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Published: November 8th 2010
an Amur tiger
(photo provided by Dr Yudin)Our first stop in Russian is Pogranichay and despite arriving 3 hours late our man, Pavel, is still waiting for us. Any sensible person would have just got the bus from the Chinese border straight to Vladivostok and avoided the need to argue with the Russian border guards (complete with guns) and be dropped in the middle of nowhere several miles from the town you are trying to get to. So why did we do it? Because approx. 80km away, at Gaivoron, Dr. Victor Yudin has established a reserve where he has bought up and studied 3 orphaned Amur (or Siberian) tigers.
To get there we head cross country through beautiful green rolling hills on red dirt roads. Its all grasslands, no signs of cultivation yet a few miles back, over the border, in China every inch of land was turned over to rice paddies. The landscape is strikingly different to China - its far more European somehow with enormous trees dotted around amongst rolling fields, it feels like Capability Brown once passed through here. The one thing that isn't European is the housing: mostly small ramshackle wooden houses with brightly painted windows. Its quite basic with wells for water
Russian Landscape
its all open rolling grassland, not a paddy field in sight and loos at the end of the garden - even in the petrol station.
At Gaivoron, Dr Yudin, is in the middle of feeding his animals so the large male tiger is right in front of us tucking into some fresh meat. Once he's finished eating, despite having 2 hectares of native forest to roam around, the tiger stays put happily watching us. He's very nosey and he quizzically watches every move we make, looking just like a curious cat. There are 3 tigers here and they became orphans when the perestroika era caused devastating unemployment in the area and in order to survive the locals started poaching tigers and bears to sell to China (a tiger can be worth US$ 10,000 for the, alleged, medicinal value of its body parts & its skin!!). Once he'd set up the sanctuary all sorts of other orphans appeared on his doorstep so now, as well as tigers, there are brown bears, nosily finishing off giant bowls of bread & water, raccoon dogs, yellow throated martens and lynx. There is obviously a strong rapport between Dr Yudin and his animals, there's no pacing back and forth, they all seem very contented and
alert. It was definitely worth the effort to get here and be eye-balled by an Amur tiger.
From here we head down to Vladivostok - its like stepping into a new universe. Technically Vladivostok maybe in Asia but culturally we are back in Europe - absolutely everything is different to China, its amazing:
- there's only cars on the road - no tuk tuks, bicycles, trucks or scooters
- motorbikes only have a single person on them rather than the whole family
- there's no horns sounding all the time
- cars actually stop at Zebra Crossings to let people across.
- and bread, there's real bread here which is non-existent in China.
Even the people are different in every imaginable way. They have a western build and faces. They are much taller so I'm no longer the tallest person in the crowd. There are far fewer people around - you can actually walk down the street surrounded by your own personal space. They talk quietly, so you can hear yourself thinking, this is not possible in a room full of Chinese who always sound like they are having an argument. But the most noticeable thing is that
they think differently, you can read their body language and predict what they are going to do. Something you couldn't do in China. It really is like a totally different world and it really brings home just how different China was.
Vladivostok turns out to be a really nice, laid back little town. But they are experiencing a cold spell and its 16C which is a bit of a shock when you've spent a week at 43C in Beijing. There seems to be some confusion between car drivers as to which roads you can and can't go up with cars meeting half-way and having a discussion on who has right of way. It all seems very strange until someone tells us that they introduced a new one way system yesterday at mid-night. They drive on the right hand side of the road here but they all have right hand drive cars. They are imported from Japan and are all lined up on the docks. They are all very proud of their Japanese cars and like to show them off.
There are no great must-sees in Vladivostok but we did get to go inside a real submarine. Plus the
the village well
the loos are at the end of the graden old fortress is full of hands on weapons including anti-aircraft guns - you can sit on them and twiddle all the dials making the barrel go up and down and spin round. During the soviet ear Vladivostok was a closed navel port. and even relatives need permits to visit the city - it only opened to tourists in 1992. Its still home to Russia's Pacific Fleet.
Of-course we're here to catch the Trans-Siberian Express. Vladivostok station is really cute with a ceiling mural depicting the various station en-route from Vladivostok to Moscow, 9288km away according to the marker on the platform. In one go this would take 6 nights but we are intending to hop off at various points so our first stint will be a mere 3 nights. We have just purchased our bottle of vodka so now we just need to find the right train.
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David & Diana
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What a difference you portray between China & Russia. Trust you had a good trans-siberian train ride....... David & Diana