Jeez Louise I’m a mess. Writing drafts out on my phone proved to be more difficult that I was willing to put up with on my travels. I tried, I failed, and I’m moving forward.
I landed in Novosibirsk this afternoon, and as happy as I am to be back and feeling at home, I’m a little sad that my solo jaunt across Siberia is over. I really had the most wonderful time. All day today, as I bought a few groceries and sat on the bus to the gym, I kept smiling to myself like a dope as I remembered moments from the last couple weeks.
I’ve never traveled by myself before, and a couple of days before I left I started to panic a little bit. I thought the combination of my introvertedness and low Russian level would prevent me from having any kind of meaningful experience. I imagined myself not talking at all for two weeks and what it would feel like to move through the Siberia I love with no one to share it with.
But of course, I was being stupid. Before leaving for Krasnoyarsk, I had too much time to sit around and overanalyze my own flawed character and forget that people everywhere are curious, kind and patient. This trip really involved an enormous cast of characters, and I’m so happy to have shared time with each of them.
So, to give an overview of my time in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, I’m chronicling it here in terms of all the good people.
Today I am grateful for:
The Power Couple
The day before I left for Krasnoyarsk, I went to Olesya’s for dinner. When I told her I was traveling alone, she went right to social media to see who she could connect me with. Fortunately for me, Olesya is very involved with the Yabloko Party, and has colleagues all over Russia. This is how I came to meet Stanislav and Angelina.
We met for drinks at this cool underground bar, and at first, I was a little intimidated by the pair. Stanislav was wearing a sports jacket and Angelina was in a black button-up blouse and a nice skirt. I was still a little bedraggled from the 12-hour train ride, wearing a newly-thrifted sweater with a hole in the shoulder I had tried to patch up. But once we started talking (and they were very patient with my Russian!) I loved them both. They’re brilliant. I’ve met a lot of Russians who don’t have much interest in politics or have just disengaged, so I was glad for the opportunity to learn about the existence/limitations of free speech and freedom to assemble, about elections and opposition parties.
Stanislav and Angelina invited me to visit an art gallery with them the following day. It featured an artist from the Republic of Khakassia (which is a region right next to Krasnoyarsk), Yuri Khudonogov. I’m really not an art buff, but he used a lot of thick paint to paint a lot of different things in a lot of different ways. My favorites were his landscapes — I had never even heard of Khakassia, but his paintings made it look so inviting, a lot of steppes with yellow grass and small mountains in gray-blue. I told Angelina that I’d like to visit Khakassia, to see if that’s what it really looks like. She told me about her former classmate, who went on an excursion through the region with a shaman, and they boiled milk or something in order to feed the spirits of the land or something like that. I’d probably like to do that too.
My Banya Buddy
Amy is a freckle-faced Englishwoman who just spent the last semester in Moscow. We met at Hovel Hostel in Krasnoyarsk (which was an awesome hostel — free breakfast and good free coffee — just FYI, in case you’re ever in the area). She’s also studying Spanish, so she’ll be spending the next semester in Peru, and overall her academic life sounds rad as hell. She wore awesome green corduroy overalls and has a tattoo of a bee. In the true Trans-Siberian spirit, Amy was on her way to Irkutsk (all the way from Moscow! That’s a lot of train time), and from there she planned to fly to China for a little more exploration.
We arrived on the same train and on our second day in the city, we both found ourselves with nothing planned. Amy said she wanted to go the a banya since she had never been to one before, so that’s what we ended up doing.
For folks who don’t know, a banya is a Russian sauna. You sit in a little wooden room and pour water on hot coals and when you can’t take the heat anymore, you run out of the sauna and jump into a pool of cold water (or a lake or just roll around in the snow.). The other important part is there’s a bundle of birch branches tied together and you’re supposed to, like, just beat each other with them. I’ve never really understood this part but it always makes me giggle and maybe that’s all it’s supposed to do for me.
So anyways there we were, two sweaty gals hitting each other with sticks and just happy to be speaking English. We talked about the Royal Family (this was a few days after Megan and Harry announced they’d be stepping back), university life and when I mentioned I’d be heading to Moscow after Irkutsk, Amy gave me her members’ card to a hedgehog cafe since she wouldn’t be needing it.
The Climbing Crew
After my muscles got all loosey goosey from the banya, I decided to check out one of the local climbing gyms. It was a bouldering-only gym, so it was quite small. Being as new as I am to the sport, I’m always a little intimidated when I go to a new gym, and this was no exception. I’m not sure how to describe the climbers I saw there besides saying they were just cool. They all seemed to be wearing sleek black outfits and were all good looking and doing a lot of dynamic moves I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do. The routes weren’t marked in a way that I could recognize, and I almost left because I was so overwhelmed. But then I saw a tall guy wearing sneakers instead of climbing shoes and I figured he was an instructor, and it’d be worth a shot asking for help (the ultimatum: get help or potentially be totally embarrassed if I didn’t understand whatever he responded with and just stare at him blankly, as I tend to do.)
Luckily for me, Igor is maybe one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. He didn’t seem at all phased when I spoke broken Russian with my thick American accent, and just pointed out an easy route with purple, slopey holds for me to try. He told me to find him again when I finished, and we’d move on from there. I finished fairly quickly, and Igor suggested I just join a session he was doing with two other girls my age. We went over to Gelya and Nastya, who are both strong, beautiful and kind. We took turns trying out the different routes Igor made up for us, and there were many words of encouragement and high fives all around, although I was only successfully able to finish two of the four routes. It felt good to cheer others on, and pretty soon a few other people had joined our little group.
As the gym was getting ready to close, we all sat on the mats, stretching and talking. Gelya explains to me that she’s actually an English teacher at one of the best language institutes in Krasnoyarsk, and then just starts speaking perfect English. I felt a little spark of pride that she didn’t feel like she needed to switch to English sooner, that she could more or less understand my Russian.
The Girl Gang
Back at the hostel after climbing, I found a group of six Europeans — four Germans, a Finnish girl and a Spanish girl — had arrived and were staying in the women’s dorm with me and Amy. They had all spent the last semester in Saint Petersburg, and decided to spend their last weeks in Russia traveling from Irkutsk all the way back to Saint Pete’s before heading home. Amy was leaving for Irkutsk the next day, but the girls invited me to hike around Stolby Nature Reserve with them the next day. And hike we did — and slip and fall and stumble up to the cliffs. When we got to the top I couldn’t believe how much the landscape looked like New Hampshire. It made me a little homesick, but I was also elated to be back in the mountains.
I think it took us three hours to get to the peaks and maybe an hour to get down. All the hikers before us had had those little portable sleds that have only enough space for your butt, so the trail was smooth from all their descents (which is why we kept slipping on the way up). But it was smooth enough that we could skid down even without the sleds. We really just threw ourselves down the mountain, shrieking and crashing and laughing. I ruined the knees of my snowpants and took a good nap when we got back to the hostel. It was a good winter’s day.