Siberia, Part One
Finally, I have got round to posting about Siberia. Yay me. And so:
After 2 years of planning, £3500 worth of fund-raising, two 4 hour flights and a 5 hour bus journey, I finally arrived in the Altai Republic, the area of Siberia I visited. Here is news: It wasn’t cold.
Well, we’d arrived at the capital of the Altai, where we had to wade through the red tape of Russian beaurocracy. Soon a problem was discovered - the Russians didn’t actually want us to go to where we wanted to go. See, the problem was this: the area of the Altai where we’d planned to go, around the foot of Mount Belukha (the highest mountain in Siberia) was technically over the border (into Kazakhstan). The official border is the Belukha mountain range, but obviously that is quite hard to police, so there is another border a hundred or so miles away where there is space for guns and things. So, technically we wanted to cross the Russian border, although we weren’t actually leaving Russia. The Russian government didn’t like this. Eventually, after two days of negotiations (and presumably months before that) our translators managed to get some border passes for us. Yay!
Waiting around outside the postoffice.
Goats! And so, we set off on a nine hour coach journey into the mountains. On the way we bought a giant cheese! This was Proper Siberia. Before, we’d had towns and tarmac and telephone wires! Now, we had moved on to the camp with the Last Toilet Seats and rickety bridges that we weren’t allowed to be driven over.
On of the objects of our expedition was to help the local area. It turned out that they didn’t actually need that much help, so we painted the school gym. The local village was very strange. It was made up of little wooden hut-like buildings, with chickens and pigs and cows roaming free, and then you’d walk round the back of the hut and there’s an enormous sattelite dish!
The village (Tyungur)
The gym we painted (after) During the project, we were camping at the base camp that had actual toilet seats and I had an Adventure. One day, we went down to an island on the river to go swimming. When we were there, the clouds started rolling in, as they do, and suddenly thunder rolled! We were on an island in the middle of the river and to get back to the camp we had to wade across the river, climb about fifteen metres up an almost vertical bank and walk for half an hour on a non-existent path through the woods. ‘Oh noes!’ We thought. ‘The washing!’ And so, off we ran. As we scrambled up the hill, my flip-flop broke. I started limping and got further and further behind until it was only me and my teacher, Mr P. Did I mention the wood was full of giant ravenous biting ants? It was. He gave me his sandle and bravely strode on barefoot (crazy man). I followed him, quite slowly due to the six-sizes-too-big shoe attached to my foot. Soon, we reached the edge of the wood. This was slightly worrying, as the campsite was in the wood. Mr P told me not to worry, we’ll just keep walking and eventually we’d reach the village or something (calmly ignoring the fact that the village was on the other side of the river). So, we continued to walk. Suddenly I spotted a bright orange thing through the trees. It was the tent of one of our leaders! (We had two leaders, as they couldn’t find a woman with winter experience, and we had to have a woman for our Women’s Problems.) The tent was about 200 yards directly down the hill into the woods. Mr P decided to push a path through the gooseberry bushes towards the tent, but soon we met a fence. Did we follow the fence round? Try to find the entrance, maybe a side-gate? No! Let us climb over the rusty wire! I now have a scar on my forearm where the skin ripped.
Sophie's bright orange tent, not in the woods but bright orange nevertheless. I appear to have run out of space, so this will be continued in another post. By the way, I have absolutely no idea what's going on with the spacing of this entry. Sorry for the eye confusion.
Well, we’d arrived at the capital of the Altai, where we had to wade through the red tape of Russian beaurocracy. Soon a problem was discovered - the Russians didn’t actually want us to go to where we wanted to go. See, the problem was this: the area of the Altai where we’d planned to go, around the foot of Mount Belukha (the highest mountain in Siberia) was technically over the border (into Kazakhstan). The official border is the Belukha mountain range, but obviously that is quite hard to police, so there is another border a hundred or so miles away where there is space for guns and things. So, technically we wanted to cross the Russian border, although we weren’t actually leaving Russia. The Russian government didn’t like this. Eventually, after two days of negotiations (and presumably months before that) our translators managed to get some border passes for us. Yay!
Waiting around outside the postoffice.
Goats! And so, we set off on a nine hour coach journey into the mountains. On the way we bought a giant cheese! This was Proper Siberia. Before, we’d had towns and tarmac and telephone wires! Now, we had moved on to the camp with the Last Toilet Seats and rickety bridges that we weren’t allowed to be driven over.
On of the objects of our expedition was to help the local area. It turned out that they didn’t actually need that much help, so we painted the school gym. The local village was very strange. It was made up of little wooden hut-like buildings, with chickens and pigs and cows roaming free, and then you’d walk round the back of the hut and there’s an enormous sattelite dish!
The village (Tyungur)
The gym we painted (after) During the project, we were camping at the base camp that had actual toilet seats and I had an Adventure. One day, we went down to an island on the river to go swimming. When we were there, the clouds started rolling in, as they do, and suddenly thunder rolled! We were on an island in the middle of the river and to get back to the camp we had to wade across the river, climb about fifteen metres up an almost vertical bank and walk for half an hour on a non-existent path through the woods. ‘Oh noes!’ We thought. ‘The washing!’ And so, off we ran. As we scrambled up the hill, my flip-flop broke. I started limping and got further and further behind until it was only me and my teacher, Mr P. Did I mention the wood was full of giant ravenous biting ants? It was. He gave me his sandle and bravely strode on barefoot (crazy man). I followed him, quite slowly due to the six-sizes-too-big shoe attached to my foot. Soon, we reached the edge of the wood. This was slightly worrying, as the campsite was in the wood. Mr P told me not to worry, we’ll just keep walking and eventually we’d reach the village or something (calmly ignoring the fact that the village was on the other side of the river). So, we continued to walk. Suddenly I spotted a bright orange thing through the trees. It was the tent of one of our leaders! (We had two leaders, as they couldn’t find a woman with winter experience, and we had to have a woman for our Women’s Problems.) The tent was about 200 yards directly down the hill into the woods. Mr P decided to push a path through the gooseberry bushes towards the tent, but soon we met a fence. Did we follow the fence round? Try to find the entrance, maybe a side-gate? No! Let us climb over the rusty wire! I now have a scar on my forearm where the skin ripped.
Sophie's bright orange tent, not in the woods but bright orange nevertheless. I appear to have run out of space, so this will be continued in another post. By the way, I have absolutely no idea what's going on with the spacing of this entry. Sorry for the eye confusion.