From Switzerland to Viet Naam, overland, 2005.

Part Four: The TransSib from Moscow to Beijing -3

Saturday 12th Feb It's Saturday 12th February... somewhere, at least. We passed Irkutsk in the dark, but out of my left window there's the glimmer of sunrise over a huge frozen wasteland. It's flat enough to be a lake, but I'll probably have to wait until the return trip before I find out where Baikal stops and starts. Lake Baikal, I read somewhere, would stretch from Zurich to Paris. That is a BIG lake. ************* Several hours later, but little has changed. Probably only Canada could produce the same consistency, the same subtle variety. Plus que a change.... ************* We've passed a couple of townships with wooden and brick houses in pastel shades of pale blue, green and light orange. But delicately done, not at all just slapped on. The odd separated house looks very self-contained, which I suppose it has to be. We're coming to a built-up area, so I'm off to look for names. ************* We're leaving Ulan Ude, the last stop in Russia. Absolutely on time! Eat your heart out British Rail, virgin on the ridiculous. It's magnificently sunny, but -21C. I got down to film a mother bear and two baby cubs, all three of them frozen, not in ice, but in bronze: what you might expect in brass monkey weather. Eventually the photos should appear online just sorry it will almost certainly have to wait until the end of April. I didn't buy any food on the platform, as I'm going to try the restaurant for lunch - it ought to be Mongolian. Someone (Michael Palin? Clive Anderson?) said it was best to stay away from the Mongolian restaurant car because it was the worst of the 3 on offer: others have said it's OK if you like mutton! And I like mutton! *************** I mentioned Mila's mistaking the Japanese guys for Chinese... a European mistake, I thought. But in the restaurant car (which is still a Russian one and will only change right on the border) I got talking to some Mongolians who ALSO mistook my Japanese companions for Chinese, which I found rather more surprising. The Mongolians are journalists whose Mongolian flight had been cancelled and who therefore decided to take the train... breaking their journey for a day's skiing on Lake Baikal, pulled by reindeer!! One of them says he'll get in touch the next time he covers the UN in Geneva... Our waiter is a young Russian, rather like a comic opera sailor, or Venetian gondolier minus his straw hat. Blue and white hooped T-shirt, 5ft 1 inches tall... and a great punk haircut. The lemon, cucumber, ham and mixed vegetable soup is wonderful: I've ordered another bowl.

************* Russian-Mongolian Border We showed our passports last Tuesday night when we got on the train. Passport time again, as we are about to cross into Mongolia. It's one o'clock Saturday, Moscow time, but the sun has already set. Mongolian time should be more realistic. ************ It's 3 a.m. Swiss time on Sunday morning. The sun looks like 10 a.m. local time, behind misty clouds, which seems about right.... the time, not the clouds, as they have very little vegetation or terrain with which to be mysterious. I'm looking at... well, you can't really call them herds of cattle, because they are walking single file along invisible paths which they obviously know very well. We've come across the odd human being, often completely alone miles away from any sign of habitation. I've been wondering if they have somehow camouflaged their yurts, but we've now seen several solitary figures way off in the middle of snowfields. No sledges, just walking.... ************* The restaurant car is now decidedly Mongolian and merits a piece all to itself. A quick wash and brush up, then it's lunchtime. Mongolian Mealtime All the things that people have said about the Mongolian Restaurant Car on the TransSib look like being disproved. Palin's and Anderson's body language suggested some form of very 'greasy spoon'. Well... The decoration (there'll be a photo or two) is SO kitsch that it's perfect. And my meal has been 'created' on my plate to appeal to the eye. So unexpected that I'm going to take a photo before I tuck in.... I can get no explanation from anyone as to why we stopped for just 3 minutes at Ulan Bator, the national capital. The restaurant cars were switched at the border which took some time, but 3 minutes in the capital hardly gave people time to move down the corridors and get off!! The meal was lovely. Hamburger meat that tasted very like ex-Jugoslav 'cevepcici' spiced just right and topped with a poached egg. Salads: mixed green to the left carrot & celery root to the right. HILT beer (Mongolia loves Hilt.... Korea's favourite and No. 1); a fresh rose in a vase and fresh fruit salad. Whenever the train judders, the hanging chimes tinkle gently in the nonexistent wind. There are quivers of arrows and musical instruments on the walls, everything finished in light woods and bamboo. I think this is the only Mongolian meal I'll be able to take this trip, as supper will be ridiculously early because of immigration and customs etc. I'll book my table for the trip back! ************* Leaving Putin Place After my magnificent Mongolian midday meal. They've brought me the Mongolian equivalent of Fernet Branca with a small, thick coffee sweetened with condensed milk. The gentle chimes from the bells,

the warm colours of worked wood and the kind smiles of the restaurant staff have made this a meal that I shall remember for a very long time. I've rarely looked back at the digital photos I've taken, but the couple that I took of my meal would fit very well into a video I made for Nestl years ago: "Cooking for the Camera".... another circle being completed: the camera director of that video was Costa Haralambis, who will be our EU Delegation team leader in Viet Naam. ************* It's just after 1 o'clock local (Mongolian) time... and the landscape has changed! Although it's still -22C/-23C outside, there is very little snow.... just a slight dusting as if there had been a gentle fall a few minutes ago. The colours are reminiscent of the highlands of Scotland after a particularly hot summer. Yellows and washed out greens, russets and browns, with bowling spheres of tumbleweed that I'd only ever seen as establishing shots in Hollywood and Spaghetti Westerns. But the most surprising thing(s) that I can see is/are animal droppings. I can't see any animals at the moment, but the abundant piles of 'horsemadirty' as my grandmother used to call it would have made me a large fortune from my stepfather, who paid me 6d a bucketful to bring it from the Memorial Park to Benedictine Rd in Cheylesmore (and, I found out later from my mother, that he was unable to smoke for the next couple of days because money was tight and he kept his bargain with me). Earlier I saw members of the deer family, I THINK I saw yaks, but I'm not certain, because they were too far away and I was unable to get the camera out in time to look at them through the zoom. There were horses that looked like Shetland ponies, ponies like Shetland ponies and ... and... ...completely out of context, I've just remembered the last stop just before I came here for lunch...... ....I'd wandered along the length of the train and, when the signal came to get back on board, I waved to the attendant of my sleeping car, he waved back, then I got onto the train directly into the Restaurant car. It's pretty obvious now that another attendant had waved back to me, because just after I'd ordered lunch 'my' attendant came rushing into the restaurant car and almost skidded to a halt beside me. 'Our' attendant had checked my 3 Japanese companions and was obviously worried that I had not got back onto the train. He arrived (I've probably invented the 'fact' that he was out of breath), tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the 'thumbs up' sign and left me to my meal... I won't do that to him again! I really thought that they'd seen me. I'm jabbering away to myself, still looking out of the window; it's Scottish Highlands, it's Devon Moors.... earth is a mixture of desert sand that seems to shine through the low cut (low nibbled?) grass. ***************** I've seen several skeletons along the way.... not carcasses, because they have been picked ivory white, either by the wind, the cold or beasties that live on carrion... probably all three. They look somehow very.... elegant. The other thing that's disconcerting is/are the telegraph poles. Well, MY generation called them telegraph poles; I suppose they're telePHONE poles

nowadays. They are much lower than the ones in Europe, keeping us constant company about 20 metres away. But the really horror-comic thing is finding birds -huge birds- sitting on top of them... so large and heavy-looking that it's as if they've pile-driven the wooden poles into the ground. Depending on the angle, they sometimes look like vultures, at other times like eagles.... but they are HUGE! With their wingspan, heaven knows how they land on those poles, but they do. And just now, I saw others sitting together (well, kind of half squatting) on the ground. Squatting/standing with other birds, definitely of different species, very close together, without any sign of aggression between them. So at some stage during their season they don't attack each other, because they're just THERE. Like the (apocryphal?) stories about African animals at the drinking hole? An immense desert, with animal droppings everywhere. Which means that there must be far more to eat than I had imagined, no matter what time of the year it is. 'Course, what I haven't mentioned is the sun! All day we've had the most wonderful, clear sunshine. With light like this, with views like these, with the vast open spaces and utter self-reliance of the individuals that I've watched making their certain, solitary journeys on foot, this is somewhere that I could imagine living. But that's probably the warmth of the train and the warmth of the after-lunch digestive alcohol pushing the sentimentality up a notch. ************* Mongolia and so-forth As we cross the border from Mongolia into China, you can see the border, the area of no-man's-land, very clearly marked.... you can see it distinctly by the lights of the train. Because there are no other lights around at all. Absolutely pitch black. Staring out into this darkness, I can suddenly make out a dark diamond on the ground... a diamond of Chinese soldiers standing to attention, saluting the train. As we move slowly along, I can make out individual soldiers, standing at attention, at 10 yard intervals for about 200yds, also saluting the train. As far as they are concerned, they're standing in total darkness, just outside the overspill of light from our carriages, as if they ALMOST don't want to be seen. They look immaculate. Incidentally, all the officials -Chinese and Mongolian- look as if they have been chosen for 'presentability', ready for photo opportunities. Clipping tickets, searching under beds, handing out immigration or customs forms, or flipping through passports, they are all making an effort to be pleasant. They seem to have been chosen as examples of what 'foreigners' might find attractive. And their language abilities are surprisingly good as well. ************* We're now switching down to a gauge that is 9 1/2 cms narrower than the Russian and Mongolian one. It looks as if the process will be very similar to that of a week ago in Brest. But the train sheds, the turntables, other equipment -and the actual bogies themselves- seem to be in much better nick, much more modern, than the stuff in Belarus. And much safer as well. The workers don't have to go under the wagons like they did in Brest. They have to check underneath, but it's more like a modern garage, where everything seems to have been mechanically and electronically upgraded.... the workers

appear to be there more to check that everything is going as planned; I would imagine there's much less danger of lopped off fingers down there. ************* Our attendant has cleared it for the 4 of us to get down and photograph and film. And, as each of the carriages is hoisted individually a couple of metres in the air, he opened the doors at the end of the carriage, so my Japanese companions and I were able to film some quite impressive footage. ************** 14th February In spite of the work in progress, I got a good night's sleep. After all the excitement, and finally being accepted onto Chinese soil, our attendant came along with free tickets for this morning's breakfast AND an early lunch in the Chinese restaurant. Breakfast is 2 boiled eggs, bread & butter and strawberry jam and tea. Just enough.... I will be happy to have the lunch between 10a.m. and 1p.m. local time, before we arrive in Beijing... if we're on time, at 13 minutes past two. ************** 14th February later morning All morning, since we've been in China, there's been a thick fog. So thick that I can actually film directly into the sun and get a very watery orb. Everything is appearing and disappearing in the mist, rather like those Japanese and Chinese paintings... but it's even more reminiscent of the very early 60s, climbing to the top of Primrose Hill and looking out into an industrially foggy London... an industrial smog, rather than natural fog. ************** It was a whole morning of ever-deepening yellow, tinged with green. How many years has it been since I've seen a real pea-souper? The Great Wall was mystical, but more TinTin than FuManchu. All too quickly we were in Beijing Station. ************** The 4 of us took 'last handshake' photos in front of our carriage window, then the Japanese joined the rest of the quickly departing crowd, leaving me clutching my suitcase, my haversack and camera bag, smiling winningly at anyone and everyone who looked as if they might be there to meet an ageing voyager ..... but no-one came. ************** Other people from a later train were being met in the underpass, but still noone looking for me. At the enquiry desk, all they wanted to do was shunt me off to a variety of hotels, so I decided to look for a phone box that might accept my credit card. I staggered out of the far too narrow security doorway to be met by a sea of faces.... and one very clearly printed card 'ROGER JOHN WORROD'. And luckily I had the right glasses on ! Rising panic safely quelled. The card wasn't held by the 'Clio' that I was expecting, but by her co-worker 'Ivy' and a driver. In the car we had a laugh about the similarity of the present situation and what

had happened with Mila in Moscow, then they showed me to my room here in the Red Wall Hotel. I am now sitting on the edge of my bed, vodka and Sprite in hand, wondering if the motion-sickness will settle down before dinnertime. TransSib completed, but Ha Noi is still 4 1/2 days away. I wonder when I'll be able to transcribe all this........ hope it's before I get back home in April.....