Irkutsk, Russia
November 8th-10th
By Dan Murdoch
"It's not the giant trees, nor the deathly stillness that constitutes its power and enchantment, rather, it's in that only the migrating birds know where it ends. You don't pay attention to it on the first day of travel; on the second and third, you are surprised; the fourth and fifth day give you a feeling that you'll never get out of that monster of the Earth."
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian playwright, on Siberia.
I AM alone.
The only trekker without a valid Mongolian visa (the embassy put the wrong date on mine) and I have stayed behind in Irkutsk to get a new one, while the trek races ahead to try for Mongolia before the border closes on Friday. I hope to follow by airplane, if I can find one.
I would have thought people would stop staring now I'm not driving a brightly coloured lunchbox. But they can’t get enough of it, they don’t let up for a moment. Waiting to cross the road, the driver of the car at the lights stopped to gawp for so long that motorists behind him began hooting. People are transfixed.
I haven’t seen many other tourists, it is the low season, but I didn’t expect Russians to be too interested in a lone backpacker.
That is all I am now. Squinting under a streetlamp at the map I tore out of our guidebook, carrying all my belongings on my shoulders. Longhaired and stubbly, wearing a dirty green Russian military jacket, faded blue flat cap and chocolate scarf. The girls in Novosibirsk had said I looked like a bumsh, which is the Russian word for a bum. So maybe people think I am a touring hobo? Saved up enough from begging to head out east on my hols. I guess that would be worth staring at.
After a few weeks of constant driving, and months staying in tents, yurts and cars, I was looking forward to a hotel room. It was horribly overpriced, but I found one with a bathtub and enjoyed laying in hot water properly for the first time in months.
The place, Hotel Irkutsk, was an international affair, not a young person in sight, and cost three days budget a night.
I'm here now, I thought, I should probably make the most of it. Wake up call at 8.30, head down to breakfast, on the way, skip past reception and book a flight to Ulaanbaatar, along with a cab to the Mongolian Embassy, hand my laundry in for collection on my return. Act like I am just another one of the businessman tugging cigars at the bar.
The embassy went smoothly, but there was no flight the following day, not one till Monday. So I began resigning myself to a weekend in Irkutsk.
I had expected a Siberian city to be rugged and basic- based around necessity and survival. But Irkutsk couldn’t bee further from that. Dubbed the Paris of Siberia by Chekhov when he visited at the turn of the last century, the pretty, treelined avenues are flanked by ornate and impressive mansions and museums.
Irkutsk was the supply hub for Russia’s expansion east, an expansion driven by those exiled to Siberia and forced to work the mines or the railways.
The city was a base for these labourers, who provided a useful source of free labour for Tsarist Russia, and had sometimes committed trifling crimes like fortune telling or begging.
As such it was a harsh criminal outpost in the freezing steppe, bordering the majestic Lake Baikal, whose icy depths are home to the globe’s largest concentration of fresh water.
This changed in 1826 when the city received 120 new exiles- former army officers who had been involved in a failed uprising in December of the previous year.
Many of these Decembrists had spent years fighting Napoleon, sending him all the way back to Paris, and they returned imbued with the spirit of Western Europe’s Enlightenment.
Unconvinced by Russia’s backwards autocracy, they revolted against the appointment of the conservative new Tsar, Nicholas I, who only received the title after his elder brother Constantine relinquished his right to succession.
The revolt in St Petersburg was rubbish, and easily crushed, but the Tsar’s decision to send large numbers of the plotters to Siberia had unexpected consequences.
These men arrived, with their families and entourages, and brought a chunk of Enlightenment thinking with them along with an interest in the arts, architecture, civility and the finer things in life. Into the badlands of wild Siberia the Decembrists took concerts, plays, poetry, recitals, dances and balls. They built schools and churches and introduced the wealthy local traders, rich from trading fur to China for silk, to cultural pursuits.
In fairness it was the women who did most of this. The men spent most of their days in the mines. But through pressure from the wives, conditions at the labour camps slowly improved so their husbands managed to live through the ordeal.
In 1856 the Decembrists were pardoned, but many of them chose to stay on in Irkutsk and continue the cities cultural development.
Despite the grand 19th Century town houses, and the more modern slab like hotels, the city’s rural past still peers out from back alleys and bathroom windows. Wooden houses, something Siberia is famous for, still standing, shack like and rotting in the shadows of their successors, but still you can make out their beauty: intricately carved coving, doorway and windows. Well joined walls and arches in pastel green and sands.
Some of them have sunk into the street, or the street has been raised around them. I saw one that was all off kilter, half of it had collapsed on its foundations or slowly slipped deeper into the earth so all the windows and doors were sloping away.
In a square by the junction of Lenin Street and Karl Mark Street there is the seemingly compulsory Lenin statue, arm pointing the way forward. I’ve lost count of how many Lenins I have seen since we entered the Russian-speaking world, and it really is a world- a huge swathe of the map.
Has any man of the modern age made more of an impact on the globe? From the Caucasus to eastern Siberia we have seen his statues, dominating central squares, his mantras adorning factory walls and his vision, idealised in freezes and paintings across the whole of eastern Europe and northern Asia.
Hitler? Certainly made an impact- though not too many statues left. Stalin? Piggy backed on Lenin. Genghis Khan? Maybe in his heyday.
I guess the only people with a comparable modern influence are Jesus and Mohammed, though I doubt Lenin’s influence will last a fraction as long. Already in cities like Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan, Lenin has been relegated from his central position in the main square and replaced with a local hero- part of the long process of nation building. Lenin now lives round the back, tucked among the evergreens.
Further down Lenin Street I was surprised to find a Stalin bust in a small, modest square. He wasn’t named and there was no plaque, but I'm pretty sure it was him, the glowering eyes and thick moustache. The first Stalin I had seen.
The streets are filled with Japanese cars, Opels, Toyotas and Nissans, shipped over to Vladivostok and driven west along what we were told were terrible roads.
“So it is possible to drive those roads. We could make it?” I asked a group of Russian petrol heads.
In unison they leaped at me with hands raised and crossed at the forearms: “No, no, no,” they all shouted.
The decision to leave Irkutsk came suddenly.
I woke up late on Friday having spent the day catching up on sleep, ate, then wondered around looking for a bar. There was a place called Liverpool, tucked down a side alley. I had to have a look. Inside it was coved in Beatles memorabilia, live music was playing in one room, and a Roy Orbison gig was on the TV. There was Beatles Russian dolls on the mantelpiece.
With the help of a Russian acting as interpreter I tried to quiz the waitress on how the pub got its name.
Is the owner English?
“No. Russian.”
Does he just like Liverpool or The Beatles.
“No.”
So why the name?
“Because it is the only pub in Irkutsk.”
She refused to expand.
I heard a northern voice, and found a couple of lads from Leeds sitting at the bar. They were taking the trans-Siberian railway across the country, but seemed to be having a completely different trip from me.
“The Russians are great aren’t they?” I said.
“Well, they’re alright once you get beneath the icy exterior. But most of them are moody bastards.”
I was surprised. “Well there are a lot of lovely ladies about.”
“They’re alright. Nice bodies. Don’t make much of their faces though.”
We were surely on a different trip. The Russians had been great to us, and we boys had constantly been turning our heads at another well-dressed, good-looking lady.
Maybe the Trabants are our golden ticket. The source of our powers.
We kept drinking and chatting, they were pleased to talk to a Brit after going three weeks pretty much only speaking to each other due to their lack of Russian and the lack of tourists in low season Siberia.
It turns out that one of them lived in Chertsey for a couple of years. Small world.
We had been chatting for a few hours and it was early in the morning, but I knew I had the luxury of a hotel room to lay in tomorrow.
But then disaster.
I idly flicked through their guidebook and saw that there was a train to Ulaanbaatar leaving at 6am the next morning- in about three and a half hours. Fantastic news, I could actually get to UB in time to get my China visa with the rest of the gang. But terrible news, I was in no state to take on an hours sleep followed by a 36 hours train ride. But what choice did I have?
I drank up, returned to the hotel, packed my bags, had an hour’s kip, and headed to the train station. No one spoke English and I got sent around the houses, but finally determined there was no early train, the next one was at 8.30pm: what a waste of perfectly good hotel room and a decent nights sleep. I cursed the guidebook and headed into town to find a café to sit, write and await my fate.
Standing outside the café, waiting for it to open, I counted how much money was left in my wallet- about $12. A man in his 30s came up to me and asked for money. I said no, but accidentally dropped a 100-rouble bill, about $4.
He stepped on it.
I asked him to move, and he stepped back, very deliberately and obviously scraping the note with him under his foot. I laughed and bent down to pick it up, but he wouldn’t get off it. Then he dragged it away a bit and grabbed the note. I grabbed the other half and we engaged in a tug of war based around the four-inch long strip of paper.
I was shouting at him to let go, our faces inches apart. He didn’t look tough, he was vaguely handsome, and well kept, but when he gritted his teeth I could see they were in a terrible state- the classic sign of the desperate (and the English according to my American friends). This impasse went on for a stupidly long time. Long enough for me to consider what to do.
I thought about head butting him. But once you’ve had time to think about these things the moment tends to pass. And anyway what then? What if he head butted me back? I didn’t fancy an early morning head butting competition with a desperate Russian mugger.
He eventually wrestled control of the note, jumped in the air and ran off, looking behind once to see if I was following. I just stood and stared. What a pathetic mugging, on both our parts. Him too cowardly to mug me properly, me too cowardly to defend myself.
I caught the train, and it had a bed. That’s all you need to know.
Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
for more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org
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