Rolling through Russia part 4: Arriving to Chita after 3 gruelling days on the road

After Khabarovsk it was time for a real challenge. My next goal was Chita, a city located around 2200 km from Khabarovsk. I knew that I obviously wouldn't be able to make this in one day, so I planned to do it in two... But if there is anything that I've learned during those few days, it's that there is no point of planning anything while hitchhiking in this part of Russia.

I left Khabarovsk around 8.30. Sergey - my host, gave me the ride out of the city and I started hitchhiking right after he left. The first ride was easy. After around 15 minutes, a guy working as some kind of a courier picked me up and we went together till Birobidzhan. And that's the point when real Siberian hitchhiking began.

Birobidzhan is around 200 km from Khabarovsk and over 2000 km from Chita. The problem about hitchhiking there, is that there is one car passing every 20-30 minutes. There is veeery little traffic, and what's even worse, I was waiting at the intersection where great majority of those very few cars was turning left towards the city...

I spent there a looot of time, at some point I just stopped watching the time and I got so frustrated that I decided to dry my gi and t-shirts which were still wet from the laundry I did the day before. Weather was perfect for that, sun, not a single cloud, and around 30-35 degrees.

What made hitchhiking there even worse, was shit load of all kind of flies and mosquitos. I have never in my life seen so many insects in one place. Even if would like to, I couldn't stay still for few seconds...

But some 2 or 3 hours later, a truck finally stopped. Vania - my next driver, was a typical dude, that makes you cross the street to the other side immediately, when you see him walking towards you. He was a big, bold guy with several scars and several teeth missing. But I didn't think twice, I just hopped in and we left.

The ride was OK. Vania was super excited about having a foreigner in his truck and he was exchanging voice messages with his friends all the time. He was going to Yakutsk. At certain moment he even offered me to go with him. As much as I would love to, cause I would really like to visit that city I had to say no - 30 days is not much for Russia and I had to stick to my plans. At that point I really hoped to arrive to the Yakutsk/Chita intersection, which would leave me with some 1000 km to go.

On the way we stopped in few 'Cafes'. I had several Russian 'pierozki', which is a kind of a bun with meat inside. And everything was going perfect until the late evening, when Vania started doing his power naps... Around midnight I began to fall asleep. I woke up around 2 or 3 o'clock, and what Vania was doing was crazy - he was driving for few kilometers and then he was stopping in the middle of the road to take a short nap (no freaking idea why he wouldn't take few hours of proper sleep instead). After several of such naps, which were getting longer and longer I decided to call it a day, I said good bye to Vania and pitched my tent in a forest around 100 m from the route.

The first night in a tent in Russia was OK. It wasn’t cold, no bears, no drunk Russians bothering me, the only thing that didn’t go perfect was the fact that I overslept – damn this “snooze” button. I planned to leave very early, around 6-7 and I ended up leaving at 9-10. I still believed that with a bit of luck I I could make it to Chita that day, but soon I realized that 1200km is too much – at least on that route.

I got the first ride of the day after around 40-60 minutes of waiting. The first truck got me some 70 km further. I waited for the next one another 30 minutes or so. This time I went a little further and I finally reached that Yakutsk intersection.

Interesting fact – in that part of Russia, there are many “portable” gas stations. There are trucks or vans with big tanks parked on some service areas and they operate as regular gas stations. My drivers used them twice on the way.

At the Yakutsk intersection I already knew that there was no chance I could make it to Chita that day. But after around another hour I finally got a longer ride. Oleg from Novosibirsk was going to Ulan Ude if I am not wrong, but he made it clear right away that he was not going to arrive it to Chita that day. Still, it was a fine ride, Oleg was a super cool guy and he had a nice car ! Eventually it wasn’t an old Japanese/Chinese truck but a nice Volvo, with a steering wheel on the left side and not broken window (which is really rare in these parts of Russia – there are small rocks flying all over the place – Siberian routes…) and it had amortized seat, which is a real blessing on those bumpy roads.

Around 8 or 9 we reached Amazar – the destination of the day for Oleg. And it wasn’t bad for me – there was a nice river where I could pitch my tent! Before leaving, Oleg gave me a lighter (no idea why I didn’t have one) and a pack of cookies, plus handful of candies – awesome, cause actually I had nothing to eat and there was no store anywhere close.

From that point I had a choice – either try to get another ride (not very likely – it was getting dark and there was no traffic whatsoever!) or spend a night in a fairly nice place and start early in the morning – the second option won.

The night was ok, slightly cold but ok (here it is fairly warm till late evening and then suddenly it gets really cold in the middle of the night). In the morning I had a quick bath in the river and when I was ready to leave I’ve noticed a small black object on the ground – I found a smartphone... there was an htc fly or something like that lying on the rocks. It was off, no battery and there was no one around to give it to (story on how I tried to return it, still to come).

Getting the first ride of the day took we over an hour and the guy who picked me up and with whom I haven’t exchanged any phrase beside short introduction, took me only 30 km further. But soon after I finally hit the jackpot. A Chechen guy whose name was too difficult to pronounce, stopped and finally I knew I would make it to Chita. He was a fairly nice guy, going from Yakutsk to... Chechenya (looong way to go). At some moment he invited me to go with him to Chechenya. And again as much as I would love to see Kavkaz, I obviously had to say no and stick to my own plan. In the middle of the ride we stopped for a Muslim prayer. And as we were getting closer to Chita I started wondering if maybe I should pass on that City and go straight to Ulan Ude since I already had a ride. If it was earlier, I would probably have done so, but since we wouldn’t make it to Ulan Ude the same day anyway, I eventually decided to visit the capital of Zabaykalsky Krai.

My driver left me around 15km from the city center so I decided to try and get another ride. 3 minutes later I was in a car with 3 guys recovering from rough birthday party, who would take me to the train station.

My first impression about Chita ? The ugliest place so far. I was asking myself why I decided to visit this place.

Soon after arrival I started to desperately search for wifi (they have wifi on train stations - but for some reason it stopped working for me), and as soon as I found one I started sending couch requests. Luckily I got a quick response from Alexandra, she was a super nice person and the first couchsurfer I've met, that didn't speak English. But since I already got used to communicating in Russian, it wasn't a problem at all. Soon after I met Alexandra and left my stuff at her place, we went for a walk and then I realized that I might have been wrong with my first impression. Of course it's not the nicest city ever, but there are plenty of nice old buildings, from the times before the revolution as I was told. Personally I felt like if I was in a model Soviet city, with huge Lenin statue watching over the city (as in all Russian cities). Take a look: