We both needed space and mostly travelled several kilometres apart, catching up only when we stopped for meal breaks and at uncertain-looking intersections. We also made a habit of cycling into villages together. This gave us extra kicking power in the likely event of a dog attack. It also helped when asking directions from locals.
We rode into a village on the first of June, the first day of summer and three days after leaving Omsk. It was called Chistovo, but our map located it almost twenty kilometres away. The main street was a continuation of the road we had arrived on – a single lane of worn bitumen with wide, potholed dirt shoulders for overtaking. It stretched only a few hundred metres through the village with a dozen or so log houses scattered on either side.
Fields dotted with workers and heavy machinery reached for miles around, but the only signs of life from within the village were a few barking dogs and a very old man sitting on an uneven bench outside his house. We pedalled up to him. He half struggled to his feet and half tried to wave his stick at us. We left the bikes and walked cautiously over to him, map in hand.
‘Um, could you please tell us the way to Yaminka?’ Tim began.
‘Eh!’ he said sharply, peering with bright eyes. He’d obviously noticed the accent. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Avstraliya,’ I replied, reluctantly. This was going to be another one of those conversations.
‘Eh!’ he said again, looking us slowly up and down. We waited uncomfortably for almost a full minute while he considered this information. Then he finally smiled. ‘Austria! Well I never.’
‘Ah … Yes.’ Tim let it pass and tried again. ‘Do you, by any chance, know the way to Yaminka?’
‘Eh!’ He turned his head slightly and thrust a wrinkled ear towards us. ‘Where?’
‘YAMINKA!’
‘Eh!’ He settled back down, looking puzzled and shaking his head slowly for a good few minutes, before he finally looked up with a cunning smile, as though he’d caught on to our game. ‘There’s no Yaminka here. Where are you really from?’
Now it was our turn to be confused. ‘We’ve got to get to Yaminka,’ I tried again, showing him the map. ‘It’s supposed to be only twenty kilometres from here. Do you know which of the roads we should take out of this village?’
He studied the page closely for several minutes then handed it back to me. I got the distinct feeling that he’d never seen a map in his life.
‘Very good then.’ He smiled confidently. ‘Have a good journey. Goodbye.’
We said goodbye and retreated on our bikes, totally unenlightened. We looked around for somebody else and saw, in a nearby paddock, a gigantic ploughing machine.
The metal monster rumbled along parallel to the road, leaving a vast swath of chewed-up earth and a billowing cloud of dust in its wake. We braked to a halt and waved at the driver. The driver’s arm protruded from a tiny window and waved back vigorously. We waved harder, and so did he. In a final effort, we waved as though we were trying to flag down a passing plane and finally got the desired result. The roar of the motor slackened and the machine grumbled to a ponderous halt. The door opened and the man scrambled several metres down a ladder. He extended his hand with a smile. He was short and skinny but he had a vice-grip handshake. We went through the preliminaries then got down to business.
‘Could you tell us how to get to Yaminka, please?’
‘Hey?’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no Yaminka around here. Do you have a map? Show me where you’re trying to go.’
We handed him our tattered map and pointed out the road we were looking for. He scratched his head and muttered for a minute then flipped a quick glance at the front cover before looking at us. ‘Where the hell did you get this map?’
We told him and he snorted derisively. He turned back to the map. ‘The roads are all marked wrong,’ he announced. ‘But I think you’re looking for Ishimka. It’s across the border and you can get there …’ He paused for a moment, as though trying to weigh up our competence. ‘No one from around here does though because there’s not really a road.’
Tim and I looked at each other and laughed. ‘Oh well, at least there won’t be any snow this time.’
He went on to explain directions. ‘Take that road there, about four kilometres to Ribinsk,’ he said, pointing. We looked at the road then back at the map. The village was unmarked, of course. ‘Then take a left, then a right, then go about two kilometres around the village until you see a little track going off to the right past an old shed.’ I nodded and Tim looked at me to make sure I’d got it. ‘Then you just head east for about fifteen kilometres. The track doesn’t continue, but there’s quite a few other tracks out there on the steppe, so good luck!’ We shook hands and began to move off. ‘Oh, by the way,’ the man said, ‘where are you going?’
‘To China!’ Tim replied, brightly.
The man snorted derisively again, checked himself and laughed. He walked back towards his huge machine muttering to himself. Probably evil things about stupid, crazy Australians.
Halfway to Ribinsk a huge cloudbank appeared on the horizon. By the time we’d reached the turnoff it was pouring. The hard clay track had become perilously slippery and to make matters worse, there were a dozen people sheltering from the downpour under the old shed that we’d been instructed to keep an eye out for.
I slipped in the mud and fell first, rather than Tim, for a change. The onlookers who had been staring at us agape cracked up laughing. Tim looked round to see what they were laughing at and he came down, too. The laughter doubled, then it doubled again as we struggled to our feet, smeared in red, claggy muck. The shed was about seventy metres away, just too close to comfortably ignore the audience. I slipped over again and swore. I looked over at Tim and noticed that he was actually having fun.
‘We should go over and charge them five roubles a head for the show!’ he suggested, happily. My foul mood gave way in the face of Tim’s good spirits and I laughed, too. That’d be about right, I thought ruefully. Tim’s always more comfortable being covered in dirt and muck than I am …
We slipped over a dozen more times before the audience started getting bored. The road was now sticking to our tyres, and our mudguards and brakes were so jammed with gunk that the wheels wouldn’t turn. We made slow progress, stopping every five minutes to scrape away the mud with sticks but, luckily, the rain didn’t last long and the road eventually dried out.
The next day the real fun started. The track we’d been following petered out completely and left us facing a broad, flat plain. We followed a cattle pad through some long grass for a few hundred metres then climbed a low ridge and took a good look out over the surrounds.
The view was the most expansive we’d seen for months. Looking north, I could still make out regular clumps of birch forest scattering the plain. Looking south, pale brown grass merged into pastel blue sky on the shimmering horizon. There was not a tree to be seen all the way to Kazakhstan.
We were on the border of the endless grassy steppe, and precisely … I looked at the map for a moment. We were precisely … I handed the map to Tim. ‘Which way do you reckon it is to this Ishimka place?’
He studied the map for a few moments then handed it back to me with a grin. ‘Yep, I definitely agree, mate. You’re spot on. Amazing view, isn’t it? And by the way, which way did you say we go from here?’
We fiddled with our compasses for a while, then set our sights on a distant patch of forest. We followed another cattle pad that became increasingly substantial until we decided that it might have been a vehicle track at some stage in the past. Where there’d been vehicles, there must have been people, and maybe a nearby village, too!
The first track joined another, and although it wound round a fair bit, it seemed to be heading generally north-east. I peered at the map while Tim had a better look around.
‘Just thought you might want to know that the forest we were aiming for has completely disappeared,’ he told me, amused.
; ‘That’s okay, I guess,’ I replied, measuring distances on the map. ‘Even if we don’t find Ishimka we just have to keep on heading vaguely east and we’ll bump into a real road somewhere in the next hundred kays or so.’
We pedalled along until an intersection left us choosing north or south. We flipped a coin and rode south. At the next intersection we turned east, then north and then south again. It was great fun and we had it all to ourselves. Besides the long forgotten tracks, there was not a trace of civilisation to be seen. We’d both lightened up immensely since leaving Omsk, and I wondered whether Tim’s laughter was a sign that he was starting to come to terms with the loss of his friend.
Eventually, we saw a boiler-shaped water tower rising above the treetops in the distance. With all our turns and diversions we must have cycled at least thirty kilometres but we had no idea how far we’d come in a straight line, or exactly which direction we’d been heading in. We might have found Ishimka, but then again we might be somewhere different altogether. As long as we hadn’t inadvertently crossed the border into Kazakhstan, everything would be fine.
We rode towards the tower. Soon a few houses and buildings came into view. We were approaching the village from behind, and I guessed that this was definitely not the main route into town. We saw a group of kids playing soccer on the street nearby and managed to hide behind a fence before they saw us. Tim stayed put and set up the video camera while I prepared to ride over to them.
They didn’t see me until I was quite close. One little girl, seeing the look of amazement on an older boy’s face, turned around to see me riding straight towards her. She screamed and ran away. I pulled up, and the rest of the group stood stock still, looking at me in astonishment. Their ball rolled into a puddle, unnoticed. I cleared my throat, a little self-consciously, and prepared to break the silence. ‘Um … I wonder, can you tell me what village this is?’
They all took a shocked step backwards: It talks! Then a few of the older kids held a brief, whispered conference. The younger kids stared even harder, some starting to look a little afraid. It talks funny too, they must have been thinking. I had to remind myself that my bike was probably the weirdest thing that any of them had ever seen. It was almost certain that none of them would have encountered a westerner before, either. I wondered for a moment whether their reaction would have been much different if I’d landed in a UFO.
The whispering ceased and one of the boys stepped cautiously forward. ‘This is Ishimka,’ he said slowly, an urgent question burning in his eyes. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Oh,’ I answered happily, ‘we’re from Australia but we’ve cycled here from Petrozavodsk in Karelia.’ Another silence. Some of the kids would not have heard of these other places.
‘Tim, come here,’ I yelled back over my shoulder. Tim trundled up, and the kids seemed to forget me as they surged forward to see him riding. I overheard some of their excited whispers as they scrambled past me.
‘It’s amazing. Where do you think the motor is?’
It didn’t take long before most of the kids had overcome their nervousness and were swamping us with questions. The crowd was growing too. In less than ten minutes, the group had swelled from ten to about thirty – every kid in the village must have come running, it seemed.
We grabbed a couple of the braver-looking of our new friends and plonked them on the bike seats. Ten-year-old legs strained hopelessly in an effort to reach the pedals until the kids were lying horizontally, clutching the handlebars and staring with excited eyes at the sky. We asked them to take us to the village shop and jogged along, pushing the bikes and holding them upright while the two thrilled little drivers zigzagged crazily down the road.
We quickly finished our shopping and stepped outside to find that the crowd had grown larger still. There were big kids now, too. The local teenagers had pulled up, packed onto the back of two ancient motorbikes. They were trying their best to remain aloof while quizzing the crowd of animated littlies as to what was going on. One of the village men had come down as well. He’d been briefed by his son, and now thrust his way through the crowd to invite us back for a cup of tea. His name was Vladimir, and as he walked us to his house we asked him whether Ishimka got many travellers.
‘We did have one once,’ he replied, scratching his beard thoughtfully. ‘About seven years ago, I think it was. A Russian, of course. He was walking from Omsk to Lake Baikal.’ Tim and I looked at each other, amazed by such a feat, and by the fact that so few people had ever passed through. ‘Nobody here has ever met a real westerner before, though,’ he added with a grin.
We were ushered through the gate into a clean-swept courtyard. Most of the kids who tried to swarm in around us were pushed firmly back out again. One who did get through was Ilya, the boy who’d steered my bike to the shop and who’d firmly manoeuvred himself into position as my new best friend. He was small for his age but a bundle of energy. He bounced around all over the place, firing off questions then changing the topic before I had a hope of answering. Another kid who joined us was Tolya, Vladimir’s son, who’d had the foresight to get his dad before we could be whisked off elsewhere.
We sat for an hour drinking tea and talking with Vladimir, his wife Tatyana and a few of their friends. All the while there was an excited buzz coming from outside. Through a small window by the table, I could see rows of little fingers curled over the top of the high front fence, straining to lift heads up and over for another glance at the mysterious Avstralitzi and their weird travelling machines. Several other adults arrived, bringing small gifts for our hosts, then pulling them aside for whispered conversations. I realised that negotiations were taking place as to who would put us up for the night. I conferred quickly with Tim. We hadn’t really planned on staying, but Ishimka was shaping up to be an amazing experience and the chance to stay seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Besides, it didn’t seem as though we had much of a say in the matter.
Vladimir helped wheel our bikes into his shed, then reluctantly handed us over to the crowd of kids waiting impatiently outside the gate. They were disappointed to see us reappear without our bikes, but we assured them that we’d bring them out again in the morning. Tim took his camera and was hauled off somewhere by one group of kids, while Ilya and half a dozen of his buddies grabbed me and we all headed off to the village lake. It was a couple of kilometres away but the kids with worn out shoes, grubby clothes and bright white smiles possessed incredible energy. They never walked anywhere, it seemed. If they were going somewhere, they ran.
We reached the lake in no time. The children gathered to point out a family of beautiful swans floating gracefully among olive-green waterlilies about 200 metres from the shore. I admired the perfect image for a moment, then looked down to find that each eager little kid had produced a slingshot and was racing to load it up, anxious to be the first to show off their sharp-shooting skills. The first stone – Ilya’s I think it was – landed with a splash about ten metres short of the nearest swan. Appreciative Oos and Aahs came from the rest of the kids and I realised with relief that the swans were probably just out of range. A dozen more stones splashed near the centre of the lake and the swans disdainfully cruised away.
Then it was my turn to have a go. I pulled back carefully, only half as far as the experts around me had done, then released the sling with a whoosh. The elastic smacked painfully into my thumb and the rock bounced away on the ground. I swore in English and sucked my thumb. All the kids laughed and wanted to learn the word I’d used. My incompetence with the slingshot meant that it was time for an impromptu coaching session.
We jogged in fits and bursts back to the village and held a dozen sprint races along the way. By virtue of my longer legs, I won the first few, but the days of riding hadn’t prepared me for speed, and when they started imposing handicaps I was well and truly outdone. Someone suggested arm-wrestling and we all hunkered down in the dust outside the village to test our manly mettle. It was two of them against one of me.
With a spark of inspiration, I introduced them to the art of thumb-wrestling. The game had never been seen before in this part of Russia and they battled fiercely against each other for an hour, enjoying the novelty and giving me a well-earned rest.
We returned to the village as the herd of village cows was brought home from the plains by a boy on horseback. He drove them towards the main street, flicked his whip a couple of times, then left. I watched in amazement as fifty cows ambled along the village streets, each animal heading back to its own house for milking.
My gang allowed me to return home for dinner, but only for a little while. No sooner had I finished eating and started to think of settling down for a relaxed evening of conversation and vodka than they started banging at the door. This time both Tim and I were enlisted to spend the evening hours on a bumpy, muddy field playing a sprawling game of no-rules soccer.
We returned to our hosts after dark and learned a little about life in the village and how it had changed for the worse since the days of communism. In turn, we told them of our lives: on the bikes, and back home, half a world away in Australia.
We finally made it to bed at around 3 a.m. I smiled as I thought back over the events of the day. It made me realise how privileged and lucky we were to be here experiencing a life and a culture that few westerners even knew existed. Yet, at the same time, how easy would it really be to get here? With a few thousand dollars to spare, I could get a visa in Australia and reach Ishimka within a few weeks, at most.
Off The Rails Page 13