Ulan Ude, at 6 in the morning, with a bit of rain around and thin clothing on, is just about the last place you’d want to be. Especially after being woken up unaccountably early (just before 5) to get off the train. Just about everybody, after getting dressed and making sure our bags were where we’d left them, went back to sleep for a bit before the train actually arrived.
I’m sure Ulan Ude is quite a nice town, really, but we weren’t too enthusiastic at the time. And our feelings intensified when we had to put the bags we had only just got back into a separate taxi to meet us at our destination, which was also a homestay.
Someone had to go in the taxi with the bags and Liam volunteered.
‘Goodbye Liam’.
‘It was nice to meet you.’
‘Thanks for taking one for the team.’
And so forth.
Expectations of a great story to tell were dashed when everyone and all bags arrived safely at the house, which was really just an entirely regular home, in a dirt alley, containing an entirely regular Russian woman who had laid out a most irregular breakfast for us. Oat porridge with raisins and apricots stirred through, bread rounds with cheese melted on, sponge cake and very hot tea.
We all had our fill and then went directly back to bed, at 7am, and woke up about 10.30am.
There was a bit of an interesting arrangement going on where the added-on part of the house which Dinesh, Presh and Shanika and ourselves were staying in had a shower of it’s own but the shower was in the ‘lounge room’ in between all three rooms. Yes, your mental image at home is correct.
The shower was a glass box standing on the edge of a small room, with three other bedrooms leading off that same room. We were contemplating some type of shower roster which would allow us all to get clean without anyone interrupting anyone else getting changed when the problem was solved by there being no hot water left, and solved once more by it being time to go meet Chu and Luan downtown for the orientation walk.
As one suspects, Ulan Ude is actually quite a nice town; a bit more developed than Irkutsk, less buildings halfway-built and less postmodern footpaths. The gigantic head-statue of Lenin is really something to see. And so is the Fun Run around the block which was beginning – and ending – just as we walked through.
Lunch was very warm and tasty food at a great price – 180 roubles for mashed potato with stir-fry on, cabbage soup with sour cream, a small bowl of salad and some sweet cottage cheese pancakes.
Everybody wanted to go see the monastery so Dunya took us down to the bus station and negotiated a price for a minivan ride out to Ivolginsk, which is maybe 25km from town. 1200 roubles for all of us there and back, and no waiting around for (or on) the bus. For some reason the inside of the minivan was covered in studded purple velour, with a diamond pattern on the roof.
But then again why not?
The Ivolginsk Monastery is supposed to be one of the main centres of Buddhism in Russia; but thankfully it doesn’t look like a defunct building turned into a museum. With all the out-buildings and people walking back and forth you can see that it actually still is a working operation. And the fact that it’s directly in the middle of nowhere, with superb scenery all around, just makes it more cosmic.
Outside the gates there are many local women selling various handcrafted souvenirs; I couldn’t help myself and bought an embossed leather passport holder to replace my chaddy plastic government-issued one for 200 roubles. Back in town the brief spell of afternoon warmth and sunshine was draining away; we were at a loose end as to what exactly one does in the afternoon in Ulan Ude. However some useful person had spotted an Irish bar, so we occupied their largest table and hatched conspiracy theories as to why so many people were wanting to talk to Dinesh in the street. After a brief protest by Andy about the lack of any form of Guinness – something along the lines of “Take Down The Shamrocks!” – we settled in for the afternoon.
Dinner time came and we walked back up the street to a restaurant we’d spotted on the way down in the morning. The beer I ordered with dinner was only a 500mL serving but the jug it came in made it look a fair bit larger. Which was briefly entertaining, until my borscht (beetroot soup) came with meat in it, which was not as entertaining. Alice hadn’t ordered an entree, and I had a main coming, so I just waited for my main, after a failed attempt to order cabbage soup of which there apparently was none. Then I ate some of her desert and everything in the garden was lovely once more.
Lack of available ambient temperature led, sadly, to the ditching of a plan for all the boys to go out together back to the Irish pub we’d gone to, then onto some nearby ‘dance clubs’; instead of that we favoured a more gender-inclusive plan of buying another beer or two from the supermarket along with our train food, and taking said by taxi back to our accommodation, drinking said and listening to music off Adam’s laptop which has surprisingly powerful speakers. Unfortunately plan B involved me playing chess with Prashant, and losing at 1 in the morning when we had to get up at 5 to catch our train to Mongolia.
(sigh)
Greg
