and bellows. He had old traditional clothing, jewelry and books and also a less related interest, a collection of bank notes from around the world. We contributed a 10,000 rupiah note from Indonesia which he considered to be a fine present - even after we told him it's approximate value.
Across the road we went inside the tiny old church where he showed us the 16th century icons (paintings) and books. Some of the icons were quite small and aged and the priest had a friend of his coming in and painting larger copies of the originals to adorn the church. We immediately noticed the lack of seating, apparently in a Russian Orthodox church the worshipers stand. The priest invited us to climb the bell tower for a nice view over the village but in reality it so stuffed with bells up there that we could see little else! On the way out the village we stopped to take a photo of one of the beautiful old cottages with traditional bright colours and window decorations.
Before leaving the area we stopped at a lookout area, off road on top of a snow covered hill. Our guides had an old Toyota Corolla wagon which we weren't convinced would make it but it turned out to be quite a gutsy little all wheel drive that wouldn't give up. We got out to take some photos of the stunning view and by the time Lee had found a good location he was knee deep in snow.
Once back in Ulan Ude we decided to visit the post office again, this time to send some post cards. With a little help from a friendly local girl who spoke English we achieved this with little trouble but while waiting in the queue (Russians love 'em) we saw how the post office works in a small Siberian city. Customers sending parcels bring their items, unboxed, to the counter and the postal workers - all women - wrap them up in brown paper. Then the address/customs form is glued on using a big pot of paste and a paint brush. Then the parcel is tied up with string with lots of criss-crossing & knots. Then, to our amazement, a huge gluggy pot of hot brown wax is uncovered from in the work bench and, using a stick from the pot, each knot is dribbled with a dollop of wax, then each dollop has the post office seal pressed into it. Seems it's not just the Old Believers that like to do things the old ways!
A visit to the supermarket for supplies for our next train trip also introduced us to the different ways Russians do things. We went in with our good old enviro-friendly green bag and loaded the goods we wanted into it. Before long we noticed we were being watched, and then that people in suits were talking into walkie talkies. The next thing a uniformed security guard was asking us, without English, to go with him towards the front of the store where we had to put our intended purchases into a shopping basket and check our green bag into a bag storage area. They must have thought we were the most indiscreet shop lifters ever! Kerry had to go and retrieve the green bag while Lee was at the checkout so we could pack our goodies. We have since found out that it is standard practice in Russian supermarkets to leave bags in the lockers or bag check room provided before entering and then take your shopping in their plastic bags. Live & learn!
Later that evening we ventured out to get a coffee and take some photos of the ridiculously huge sculpture of Lenin's head in the main square. Lee made short work of a small flight of stairs beside the road with only his foot touching the first icy step, and only his backside hitting every subsequent step. Of course when in Russia, do as the Russians do - get up as quick as possible and continue on like nothing happened! 5 minutes down the road and Kerry went down like a sack of spuds after tripping over a curb. No ice to blame here though! To top it all off it was way too dark and pics of Lenin didn't turn out anyway. And we forgot to get coffee!
So, having survived our first stop in Russia we said "Da svidaniya" to our hostess & guides and re boarded the train to head deeper into Siberia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.099s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 54; dbt: 0.0496s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Julie
non-member comment
"Baby its cold outside"
Hey there, Well!!Im guessing yu wont bed doiing any train travel when yu get home. Only u 2 can get caught up in "frozen fritz smuggling!!! It has been so fantastic to talk to u on skype. Im having trouble with typing this message, the keys wont work so I will leave it for now ad will try again later. sorry !!!!! Luv U Lots xxxx