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Severobaykal’sk, Russia

The faint flutter of dragonfly wings drifts through the sweet dry air in the woods above Lake Baikal. A rain drop or two plops on my head and hand. The sun explodes on a far far away cumulus cloud rising above the massive mountain range tumbling into a distant Baikal horizon of swirling greys and silvers on her unknown waters.

I see a pair in a mating lock head to tail on the ground where I stand. Her wings fluttering at an invisible speed. Always on the ready. He, upside down under her, flicks his wings as a long-legged red spider inadvertently bumps into them on his late night preamble. Mosquitoes buzz about my head. And there’s a sense of a light dry dust being carried on the sweet pine scent. Pine cones lay cracking on the surface. The loving pair suddenly take off. She flies wih purpose and he holds on in his copulative embrace. They disappear into the needled canopy above me.

The air is so still. Another drop lands on my boot. I breath another life-giving breath of parched pine perfume and stare lost across Baikal’s placid expanse. Dogs bark. Severobaikalskis gather in twos and threes on the forested cliff edges to savour the remnants of another precious mid-summer’s day. A faint rain veil has moved down and across the Lake from the northeast. But the air so still tells me that I’ll stay dry.

The full moon has risen now. In the southeast. The reflection like an orange pathway right across shows a gentle shimmer of movement on Baikal’s surface. Occasional smooth patches appear in the light surface. I think of her sinking depths away from those lunar refractions, while the wings flutter overhead.

Kazachinsko-Lensky District, International

04:30 local

Lena, of the namesake Lena River and also the inspiration for Lenin to change his name, seems a mountain town. The taiga seems taller, older, wiser? The shunting yards and the timber yards are dilapidated but functional. Rusted but oiled by people. Tied up with wire as we say in Australia.

Hot water pipes that used to supply heating to residences, criss-cross the town in trenches lying rusted and exposed, their insulation in tatters.

The mountain road is gravel beside the BAM line. And the early graveyard morning mist is broken sporadically by the first rays of the rising sun.

05:30
We’re following a shallow river now. Briefly at least. It’s gravelly bed clearly visible under just a couple of feet of smooth running crystal waters. The sense of mountain life is evident. No longer the wide meandering silt laden rivers of the flat expanses of taiga in the west, the rivers cut through tough meta-sediments and the catchment is largely forested.

The narrow river returns. We’re travelling alongside it heading upriver as it were. Pines and spruce line it’s tidy banks. The river-worked stones are paver-like. Occasional conifers lean out over the river ready to fall and become the decaying flotsam of tomorrow. The fog still hangs over the entire landscape.

06:00
Nir (Нир) is another one of those two minute pauses on the BAM. The station building another example of soviet monumental style. I open the vestibule window to take a photo and I’m hit by the freshness of the taiga-infused mountain air! Hmmmm. I can taste Baikal already.

Soon the river we were following is narrower. But as the fog breaks high I can see rounded mountain ranges and that we are in a broad valley and that the river is part of a multi-channeled system hidden beneath the taiga covered valley floor.

The rocks where they tumble from exposed relief are massive and tablet-like now.

In the partition along from mine a lady has emerged from the top bunk and in doing so has inadvertently knocked a pocket knife from the opposite top bunk where the occupant sleeps and it’s fallen neatly into the folded crevice at the back of the knee of Vitalik (the guy who gave me a couple of vodka shots a couple of days ago – god that seems like a different train almost!). He didn’t wake up. And she’s not game to remove it. We’ll see what becomes of the pocket knife later.

06:40
The road that follows the BAM is paved now. And I see a piece of soviet memorial in the form of a modest red and blue BAM monument on the side of the road with the superimposed profiles of Lenin and two other bearded chaps.

09:21
The sweeping valleys and the trap rock cutaways of the BAM line continue. Around me in platzkart the usual morning ritual of fellow travellers has begun. But I’ve been up for ages. But there are fewer now. Many having alighted during the night.

Rivers have grown in size and then diminished as I suspect we’ve cut across drainage lines. The BAM is almost a cultural icon in and of itself. My provodnitsa of the last few days has worked for the railway since 1991 – since the breakup of the soviet union. She’s seen a lot!

09:45
Suddenly the mountains are much more dramatic! We’re approaching the 180 degree switchback and the tunnel. I’m making friends with the chest chougher and the bark worse than her bite ladies: taking vodka in lab ware in the dining cart.

The bright mid morning sun. The orange lichen on the rocks. The scree slopes. The tumbling streams over tabular rocks. Glorified in the late morning breakfast glow of vodka.

10:57
The train turns clockwise into the feted 180 degree switch-back turn. And the tunnel comes into view. The tunnel was six and half minutes in passage time. The restaurant ladies were happy to have my excitement and my custom in the restaurant car of a vodka and zakuski order.

Braided streams. And the banks somehow suddenly remind me of the banks around Cangai on the Mann River circa 1980. No longer are we following flowing rivers upstream. I sense these are now flowing clear downstream into Baikal.

Snow on the pass peaks in July. My provodnitsa comes to the restaurant car to find me. I must prepare for my disembarking. Just 20 minutes to go. I pack up my things. Say goodbye in my mind to my dormitory and it’s occupants. And squeeze up the aisle with my packs on. Time for one quick song for the provodnitsa as I stand fully loaded in the vestibule.

Yevgeny of Baikal Trail Hostel awaits me on the Severobaikalsk platform. And having crossed another time zone last night I’m now five hours ahead of Moscow time and I’m not sure if it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Zhigalovsky District, International

Russians come prepared. Invariably they take over the train. Customary are the shorts and bare chests for men in this mid-summer heat and humidity. It rained coming into Novosibirsk yesterday and the mugginess was palpable.

Food supplies are generally brought with them or purchased from station platform hawkers along the way. Cucumbers, tomatoes, salt and black bread are staples. Also popular are the pre-packaged foam containers of instant noodles and whatever assortment of chemicals. The constant hot water supply from the samovar at carriage end is handy for this type of instant hot meal.

Tea in the glasses that sit in the little metal frames supplied by the provodnitsa is also a perennial. Ubiquitous too is the teaspoon left sitting in the brew. Apparently a very Russian trait. I’ve taken to it as well.

The trains’ interiors are largely made of wood, wood laminate. They’re solidly built. And the trains I’ve ridden since Perm have been probably in the order of 20 to 30 years old. (provodnitsa reckons 25 years old)

The restaurant woman goes up and down the length of the train with a little trolley she pulls behind her of drinks and snacks and beer in two litre plastic bottles. Occasionally she comes by with fresh savoury meat pastries.

Recharging mobiles is a busy business when two dodgy power points re shared by one whole carriage. The plugs are over-width and so my adapter is at risk of falling out all the time. There’s a lot I trust an common purpose on board. I leave my phone in a plastic bag tied to the window so it doesn’t have to hang from the wall be the cable. I leave it unattended. Everyone does the same.

Ust-Udinsky District, Russia

The lights are down on the dormitory. And I’m mesmerised by the full moon that rose an hour or more ago and is still low in the sky. The train is turning much more often – an indication of newly changing relief. The taiga-filled valleys are full of draining mist. And through all this it would appear that the daughter of the couple in my partition are having a family feud in relative silence. She, in her early twenties I imagine, has gone and sat on my side of the aisle (the woman who had spent the day lying down in this space had gone when I got back from the restaurant) to ‘get away’ from her parents, all of one and half metres away mind you! And while their familial bonds wane, the moon waxes, ever so slightly.

Bratsky District, Russia

At 22:00 with sun still well up behind clouds we crossed the massive dam wall holding back the aptly named artificial Bratsk Sea. A huge basalt gorge was the dam wall location and at the time between 1967 and 1971 it was the world’s biggest single hydro power plant. Bratsk is situated along the Angara River, which is the only river draining Lake Baikal from its southwest corner. As the train skirts around its southern reaches I see more timber yards and some old heavy industry. The land is much more undulating now with some mountain ranges visible to the east and northeast.

The taiga comes right up to the edges of town and villages. I saw one in a small valley that was almost consumed by the taiga rising and falling over every hill and dale save for the space eked out by the town.

Tayshetsky District, Russia

(15:00 & 23:00, 4 July)

We left Tayshet (part of the Trans-Siberian) a few hours ago around 15:00 local time. This is the place where the BAM (Baikalo-Amurskaya Magistral or Mainline) starts officially – the 3100km rail link – mega-branch line – to the Pacific across the northern shores of Lake Baikal.

Labelled ‘Hero Project of the Century’ by the soviets to deliberately encourage young patriots to come lend a hand, it was built through virgin taiga and permafrost between 1974 and 1991 (NB: part of it was started in the 1930s but never finished).

Every village I’ve seen so far since leaving Tayshet through this endless taiga has been a logging town. Every train I’ve seen go by has been carrying logs. Every house seems to be made of wood. But they all started as rail depots for comrade workers and supplies along the construction route.

Sawmills burn refuse. Cranes load sawn timber stacks. And as we progress east the undulation continues and I can feel the train heading up an incline for the first time as we negotiate some sweeping bends.

The occasional relief affords a glimpse north and south across the endless expanse of taiga. It seems it’s been the one unchanging vegetation type (at these latitudes) since I left SPb: pine, birch, spruce/fir and larch.

The buildings in these railway timber towns are all made from timber. There would appear to be no shortage.

Today I’ve spent most time in the restaurant carriage reading and writing, as the woman on the bunk below me hasn’t bothered to pack up her mattress and make up the day seats and table that fold up from within the lower bunk bed. She’s not the most sociable. But I did see her smile once yesterday afternoon at Novosibirsk where she boarded. As the train pulled away from the station her son or lover (not sure which) was running alongside the train on the platform. He kept up with the train for a good while. And through the window she was waving him to stop and though he couldn’t hear she was whispering things to him and smiling in a bashful way.

The guy in the restaurant wagon with me now is having his daily ritual. Well its the third time he’s come in to have it today! The restaurant woman with the big bark presents him a measured quantity of vodka in what looks like a giant bell-bottomed lab flask, along with a petite shot glass and a plate of potatoes, onions and herring as zakuski (appetiser). I wonder why he just doesn’t buy himself a whole bottle, but I admire the ritual. And he usually leaves without finishing the absolute last drop either.

23:00 local time and the fog settles over the open areas between the taiga. A pastel red and grey, the colour of galahs back home, paints the near midnight sky. It’s probably time to crawl back into my top bunk and let the rollicking clickity clack lull me to sleep.

Tayshetsky District, Russian Federation

I’ve been noticing now for some time when the train pulls into a station a small team of men walk up the length of the train with high visibility vests armed with small long-handled hammers. With a man on each side of the train and a team walking from each end, aiming to meet half-way, the men walk past each of the massive sets of train wheel units tapping in ordered sequence the wheel bearing case hubs, the enormous suspension spring coils and lastly the outer part of the wheel itself. I assume they are listening for abnormalities, their ears attuned to the sounds of good or bad working order. The wheel bearing casing gives a dull hollow ‘thud’, the suspension coil a high polyphonic ‘ting’ and the wheel a higher monophonic ‘bring’. As they progress down the line you can hear the three-toned sequence in various patterns of interval as the men walk their line and pace. Sometimes they pause and hit the components repeatedly, something having caught their ear. Satisfied that all is actually ok they continue on. Sometimes it happens that they all align and a beautiful percussive melody – Thud-Ting-Briiiing – drifts down the platform, invariably full of yawning and stretching passengers and a motley collection of hawkers selling everything from dried Siberian lake fish to indecently large and furry fox fur hats. Right now my train has stopped at a station and the melodic dinging of the acoustic wheel testing is drifting through the my window. It sounds good. And it sounds reassuring. It tells us that Russia’s trusted РЖД is looking after us.

Tayshetsky District, Russian Federation

I’ve been noticing these round brick towers with a wooden section on the top. About 50 metres tall and about eight in diameter. They’re located invariably next to the rail line, sometimes at a station and sometimes at some signal box. They also tend to have mobile phone transceivers on them as well. I don’t know what they’re for but their older style architecture would suggest maybe a security control purpose in the past. I’ll have to find out. PS: the provodnitsa reckons they’re water towers. This would explain some of them but not all.

Krasnoyarsk, Russia

Breakfast in the restaurant carriage for the first time this morning. Start of day two of this trip from Tyumen to Severobaikalsk. Sometime during the early morning we crossed from Western Siberia to Eastern Siberia.

In the restaurant car they’re not quite ready yet. I help the woman rolling out the restaurant aisle carpet to pull it straight from my end. She has an horrendous chest cough and tells me between barks that they open at 05:00 Moscow time. The clock on the wall says 04:15 like all train and station clocks do across Russia. Local time though is now four hours ahead. Since boarding this train I’ve moved through two different time zones, each an hour head. Another woman without a cough but a bark worse than her bite comes to serve me after 04:30 Moscow time. She’s an enormous lady with a posterior like a bus and as she turns away to shout my order of meaty soup with pickle juice to the scruffy looking cook at the end of the carriage, she nearly knocks me in the head.

When I came in she was shouting at the cook and looked quite angry. But maybe that was just her way. For all I know she could have been describing a lovely holiday she had just been on.

It’s been pretty much flat across the route taken so far. But this morning I woke to a more gently undulating landscape, with dark hills of thick pine and beech. Occasional open fields look abandoned with what looks like forest regrowth scattered around the margins. What I presume to be vetch is flowering patchily across open fields in its bursts of crimson glory. The chest cough lady tells me it’s called chai, which is tea in Russian. Staring out the window, a lovely change from the dormitory atmosphere, I am wondering who owns the land across this vast country.

After the delicious soup I ask for something more. Most of what I point to on the menu isn’t available. Bus bark lady leans over and helps me with a kind smile. I order some Siberian salmon caviar on bread and she promptly turns and shouts that one through to the cook. It comes with glacial slabs of deep yellow butter on white crusty bread. The lustrous orange caviar sits atop the butter slabs like mountains of sparkling gems.

After breakfast the woman with the bark worse than her bite sits facing me at the end of the carriage, having occasional shouted conversations with the chef while doing her make up with thick black eyeliner and bituminous ebony mascara applied with a deft left hand.

A ploughed paddock of dark black soil appears. And then some low green crops. Then as the landscape falls away to the north from the train tracks I spy a large orderly landscape of big cropped paddocks and tree lots. Then we’re back into closed beech forest and suddenly an abandoned Lada sedan overgrown with bracken.

It’s overcast and foggy out. Train’s pulling in to a station. Time to stretch the legs.

Tayga, Russian Federation

(23:00, 3 July) I’m on the train somewhere east of a Siberian town called Taiga (ТАЙГА) and I can’t sleep. No fetid fug this time. Actually rather comfortable. The guy on the other side of the aisle has opened the top window fully and a welcome cool breeze blows about the dark of the dormitory carriage now. I seem to have man-handled the lumpy mattress enough and have rid the knot that was right where the small of my back lay. I still don’t fit length ways in the narrow slot I’m cradled in high above the aisle. People walk past their heads just below my sleeping plane. There are nine partitions with six beds in each. Four on the long side of the aisle (two up, two down) oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel. And the other two, one above the other, are on the narrow side of the aisle oriented parallel to the direction of travel. There are two toilets, one either end of the wagon, no separation of male and female, and are shared by all 54 occupants. They’re a bit old and appear dirty but the provodnitsa, who occupies a special room and ‘office’ at the end of the carriage where the samovar (water boiler) is, has a regular cleaning program. They are simple toilets with a foot pedal that opens the metal pan like a trap door and water flows to rinse the contents onto the noisy track racing past below. Up to my second provodnitsa on this journey. It’s a tough job. I was standing leaning on the exit doorway on the north side looking out its window for a while before. Admiring the endless taiga. Noting little boggy tracks leading deep into its emerald green interior. Wishing I could jump off and tread silently into the woods. Every now and then an oncoming train would zoom past clickety clack just metres away. A ghost town of tired wooden buildings drifted past my view like a hole in the taiga and time. Dark brown log houses with wooden shingle roofs, surrounded by overgrown vegetable gardens. Little cemeteries with colourful iron work fences barely visible for the brambles and bracken. And lane ways and paths almost indistinguishable for the crops of weeds and bushes growing where children once rode bikes and passersby stopped to chat with each other on the uneven ground. Once sustained by soviet nation-building arrangements these villages subsequently floundered in the post-soviet period of economic rationalisation. Gone are the people. Probably older people too. Gone where? To high rise apartments in the cities perhaps. To look out their windows to the taiga now far away. And dream of when the taiga was their train in life.