Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By the time we arrived, apart from the steady flow of old-growth forest heading
towards the voracious Chinese market, the railway was relatively unused.
We struggled on a further ten kilometres, puffing and blowing as we climbed
sandy hills and sped down to crash spectacularly at the bottom of others. We made
camp at a beautiful gurgling creek where we were surprised by news from a passing
convoy of logging trucks. 'We saw a bear a few kays up the road,' they told us non-
chalantly. 'A big one.'
Jesus, I thought, looking at the men sitting high up inside the steel-walled pro-
tection of their cabin. I glanced over my shoulder at our still-smouldering campfire
then back at the grinning men.
'But that's okay,' the driver carried on. 'If you see it, just shoot into the air and
it should run away.' He paused for a moment. 'You are carrying a gun, aren't you?'
'Um …' I exchanged a worried look with Tim. 'Actually we don't have a gun.'
'What!' The driver stared down at us incredulously. 'You must have a gun!
Nobody stays out here in the forest without a gun, especially at this time of year.
There are bears everywhere!'
'Oh, really?' I was starting to feel sick.
'Christ!' The driver snorted and pulled his head back into the window. He ex-
plained the situation to the other passengers, and they all burst out laughing. 'I hope
it's not hungry!' he yelled down to us, then crunched into gear and drove on.
The next day we encountered an unexpected forty kilometres of new bitumen
for the ride into Chunsky, the last outpost of real civilisation before Bratsk - 400
kilometres distant. Along the way, an expensive black Land-cruiser pulled level
to glide alongside us. A black tinted window hummed open to reveal the driver,
a fat, dark-skinned man with black slicked-back hair. The high-pitched voice of
the latest teenage pop star from Moscow ripped loudly through the open win-
dow from an undoubtedly state-of-the-art system. Two ovals of shiny black Ray-
bans turned slowly and a gleaming white smile erupted from above a corpulent,
smoothly shaven chin.
We chatted briefly. The driver and his passenger were Azerbaijani businessmen,
involved in some way in the forestry industry. They were obviously not the ones
who chopped down the trees. The guy in the passenger seat - a thinner version of
the driver - owned a restaurant in Chunsky and he offered us a meal when we got
there.
They flicked up the window after a while and seemed about to pull away, but at
the last minute, as though struck by an afterthought, the window glided down again
