Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
was no traffic in either direction, dunking his feet into cups of hot tea from the ther-
mos.
In the evenings I would hunker down with a candle and write long letters to Nat,
while Tim settled down to his diary with a shot of
barmatuki
, tea-infused vodka
courtesy of Baba Galya. Before he ran out of this 'bedtime juice' he went through
a week of evenings in various states of tipsiness. One evening he described himself
as being 'pissed as a newt', a phrase I hadn't heard in years.
After four days we reached our first major milestone. The town of Nikolsk
emerged from the trees, first as a few isolated cottages, then as a string of ornate
wooden houses. We approached the river at the centre of town and stopped at a
rundown
stolovaya
, a uniquely Russian establishment that, depending on the guests
and the occasion, serves as a restaurant, café, pub or just a general eating-house for
the masses.
The lady behind the counter was unimpressed as we traipsed in with our smelly,
dripping clothing and faces smeared with mud and charcoal. Definitely eating-
house, I could see her deciding. And hostile service as well.
Outside, a group of local men gathered around our bikes; we could see them
poking, prodding and fiddling through the window. I finished quickly and dashed
outside - too late to supervise one of the guys who pushed off on my bike and
helped himself to a test-ride. He wobbled wildly for a few seconds before slew-
ing heavily into the pavement. The rest of the guys cheered drunkenly while their
friend brushed off his ripped pants and grazed elbows, and I went to make sure no
damage had been done to my bike.
One of these guys, Igor, was about our age and seemed harmless enough. None,
it seemed, really needed to get back to work and within a few minutes we'd been
invited to someone's home. Only half an hour after determining that we could
probably ride another twenty kilometres for the day, we were wheeling the bikes
to Igor's father's house where there was a temptation beyond resistance: another
meal!
Igor's father, Yefgeny, turned out to be an old grease-smeared communist. When
we came across him, his head was stuck in the bonnet of a huge old Soviet
Kamaz
truck. He greeted us with a grunt from somewhere behind the carburettor, but
emerged when he heard our accents. He'd never met a foreigner before but he
approved of us instantly. Tim and I were, apparently, everything that foreigners
should be: young, Russian speaking and adventurous.
