Ulan Ude was the next stop after Chita. I left Alexandra's place around 8 in the morning and went to the train station to get a marshrutka (a type of Russian bus) to go to the main road which is quite far from the center. After about 30 minutes ride I arrived to Rudnik Kadala (Chita's suburbs) from where I had another kilometer to walk (through a very miserably looking village).
As I was getting close to the road, a random guy in a car noticed me and asked where I came from and where I was going, so we had a very brief conversation and I kept going. I got to the road and started my thing. Soon it started to rain (it happens here sometimes - it rains very lightly for few minutes and then it's over - weather changes really fast in Siberia), so I've put on my rain jacket , backpack cover and kept hitchhiking. About 10 minutes later I saw a car 50 meters behind me, so I went to check if maybe he stopped for me. And indeed he did, it was the same guy I had the conversation with, few minutes earlier.
So I got into the car and I learned that Kostia (that was his name) will drive me straight to Ulan Ude - my first direct ride in Russia, yeey!
Kostia was a marketing or sales director for one of the local beverage companies and he was really happy that he could help me out. On the way he told me a lot of things about the region, he showed me one of the local summer hot spots - a pretty nice lake surrounded by forest and plenty of people in front of their tents having BBQ. On the way, we also saw some fire in forests - due to very hot summer, it's not very unlikely here. It's constantly 30-35 degrees.
When we arrived in Buryatia, he also invited me to try Boozy, local specialty - large dumplings with meat and a little bit of some bouillon inside - they look like a bigger version of Georgian khinkali. And they are really delicious!
Buryatia was very different from Zabaykalsky Krai. Forests and green fields were replaced by never ending, dusty steppes and later mountains.
The city of Ulan Ude covers quite vast area, suburbs full of wooden houses start way before the actual city begins.
Kostia gave me the ride straight to the center, to Lenin's square. He left me just few meters away from huge Lenin's head sculpture - the largest in the world as they say.
I am not sure if it's always like this, but that day it was super windy and with all those steppes surrounding the city, it was very dusty. After few seconds on the main square, my phone was all grey/white because of all that dust and it was slightly difficult to breath.
Again I started searching for wifi to see if maybe I got any responses on couchsurfing. And I did, Igor, a local Buryat guy agreed to host me even though he already had a couple of visitors from Turkey.
Igor gave me his phone number, but since I still haven't got my Russian sim card I had to ask random people on the street for a phone. And again it worked - Russians are usually very helpful. I called him and we set up the meeting in a bar where he was going with his other guests. On the way to the bar I got to see a bit of the city, I've seen a gang of homeless dogs (there are plenty of homeless dogs in Russia) and I've met a Buryat girl who spoke Polish - she used to have a Polish professor at the University.
I was the first one to arrive at the bar, but soon Igor showed up with his Turkish guests and some other couchsurfers, including an English guy who recommended me some nice hosts in Irkutsk. We had few beers and chatted a little. The Turkish girl spent last month in some remote part of northern Mongolia, where she worked on her Ph.D research if I'm correct. She is an anthropologist and she works with some local reindeers herders tribe - it was super interesting to hear about that. Around midnight we got back to Igor's place. And in he morning after the breakfast it was time to leave the capital of Buryatia after a very brief visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment