10^th August, Russia

The border crossing from Kazakhstan to Russia was a more drawn out affair than it should have been. While waiting we listened to a tape that a friend had given us. It contained new material from his band but unfortunately, it was recorded poorly and produced an awful discordant racket.

However, the disquietening effect of the music had found its match in the occasion. The general ambience was draining, boring us to distraction, making the broken beats seem half-baked, drowned out by an altogether more disturbing presence. It was as if sorrow and neglect seeped like a vapour from the dismal steppe around us – awoken by the warmth of the sun as it dispelled the morning haze and climbed steadily into the sky. We felt it only right to celebrate this penultimate border crossing with a couple of strong beers which made the rural Russian population infinitely more comprehensible. We could feel that peculiar Russian sorrow at last, although not perhaps as they.

I woke in a terrible grump on the outskirts of Barnaul. For this, Jonno could not account. “It’s a beautiful city, full of beautiful girls and it’s not Kazakhstan. What’s your problem?” I did not have an answer.

Kazakhstan had been hard on us, but it had been fun and we had brought most of our problems there upon ourselves, with our disorganisation and paranoia. I really did not miss the mobile phone that had disappeared in western Kazakhstan and the loss of the camera bothered Jonno much more than me. The sleep deprivation and confinement with one person, even with someone as kind and forgiving as Jonno, was too much for me. I craved solitude and stillness and would have been as happy to take it in Kazakhstan as anywhere but there was certainly no reason to think I was any more likley to get it in Russia. Admittedly my resentment was exacerbated by the morning beer and the afternoon nap.

We parked up and found an internet café to complete the essential emails and acquire a map of Mongolia. We decided a ‘Google Map’ would be fit for purpose and paid our twenty roubles for an A4 print out. Needless to say, it little prepared us for the huge mountain ranges and distances we had yet to travel.

With business concluded, it was time to attend to supper. It took us a while to find a suitable place but we were recommended an ‘Italian’ restaurant. We walked past a corner shop that had a bar selling draft beer onto the street like you might find dispensing harmless ice-creams in a far bleaker tourist town in England.

The restaurant was an interesting microcosm of modern Russia. Drawing influences from an American idea of commercialism, and built into the ground floor of a new apartment building, the place had the feel of a hotel lobby or bar. It was immaculately turned out and everything was new. The waitresses were all wearing embarrassingly short skirts and brought photograph menus to the table and served us with French Kronenbourg. It lacked the traditional atmosphere and the fine, fresh ingredients of a true Italian restaurant but it did have something else. Barnaul is a vibrant student town. Photographs adorned the walls of the corridor to the billiard room showing the youth enjoying themselves with a catwalk, a beauty contest and fancy dress parties. The overall effect was a rather welcoming well provided place which completely changed my idea of Siberia, the cold inhospitable hinterland.

We chose to eat outside on a canopied deck. Before our food had been served there was a torrential downpour. Puddles soon formed and you can imagine what happened to the waitresses’ tops as they rushed around moving people’s food and drinks inside. The waiters had to keep pushing the water out of the canopies which were bulging within an instant, and threatening to burst through.

The food was really quite good and we decided that Barnaul might be a place worth returning to. By the time we had finished eating it was quite late. Time to leave town, we headed back to the car. A little lost, Jonno was driving through the centre of town when he noticed someone of interest. It was as though he had seen an old friend. He came over to the car and introduced himself as Michael. Michael had a friend with him, called Dima. Dima was Ivan’s spit, an engineer, stout and strong with fluffy blond hair. He beamed welcome and was a little bit drunk. Michael spoke excellent English and was studying for his Ph.D. in Physics. They offered us a place to stay with bed and shower. It was difficult to refuse but knowing that we would be unlikely to leave before lunch the following day we decided to carry on. Nevertheless, he gave Jonno his email address and promised he would help him to get an architectural placement in the city.

It was now my turn to make time. I stocked up on chocolate and had another slightly less solid ‘MacCoffie™’. The driving was fun. The road went up and down and had plenty of forested bends. We went through several villages where the atmosphere seemed friendly and people were partying. It was like being in Kyrgyzstan again. After several hours, and when it was starting to get light, we stopped and made ready to bed down for a few hours.

We decided to stop having dropped down in altitude a little. There were many more dwellings and the trees had been cleared in places for livestock. We stopped at a siding where the road was being widened and a logging road cut deep tracks through the clayey earth and up a wooded bank. A few little houses stood to one side with lit windows and smoking chimneys.
It was still and perfectly peaceful – that is until a couple of Rally teams arrived. Someone was making their presence known, disgracefully drunk and screaming, “A rally car, a rally car,” in a most horrid, blood curdling, falsetto voice. We had been asleep for a maximum of four hours and it was barely lighter than when we had stopped. He first woke Jonno expecting to be warmly received. He then began recounting a dubious tale. Apparently they had been rudely pushed out of a nearby pub because the locals were jealous of the attention their girls had been bestowing on the drunken rally fools – forcing them to drive when in no fit state to even speak.

Meanwhile, one of his friends, probably sick of his team mate’s horrid caterwauling, had disappeared. He then crossed the road and was walking towards me screaming about his friend, thousands of miles from home, lost in a wilderness inhabited by savages. This is when he stumbled upon me where I thought I lay safe, camouflaged inside my bivi-bag.

“Awh, Whaahts thaart?” came the dreaded proof that I had been spotted.

I neither moved nor made a sound, willing him to find some manners or caution and leave me alone when I failed to reply. Finally, when he continued to question me and I feared he was about to poke me with a stick or kick me, I replied with all the grace I could muster.

“I’m asleep, leave me alone.”

When he in turn replied, “That’s not very nice.”

I nearly screamed and if I had not been confined within my sleeping bag I would have charged him down with the express intention doing him to death with a cobble or a boot.

But still he carried on, “I didn’t know you could fall asleep like thaart. Whart’s your name?”

“Just shut up, shut up now and go back to your car.” Even as I said it, I had given up.

Jonno offered him his patient ear and sound advice, “Just go to bed. He’ll have been sick and fallen asleep. If you wait until tomorrow he’ll come back on his own.”

This had no more positive effect than my stonewalling and he was still jabbering on about how rude I was or how he cared more for his friends than Jonno did as I packed up my stuff and got into the car.

Jonno had also decided it best to leave as quickly as possible and so we drove off. It was a shame to have broken such a well needed rest prematurely but there would have been no opportunity to sleep any more where we had been disturbed and we slowly woke as we drove, soon discovering that the Republic of Altai must be among the most beautiful places in the world. A relatively small and remote province of Russia, it attracts a good number of tourists for its mountain passes, rough wooden homesteads and the many rivers and lakes. Anthropologists and archaeologists are also fascinated by the shamanistic society native to the area and some exquisite ancient burial sites in which a renowned, tattooed female mummy was found. Perhaps a warrior princess. We were often speechless at the sights we saw and enjoyed the day immensely, forgetting any lingering tiredness or ill-feeling.

However, when we stopped for a pee we couldn’t get the car started again. Rather than turn the car around to jump start on the down hill we decided to push it to the top of the hill, a mere 100 yards away. We asked a few Russians there with their wives to give us a push. They each looked capable of managing it on their own but they declined, preferring to laugh warmly at our folly. Thinking we planned to push it all the way to the next village one of the men made a humorous gesture, waving his hand to show up and down, up and down. We bumped it with no problems on the down side and were away again.

I was very sad to leave this part of the world so soon but by the afternoon we were at the border – along with forty proper off-road vehicles, including twenty four Porsche Cayennes and a classic Porsche 911.

Rising/Falling – Always Hoping -can be bought online at Amazon.co.uk, - ordered by your local bookshop for just £8.74 (the price the team’s car was auctioned for at the end of the rally) Just note the ISBN:9780956196613 - or bought direct from the suppliers @ £10.99 (£8.74 plus £2.25 p&p) Address Cheques to Craig Chamberlain, Glovers Cottage, Lazonby, Penrith, CA10 1AJ