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Novosibirsk, Russia

Omsk, Russia

Tyumensky District, Russia

Last night after a half-day rest holed up in a room of Hotel Vostok – a renovated ex-Soviet office block monstrosity near the centre of Tyumen – I caught the midnight train coming from Moscow to Tynda. I’m going as far as Severobaikalsk but that’s 60 hours enough for one journey man.

In the hotel lobby checking out I realised my train didn’t leave for another few hours. I got them to order me a taxi for 22:30. I sat down in the lobby to put a new screen protector on my camera display screen and take a slow beer. Leaving my backpack at the reception I headed into Tyumen’s centre to see the Tura River and the cathedral. A massive riverside beautification had taken place with a terrace of paths, platforms and linking stairways. But the vista was an industrial one with a chimney stack dominating the river valley views. The sun set down Tyumen’s main street was intense as the sun hung for a long time as a brilliant red ball obscured by the smog across the region. I thought there might be some taiga fires causing this as well.

The buses didn’t come as regularly on the way back and I was anxious when the time for my taxi from Hotel Vostok. came and went and I was still a half hour walk away. But a bus did come and I got back to the hotel at 23:00. They ordered another taxi and when it arrived at 23:20 I politely said ‘bistra, bistra’ to the driver and he obliged. At the station, where I’d been a week before on the way to Novy Urengoy, I had half an hour before departure.

My ticket didn’t include the bed linen so I bought that from the obliging provodnitsa for the very exact price of 101.40 roubles.

My dormitory companions to start with kept to themselves. The next morning as we all awoke and crawled out of our cots seeking hot tea and bread for breakfast I introduced myself and soon the bare-chested beer-gutted Vitalik was offering my vodka shots across the aisle. Elderly widow Tamara was travelling to see her brother in Novosibirsk. And Vladimir (Valodya) was happy to talk a little without vodka!

Nefteyugansky District, Russia

Bus en route from Khanty-Mansiysk to Tyumen

I’m glad I’ll be back on the train line today. It’s early morning and the fug on this bus is at once full-on, over ripe and fresh and by turns sweet, sweat stale and offensive. I’m sitting sideways with my legs into the aisle as the sun rises deep blood red on the horizon (we’ve come far enough south now I noticed overnight to have a few hours of darkness) and cleared areas amongst the now tall taiga have a blanket of fog hugging the ground. My right elbow gently rests on the huge belly of the young guy occupying more than his seat next to me. They only turned the air conditioning at the start and then once earlier on this twelve hour trip from Khanty-Mansysk. I can’t wait hit it to be over. Gonna book into a hotel in Tyumen for at least a shower once I get to the train station to find out the schedule of the next train to Severobaikalsk on the northern shores of Lake Baikal – my next destination I think. It’s been two and half days on the river and road (and floor) since the Arctic Circle at Salekhard!

Khanty-Mansiysky District, Russia

Towards the end of the day on the hydrofoil I met some new young lads. First was a young serious robot-like Artyom who was a youth member of the alliance between the two leading parties in Russian politics: the United Russia party and the United National Front party. He gave me a pen with the logos on it as a momento.

On the observation deck I was asking Artyom what time do we arrive. But he didn’t understand my question and young Dmitri (17) who was standing nearby overheard and asked what I was trying to say. Soon I was talking with him and his mate Andrei (15 but taller than Dmitri). They were both great fun and Dmitri was enjoying practicing his English. I asked Dmitri for his help once we reached Khanty-Mansiysk to buy a bus ticket to Tyumen. No trains from Khanty. They were doing the same and they were more than happy for me to tag along with them.

As we sped closer to Khanty-Mansiysk a fan Valyera, who must have seen me play guitar in Мужи and who on first impressions I thought was slightly drunk but was just actually very friendly, was keen for me to play songs for his mate – a music lover who would come to the station at Khanty. I agreed but said in earshot of Dmitri that my first priority was checking the bus timetable to Tyumen.

We got to the confluence of the mighty Ob with the Irtysh River, which the hydrofoil entered to head up to Khanty-Mansiysk. Up ahead I saw a gleaming city with brightly coloured modern apartment blocks, a church on the hill above the city with its gleaming gold cupolas and a massive pyramidal obelisk on the hill top above the river and the city.

Bus scheduled to leave at 21:00 hours but we had to wait to buy tickets directly from driver. There was no time for a shower. So I suggested beers and zakuski all round. Left our packs at the luggage storage service at the bus station which was right by the river port and after a visit to the shop we found an empty bench to share. There were three extra friends of Dmitri and Andrei who had been waiting to meet them at the river port. They were all between 15 and 17. I played a few songs and Sergei, my brother red head, played some tunes, which had the whole group singing along. We had the attention of other river side park wanderers as well.

Beers consumed we headed as a gaggling bunch back to purchase our Tyumen tickets from the bus driver now in. This would be my first long distance non-train trip. And it didn’t auger well from the start when I couldn’t find a seat space that was big enough for me to sit in!

Andrei sitting next to me played me the Russian rap song he’d written and composed. I was very impressed. He then said in his rudimentary English that he would miss me when I was gone and then promptly turned and lay his head on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if he was seeing me as a father figure or not. I was sure old enough to be their father. I decided that this seat wasn’t big enough and moved up the back for a while. Tired and irritable I wasn’t in the mood for consoling young teenage boys.

I eventually moved again and ended up beside the biggest guy on the bus with the worst body odour and opposite the lady with the chihuahua on her lap breathing foggy doggy breath my way (see Fug Bus entry).

Berezovskiy, Russian Federation

Hydrofoil from Salekhard to Berozova to Khanty-Mansiysk. Today I am on the river boat (old hydrofoil) heading south along the giant Ob that empties half of Siberia from the Altai Mountains on Russia’s southern Siberian border north into the Arctic gulf here at Salekhard. It will be two days by boat up the Ob River to Khanty-Mansiysk, that is if the current four hours of broken slow engine and less than half speed pace resolves itself. It will then require a twelve hour bus ride further south to Tobolsk or Tyumen, in order to be back on the main east-west line to then be in a position to be able to head east toward Lake Baikal. Earlier in the morning before the 10:10am hydrofoil departure I played guitar on the floating river port hotel and made friends with the river boat land management crew. The police arrived to check the arriving passengers’ documents and prior to the arrival of the incoming boat they took their uniform hats off and sat down in the upstairs area to listen to the strange ‘strangled sounds of the foreigner’. The disembarkation process was a crush of human flesh made especially excruciating as the police checked everyone’s documents. It seems that in these autonomous districts of northern Russia and with Salekhard being a ‘closed town’ that these checks are obligatory for all incoming passengers. The Berozova hydrofoil, which had seen better years, was almost fully boarded but river port top boss Anton (a young dark-haired lanky man with a leaders aire and an open disposition) asked me to wait another five minutes: he wanted the crew to say goodbye. From inside the boat I realised that my ticket had not been sighted so I proffered it to Sergei (Anton’s newby also from Novosibirsk – capital of Western Siberia way up the Ob in the south), but Anton stepped forward and with a big smile said that I need not show my ticket anymore. “Just play guitar and Russian police will wave you through all the way to Vladivostok!”, he quipped in his heavily accented English. Slitting in front of me were mine workers heading back to home from the underground chromium mines in the still snow-covered Northern Urals, which I could see in the distance to the north-west and west of Salek********e of them, Radik, was very forward. He immediately offered me food and a shot of vodka. Up on the tiny open air observation cockpit, where everyone gathered to smoke (and it seemed like indeed everyone on the boat smoked, much like my impression of all Russia) he’d asked to look through my binoculars and revelled in telling the others of their specifications. Soon he was flicking his throat again with his finger caught behind his thumb in a repeated fashion. This meant vodka shots. I replied in the appropriate manner, adding the Russian colloquial word for ‘just a little’ (chuyt chuyt). Radik and his mine working friends were very friendly. One of them spoke Tartarin. And around me I was noticing Finni-Ugrik people, as well as Yamal and Nenetsy people. And as we went further south, Khanty and Mansi peoples. Their facial features reminded me of Inuit. Some of the older women were in traditional bright floral dresses and scarves. As the day progressed I soon realised that we weren’t going as fast and that the boat wasn’t hydroplaning as hydrofoils should. Turns out there was a breakdown of a key motor. The onboard grease monkeys were onto it and had turned the rear passenger salon into a mechanical workshop with engine parts scattered about on the floor. Meanwhile the boat was on normal stern propellers and going less than half normal top speed. Radik soon turned out to be very manipulative and I started to trust him less despite his largesse with vodka shots and tasty zakuski. He became very possessive trying to not let others talk to me. He started saying that he’d like me to come to his home and stay with him and his wife. And take banya together. The Russian way. Sitting in the cramped seats of the forward salon, he’d slap toilet paper on my knee, put the open can of tinned fish on my leg and shoving a torn off piece of black bread into my hand he’d say ‘Eat!’ And more vodka was poured. It was pleasant and mildly amusing but his pushiness was wearing thin. At one point on the observation cockpit he was saying something to me, which I wasn’t understanding anyway, but to which I was nodding vacantly as I observed through the binoculars the apparent cropping on the fertile plains of alluvial soil above the steep cliffs cut though by the river. Whatever he was saying got the attention though of another man who seemed to tell Radik off and for him to stop hassling the tourist (me). I found this a little awkward but secretly admired the other man for stepping up to it. He was a big fellow from Gorky – a place on the river we’d reach the next day. As Radik shrank away I moved over to talk with my defender, Sasha (Alexander). He was very kind and patient. I’d also met another smaller Sasha, who I had noticed staring at me piercingly while we had waited to board this morning. Initially suspicious of his intense gaze he turned out to be a genuine friend and he and his offsider, a quieter unspoken chap, helped me at a few key points through out the day. Talking with big Sasha I learnt that the crops were potatoes which had a very quick growing period. It continued to be difficult for me to imagine this landscape in freezing sub zero temperatures. With the river freezing over transport actually became less problematic in the long winters as the rivers became ice highways and the land between, now full of summer marshes, bogs and lakes became trafficable by snow-mobiles and the like. Before the onset of winter the river port vessel in Salekhard was towed slowly over five days south to its winter station while the Artic and sub-Arctic rivers froze over. Big Sasha bought me a beer (called Кулер, which is ‘Cooler’ just written in Cyrillic – there’s a lot of this in Russia – English words simply written in Cyrillic) and I returned the favour later, which Radik happened to notice. When I offered to buy him one he waved me off dismissively. He was now hanging out with a young slip of an indigenous woman in her late twenties and seemingly by default a young indigenous boy-man who I thought was the woman’s tag-along brother. It seemed like Radik and her had already been romantically involved or they’d just met, because Radik was all over her and she didn’t seem to mind. The young boy-man was 21 years old with a boyish fuzz over his face and on his upper lip a dark nicotine stain was clearly visible. He was very thin but stood like a sumo wrestler and had the gait of someone trying to appear bigger than he was. His tough guy demeanour was mostly humorous but I learnt of his dangerous side when I asked him what the very obvious indented scar on the back of his head was. It was fresh with scabs still in it and there was hair missing all through it. He shrugged and indicated it was from a fight. With a pretend drinking motion I asked if it was whilst in a drunken state. Everyone around seemed to think so. Anyway, I later learnt that he was just friends with the indigenous woman. He, like Radik started to become a bit annoying too, borrowing my binoculars and handing them freely onto others without asking my permission. I didn’t mind though. There was a feeling on the boat of people looking out for one another. He got a bit too close at times and at one point in his slightly intoxicated state (Note: there’s a lot of constant public drinking in Russia) he fell toward me as the boat took a turn and burnt my upper shoulder and shirt with his lit cigarette tip! The Ob is massive in these lower arctic and sub-arctic reaches. But hard to see it all from the sea level, as it’s braided and multi-branched. The river water column is turbid and full of interlacing plumes of variously brown suspended and dissolved sediments. This continues to be the case all the way up river and I surmise that it’s a mix of perhaps natural and human-induced erosion. After drinking the couple of beers with big Sasha I grabbed the mini guitar and despite it being noisy from the wind and engine sounds on the observation cockpit I sang loud and we had some laughs with the small crowd gathered there. The mechanics pushed through occasionally, opening one door to enter the observation cockpit an exiting through another. Their faces spoke of the continued unsuccessful attempts to fix the motors. The hydrofoil continued with its broken back and we proceeded at less than half pace arriving into rivertown Moozshi (Мужи) at around 20:00 on a hot sunny Saturday evening to await 2.5 hrs for a replacement hydrofoil to come take us to today’s destination of Berozova. Big mozzies and green-eyed horse flies abound in Мужи. Despite the sub-Arctic location it’s hot and hazy. Radik insists I follow him and his girlfriend as we spend time ashore at this languishing riverside town. Despite my desire not to spend time with him I’m intrigued by his character and I find his slip of a girlfriend entertaining. He strips down and takes a dip in the muddy waters of the Ob by the filthy shores. I hand them my mosquito repellent. Pointing at his girlfriend Radik explains that she’s someone he ‘spends time with’ when in these parts away from home and his wife. I wasn’t surprised. She just smiled and pushed him affectionately. Barges of all shapes and sizes are rammed up the muddy banks and to walk them requires stepping over taut steel cable mooring lines. Families sit about on barge decks. Men and boys fish from the jetty or sit on the hauled up boats talking. Occasionally men take off in outboard engine dinghies while others arrive from river parts unknown. The water drifts by with a thick film of oil on the top. As the fish break the surface to snatch the horse flies that the boys catch off each others bodies from the jetty above and toss down, the oil film changes shape and new coloured patterns form. Having been to the shop at the top of the hill, now with big Sasha, to get cold beer and food we returned to the river port jetty. The banks between the footpaths were covered in the lush summer growth of what looked like weeds to me. On the river port jetty I played some more songs as the sun continued low in the sky, never at all looking like it would set. I attracted a sizeable audience and apart from the horse flies and mosquitoes I was a truly enjoying the evening. Sasha and I drank a couple of more beers on the jetty and when the new hydrofoil arrived at 22:30 there was a festive feeling amidst the passengers. The new boat would take us further up river to our scheduled overnight stop at Berozova where we arrived at 01:30 instead of our scheduled 18:00 arrival time. The sun did set eventually for an hour or so. Never far below the horizon the sunset went on for hours before, during and after. And the views from the observation cockpit were incredible. I spent at least an hour just photographing and watching the colours reflected in the river’s meandering channels and through the sparse taiga, which was slowly increasing in size as we coursed the Ob River southwards. Being in the cool of the ‘night’, fog hung low over the grassland depressions and marshes between the taiga. And together with the clouds and colours, an errie atmosphere was created between the trunks of the taiga and the floating plumes and canopies of white mist. At Berosova we were forced off the boat and had to wait the five hours in the floating waiting room by the river’s edge until 06:45. I slept on floor in the space between two back to back rows of chairs. Very uncomfortable but I was exhausted from the previous days’ activities. Being a Saturday night / Sunday morning in Berozova, local revellers were parked at the river’s edge and still partying with their car stereos on loud. Like many of the river towns in the sub-Arctic reaches of the Ob there is no road or rail into Berozova, just the river boat or planes. At six o’clock Radik’s annoying voice woke me up. He was trying to drag me out from under the chairs where I’d crawled during the night. Chris! Chris! was his unending refrain. I was half thankful that he was looking out for me. His pretext was that he didn’t want me to miss the boat. But there was no chance as everyone in the crowded waiting room was waiting for the same boat and I wouldn’t have slept through that racquet. As he tried to push me in front of him to go first when boarding I hung back and gave him a friendly push instead. I then thought I’d better not push my luck with him. Once on the new hydrofoil and zooming at high speed I got some sleep sitting up in the seat despite the hot and sweaty effect of the rear’s sun-room effect and the buzz of a full ship with people sitting amidst motley collections of luggage and talking or listening to loud Russian gangster rap on headphones. This is the second leg – the all-day trip to Khanty-Mansiysk, capital of the autonomous district of the same name. All good except for a bit of a hangover from yesterday’s shena****ns with Radik and friends! All very interesting views and river culture insights with indigenous Khanty and Arctic peoples travelling on board. More frequent now are the river-side villages. Many are only accessed by boat. And along the banks the taiga, now tall enough to be called a forest, was literally falling into the river itself. The hills on the eastern margins, where the Ob’s giant fluvial mechanics were at their greatest potential, were cut through exposing large white sands that stood like unstable eroding cliffs. The beech and pines at the edges were falling down. Campers and picnickers could be seen on the isolated banks, their outboard dinghies and pleasure craft parked up the muddy banks. The hydrofoil zooming by would respond to their waves with a resounding blast from its fog horn. And during the mid-afternoon we passed the point where the giant Western Siberian gas pipelines crossed under the Ob River. I counted at least eight separate pipeline crossings. The crossings showed no signs of the pipes themselves. Just manicured grassy verges and lawns running from between the taiga above to the waters edge. The pipes were buried under here and I assume they were tunnelled beneath the Ob’s bed. They supply all of Europe. I started to get a sense of the magnitude of the resource that was being mined in Siberia. And I had only travelled to just a couple of the resource extraction sites. Mid afternoon we arrived at the floating pontoon for the village of Gorky where big Sasha got off. Next at Priobye little Sasha and his mate were getting off. In town stretching my legs for a moment I found Radik and his mates eating. One last time he insisted I do what he says. This time I obliged as it was a glass of much needed water. In the bright sun of the afternoon I spent most time up on the observation cockpit. My energy was waning. Wind in my hair wasn’t enough to keep me awake and at times I felt like the handicapped one on the River Ob.

Salekhard, Russia

The Triffid’s ‘Wide Open Road’ could easily be my soundtrack here in Salekhard (Салех&#1 072;рд) right on the Arctic Circle. The land is very flat and covered in the taiga-tundra and the River Ob, which drains all of Western Siberia, meanders through this to its delta at the Ob Gulf. I flew along the Arctic Circle this morning from Novy Urengoy to Salekhard and saw the thousands of lakes and marshes. With the flatness come meanders and with meanders come ox-bow lakes. I saw the Ob Gulf from the plane and the flat expanse around it. The Yamal Peninsular stretched flat and enormous to the north.

Upon arrival in the small Bombardier jet, I was detained by the airport police and their registration process. While he was copying my passport I went for an urgent toilet stop. Because my baggage was doing laps on the conveyor belt and I was nowhere in sight I assume that the airport policeman must have thought I’d gone walkabout. With his all-access key he opened the toilet door on me, which gave me a bit of a shock. He closed it before I could see who it was but I assume it was him. When I got to the baggage collection room he was standing guard by the locked door allowing me access to get my backpack and return my passport and immigration card intact.

I got a taxi to town and thought it best to head straight to river port to see what the options were. I’d found out at airport that there were no seats to Tobolsk until 24 July and none to Novosibirsk until 7 July. I was starting to feel anxious about getting out of the Arctic on time to complete my trip!

At the river port floating office and hotel it was a bit busy with a fast boat about to leave south up river. I waited for a white in the long queue and when I got to the ticket office window the young woman said she spoke a little English. But my questions were too complex for her and so she asked me to wait half an hour until the disembarkation of the incoming boat was over. During this time I continued to notice the prevalence of Inuit-type people in the crowds, which I’d first seen at the airport. High cheek bones and and darker reddish skin.

The ticket office woman took me upstairs to the river boat managers, a couple of boy men from Novosibirsk with some English. With the aid of a big map on the wall I was able to ascertain that the neighbouring boat service (their competition) was slow, took five days to Tobolsk and didn’t leave till the day after next. Whereas I could get to Khanty-Mansiysk (Ханты-&# 1052;анси&#1081 ;ск) in two days and take a bus from there to Tobolsk, which was a 7 hour bus ride. I opted for the latter. The two day boat ride was priced at 2618 rubles.

This floating ticket office / waiting room was also a hotel. And so for an extra 800 rubles I got a place to stay without having to go any further.

I went for a walk into town in the mid afternoon and got attacked by the biggest and most ferocious mosquitoes I’ve ever seen!

A man and a woman came up to me asking for money oblivious that I didn’t understand what they were saying. And later a drunk guy approached for the same reasons. I declined their requests.

Part of the town of Salekhard was located on a large rise above the river flats, with good views east. To the west were the Urals way off in the distance – a series of massive ranges in the haze on the horizon.

On this rise above the tributary where the river port was there was a huge wooden church undergoing restoration. Made with he same log cabin construction techniques I found a way in and ended up talking to the crew working n the scaffolding who were all from Armenia. One was eyeing off my possessions around my neck and belt. And at one point asked to use my phone I think. I just feigned I couldn’t understand Russian, which was mostly true all the time. They were interested in my salary and status. They were here because there was little work in Armenia for them. There are many such itinerant workers from the central Asian states and former soviet states. After a while the fellow eyeing off my things made me increasingly nervous and I felt that being inside the forted church grounds with no one else around was too risky, so I said goodbye and left.

I chanced upon a public beach at the base of the rise below the apartment blocks on the edge of the Ob’s braided streams and back lagoons facing the flats. A strange site. It had all the trappings of a regular beach except this was still a way from the ocean of the Ob Gulf and was on the Arctic Circle. Very surreal! And the heat made me even more confused by my surroundings.

I had some shashlyk (pretty much all that I can find on the street) and a beer and watched the Arctic beach goers. I walked back across the beach through the overloaded rubbish bins and past the rank port a loos not emptied for weeks. I had to be back at floating hotel by 22:00 as they told me the gates lock then. I walked back through the towering apartment blocks. So many we ones were going up. There really must be a Siberian gas boom. Sounds like Western Australia. I stopped to get some food for he boat ride and then some cash out but the machine wouldn’t let me take 10,000 rubles in one go. I tried a few times. Finally I worked out how to do it – in two lots but with added Bendigo Bank fees I thought.

The shy young boy managing the floating hotel let me in no worries. The front gate to the ship yard was locked but there was a gap through. I did my washing, drank a beer and felt the rocking of the boat when ever a large vessel steamed by. The shower and tap water was brown river water. And from what I could see of the Ob it had a long history to tell draining as it does from the temperate south to the arctic north across all of Western Siberia.

Salekhard, Russian Federation

Sasha gave me the Wake Up Call as promised promptly at 08:15. I’d last seen him crashed out in his mother-in-law’s flat five hours ago. So I was impressed to hear from him. I took a while to get going myself and get packed and down to the lobby where a tired Nicolai, just coming off a night shift, was ready to drive me to the airport in his flash new VW sedan. I felt incredibly lucky to have stayed in such splendid digs for two nights for free. One of the top Gazprom bosses had been at the reception desk the day before when I was leaving to head out to the BBQ. He was looking at the momento sketch I’d done on their guest book at the staffs’ request. It was of a kangaroo and a stylised representation of Australia and Novy Urengoy. He looked at it with some bemusement. He didn’t seemed bothered I was there. But I don’t know if he knew I was staying there for free. Nicolai kindly insisted on staying till I boarded, despite his obvious need for sleep. He had another night shift tonight and then he had to meet his girlfriend back out at the airport the next day! We sat in the cafeteria and chatted. I was still waking up! At the security gate I bade farewell to Nicolai. Such good people they all were. There were no toilets in the departure lounge at Novy Urengoy. Strange. I asked if I could go back through security. No they said. This was a going to be a problem I thought. But I managed! I think we were late departing. As I traversed the tarmac I took a photo of the Bombardier jet aircraft and had a finger waved at me by a large ear-muffled ground staff. On board I had a window seat. But upon seeing the camera in my lap the air hostess said that photos from the plane window weren’t allowed. I thought it must have some thing to do with this whole autonomous district of the arctic being a ‘closed area’ for gas production. Someone had told me hat Gazprom now owned the north! Anyway, after take off and after she headed up the aisle with the food cart I took lots of photos of the amazing arctic landscape below. And she never seemed to keep a further eye on me. The landscape was flat and covered in lakes, upon lakes, upon lakes. Gas flaring and smoke billowed from a number of sites close to Novy Urengoy and the white and black plumes drifted to the west from their source across the mosaic of taiga and tundra. It was only a one hour flight and I marvelled at the landscape below. We were essentially traversing east to west along the Arctic Circle. While Novy Urengoy is about 70km south of the Arctic Circle, Salekhard is slap bang right on it. I saw the white braided meanderings of many drainage lines and rivers coming out of the low relief of marshes and lakes bounded by small rises of taiga, carrying silt and nutrients in their waters to the Arctic and exposing the white sands they coursed over.These rivers all drained to the north and into the Ob Gulf. I could soon see the waters of the Ob Gulf, shimmering and blue on the horizon, as I twisted my neck to see through the low set perspex windows. Closer to Salekhard the Ob became a huge multi channelled delta of sorts. From what I could work out Salek********** the inside of the bend where the Ob turns east to run its last course to the Ob Gulf. Salek********** the edge of the river where the Ob’s braided streams combine with a tributary entering from the south-east draining out of a sizeable freshwater lake. I don’t think I ever saw Labytnangi which is on the Ob’s north-western shores. However, it may have been the towering port cranes of the Labytnangi Ob-side docks that I saw when the hydrofoil departed from Salekhard’s River Port. The jet swung out and over the town to the other side of the Ob and turned to make its approach. I couldn’t take my eyes off the ever changing and unfamiliar landscape below despite my hangover and lake of sleep.

Novy Urengoy, Russian Federation

After the interview I was resting in the room reading a very interesting book on the socio-cultural history of this autonomous district. Sasha (Aleksander) called my room with information that Nicolai had been investigating: there was a boat travelling from Salekhard to the Ob Gulf. I could also take a boat up the Ob to Tobolsk. So if I wanted to go to Salekhard we needed to go now out to the airport to get the ticket. Apparently there had been no seats left on tomorrow’s flight but Natasha had made some calls and had secured me one and at a cheaper rate (at 7250 roubles it was still pricey but this is the norm in the far north). While I was waiting for Sasha to finish duties at the front desk and take me to the airport I was sitting in the empty plaza in front of the Hotel Yamburg. I saw Natasha leaving. It turned out she was traveling to Yamburg herself to go to the hospital there. Apparently there was a Gasprom hospital there only for employees. Sasha said it was better than the hospitals in Novy Urengoy. At the airport they didn’t take credit card and I’d left my extra cash stash with my passport and debit card back at the hotel. So instead of driving back Sasha rang his colleagues to ask them to put the 7250 roubles into his cash card account. And so we waited 15 minutes for this to happen and then Sasha kindly went back in to pay for the ticket. I’d pay him back once back at hotel. All the reception staff with the permission of their boss Natasha were taking the afternoon off to take me on a shashlik (BBQ skewed meat chunks over coals). Sasha, Julia and Vera and I drove out to what turned out to be the edge of the land behind the hotel. Still surrounded by vegetation that was half way between taiga and tundra and right by the ever present lakes and marshes, Nicolai was already there bare-chested preparing his portable BBQ frame. He looked every bit the trim, taut and terrific Russian cool man. Non-hirsute and knife by his side. I quipped he looked like Crocodile Dundee and all the others thought it hilarious. There was beer flowing. And while Julia and Vera washed and prepared the salad (fresh gherkin cucumbers and tomatoes) I played a few songs at their request. It was very pleasant. But I had to stop to apply mosquito repellent – they are huge, ferocious and persisent and in great numbers at all hours of the day as are the big green-eyed horse flies. The Hotel crowd were all great company and a lot of fun. They obviously like working with each other. When Oleg and soon after Ludmila (who was the only one in the Hotel Yamburg crew who didn’t speak any English) arrived the full team was together. They called themselves the Dream Bream Team as a self-deprecating joke. Bream is a type of fish and in Russia you can imply someone is lazy by calling them a ‘bream’. A bit like we use the tern ‘sloth’. Lots of jokes riffing of each other around this. They had a new fellow joining the reception team today and they were all wondering what he’d be like. They were already calling him the ‘sub-bream’. Nicolai cooked another round of pork chunks on the skews. This was prepared meat they’d bought. He spoke about his family’s hunting tradition and how he’d first learnt to shoot a gun in his apartment when he was seven at a target that his mother had drawn on the wall. His mother was a champion sports athlete shooter. He saw a bit of himself in me as he was a traveller too he said. He’d been to the Altai Mountains region in Southern Siberia to mountaineer and compete in orienteering. He was short with a thin athletic build and piercing blue eyes. Julia enjoyed practicing her English. But Vera was much quieter. Julia made the rule that for the rest of the afternoon only English should be spoken. It was fun to hear them reply to Nicolai in English, who was quite the comedian, when he struggled with his own English. “Sorry we don’t understand you’, they would shout back at his long rapid under-the-breath Russian quips that had us all in hysterics. They were all happy to be able to practice their English. Later that day Oleg would quip that I was breaking a mundane routine for them in Novy Urengoy. It was such a pleasure to meet a real traveller from afar. Something that had never happened in their time here. Julia’s boyfriend arrived and we decided to drive to a lake so I could maybe swim at my suggestion. We packed up the BBQ and headed back to the hotel so that Nicolai could take up his shift at the reception desk. At the lake oh of town, surrounds entirely by summer houses, my zeal for swimming when I tested the waters. The wind had picked up and it wasn’t feeling as hot anymore despite the blue sky. In the distant the black black smoke continued unabated. The product of gas flaring from oil wells all around the flat landscape. Sasha invited us all to his place where his 6 month pregnant wife Anna and their 6 year old daughter were. There was prepared all sorts of zakuski including mashed potato with diced anis-smelling parsley on top, fried whole fish caught by Anna’s brother and gerkin cucumbers. We’d bought a big bottle of vodka on the way at the little store in the basement of one of the ever-towering apartment blocks. It was always interesting to see that the biggest section of any of the little stores (magasins) was the liquor section. I also noticed that you could bring you own bottles and have all types of beer filled up from the various draught beer taps in one section of the shop – take away draught beer! Oleg arrived as the vodka shots were picking up pace. Apparently the time between the first shot and the second shouldn’t be long. And I then said does that mean we can take longer between the second and third shots. No came the resounding cry. They just decrease in time between shots. I noticed that Julia’s boyfriend was taking his time and not downing the shots in their entirety. I was happy to continue with Sasha and Oleg though. I knew what my limit was and one bottle between four men was probably it. I noticed that they were also strict in drinking lots of juice between shots. After each one Sasha was liberal with the juice and water he was pouring for me. Sasha’s wife Anna was very sweet. At one point much to Sasha’s embarrassment she recounted how when she’d first him at school when they were 16 that she knew then that he was going to be her husband, “He just didn’t know it yet!”. Anna and Sasha with their daughter lived in a one room flat with small kitchen. They shared this with their weird hairless cat. It freaked me out a bit. Alien-like it was. Extremely warm to touch. Almost as if it had been shorn. But everyone loved it and held it a lot. At one point it stood upright on back legs. Very weird again. Ludmila, Vera, Julia and her boyfriend left and Oleg and I stayed drinking with Sasha. As it got later Sasha suggested we take our party to Anna’s mother’s apartment nearby, so that Anna could get their daughter to bed. The apartment building complexes are extensive. L of them look generally run down. Lacking paint. Paint flaking. Holes in walls. Pipes exposed. And then inside there are graffiti over the walls and in some hundreds and hundreds of telephone numbers written in marker pen over the walls, the doors, the elevator sliding doors and all on the inside of the rickety old lifts. Sasha and Oleg embarrassingly explained that these were sex worker numbers. I didn’t drink too much after we arrived at Sasha’s mother-in-law’s place. Sasha played a bit of piano accordion. It was a wonderful example of the instrument. Oleg and I stayed chatting and laughing while Sasha crashed. Too tied though to continue Oleg helped me get a taxi calls to take me back to Hotel Yamburg. It was 230am and I had to get up at 08:30 to catch the 10:10 flight to Salekhard. Sasha had promised a wake up call.

Novy Urengoy, International

Sun barely setting these days. This morning I woke up in the plush surrounds of my Hotel Yamburg suite in Novy Urengoy, oil and gas capital of Siberia. But something was fishy. I checked my pack. The dried fish I’d bought at the platform stall on the train trip north to Novy Urengoy was smelling strong. But not off. Just that strong dried fish flavour. One of the fish was whole and I’d bought it because it looked so strange. Never seen one like it. Kind of ribbed flat back with a long pointy snout. These are freshwater lake fish I believe caught locally in Siberia and in this case sold to the train passengers.

Last night Aleksander had offered to take me to a local shashlik (a bbq meat traditional to Russia’s Muslim cultures in the very deep south east of Russia). After two days in the fug of the train the shower was welcome and I was ready to meet Aleksander. He was off duty and drove me in his car to the north side of Novy Urengoy to his favourite shashlik bar. I bought dinner. The least I could do after their gestures of kindness. Aleksander, originally from St Petersburg, lived in one of the many apartment blocks in Novy Urengoy. The town was established in 1975 essentially to service the beginnings of the oil and gas industry and received official town status in 1980. The apartment blocks looked newish but worn down and rough. Cables ran from floor to floor along walls and from block to block tens of metres overhead servicing do-it-yourself cable TV or Internet installations and arrangements. I was also amazed at the number of cables swinging down in great concave arcs from individual windows. These explained Aleks were supplying power in winter to the engine block heaters in the occupants’ cars parked below to keep them from freezing. Normal winter temperature here is minus 30 degrees Celsius. Kids go to school still on these days and colder. But if the temperature drops to minus 42 then kids don’t go to school. About five years ago the town recorded a temperature of minus 63 degrees C! People died in their cars during this time – frozen to death!

I noticed some new civic buildings under construction and saw the huge blocks of insulation being attached to the outside of the block construction walls. This particular building was going to be the new births, deaths and marriages office. It seemed Novy Urengoy was planning for many more years of an active living workforce supplying the labour and services to the expanding gas field production across the Siberia tundra.

We walked to the town’s main square and memorial. The Eternal Flame was here like it was in most towns across Russia: a memorial to the heroes of the Second World War 1941-45.

Beside the memorial Aleks pointed out two old men standing beside the flame talking wearing fessed in fatigues, one in airforce blue fatigues and the other in army green fatigues. They were members of the Cossack Army – an unofficial army within Russia. The official police know about them. They undertake voluntary duties like local vigilance making sure say in this case that no one vandalises the Eternal Flame. I’m not exactly sure what they do but it sounds a bit like an association of men in voluntary civil service.

This morning Aleksander from reception called to see if I was ready for the interview. The Gazprom promo unit wanted to do a video interview as I was the first tourist to their facility. Essentially I am officially the first tourist to visit Novy Urengoy. And they want to make a big deal about it!

Young receptionist Julia was brought in from off duty to translate the interviewer’s questions. They asked me about why I had come to Novy Urengoy and what I thought about their oil and gas capital of Siberia. Natasha was standing and watching while we sat outside the front lobby steps in the bright morning summer sun, while the video camera operator moved his tripod into position. They asked that I bring the guitar and sit it on the bench we were seated upon so that it was in view and that I place my camera there too. They wanted to be sure it was clear that I was a tourist!

They got me to sing a song or two at the end of the interview too (I’m travelling with a tiny guitar I picked up in Moscow) – hilarious! Something Australian they said. I gave them Waltzing Matilda. A special request from Natasha was the REM song ‘Talking About the Passion’, which she’d heard me sing at the reception desk the night before. But she just called it the ‘Distraction’ song as that was the only lyric she could pick out. This was all captured on film. And I must say I was feeling very overwhelmed: to go from the invisible traveller to special guest and star performer! Anyway I was happy to indulge. And while it didn’t feel so real to me I truly believe that these people in Novy Urengoy were excited to have such a visit as mine.

(This interview would appear on the weekly Gazprom community TV station viewable only in Novy Urengoy.)

After the interview Natasha asked if I could practice English with her staff as its important for them in their job and they rarely get the chance. I said I was more than happy to oblige.

Now they are organising a BBQ out of town into the tundra this afternoon for me.

Not sure what’s next. But it sounds like they’re doing their best to facilitate my desire of seeing the sea at the Ob Gulf. And Natasha has pulled some strings to get me a seat on the thrice weekly service to the autonomous district’s capital, Salekhard. From there they say I can take a ship to the ocean and also up river to Tobolsk. I’m very grateful for their hospitality.