Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Such qualities,' Yefgeny said proudly, 'make you just like the fine young com-
rades of my day!' He looked narrowly at the gathering crowd and added in an un-
dertone, 'They were a big step above listless, lazy young sloths like my son here.'
An impromptu party was thrown. Igor's mother laid the table with platters of
boiled potatoes, jars of pickles and slabs of pork fat while her husband gleefully
produced the bottles of vodka. Shots were downed quickly - much too quickly -
and within minutes my head was buzzing. Yefgeny got rolling drunk and told loud,
carousing stories about his good old communist days, while his wife looked on dis-
approvingly.
It was late at night when the vodka finally dried up. As Igor's guests, we walked
across to his flat on the other side of town to be greeted by his extremely unhappy
wife. She took one look at us, decided that we were drunk bums and launched into
an all-out attack on her husband.
They had a long, loud and almost physical 'domestic'. He was a 'lousy, useless
drunk who would lose his job and let her go hungry' and she was a 'stupid cow
who should mind her own business'. Their baby daughter screamed unnoticed in
another room, and we found our own way quietly into some spare beds. It was a
relief to get back onto the road the following morning and head out of town.
We carried on, going a little further and getting a little fitter with every passing
day. We went through a cold snap and woke one morning to find that the damp in-
sides of our felt-lined Russian gumboots had frozen solid. Neither of us wanted to
get up, and we each lay silently in our sleeping bags, waiting for the other to make
the first move. Finally Tim gave in to hunger pains. But after breakfast, as I was
packing up and getting ready to leave, he told me that it was still too cold for his
toes, and that we would have to stay put until it was warmer. Selfishly, this annoyed
me and we had another fight.
'Come December,' I argued, 'when we're planning on riding into Beijing, it's
gunna be heaps colder than now, and if your toes can't take this weather then we're
simply going to have to finish up earlier. Like October!'
Actually, this was something that I'd thought about a lot. I was missing Nat ter-
ribly - the more so after leaving Petrozavodsk and breaking off the daily contact
on the Internet. The thought of being able to knock a single day off the 'exile' was
the stuff of my dreams.
'No way,' Tim replied, always the calm one during our arguments. 'We'd have
to race the whole way, and we'd miss everything. Besides, there's no way I'm go-
ing back to Australia before my birthday.'
