A Wedding in the Country

Sunday 6 August

What a difference a day makes! We got up this morning to find dark, cloudy skies and heavy rain! Not cold, but very wet. In true intrepid traveler style we donned our kaggles and set out to see what Ulan Ude had to offer.

Ulan Ude is situated near the border with Mongolia and the whole state, which covers several hundred square miles, has only 600,00 people, although they also have a problem with illegal immigrants (didn’t we have something like that at home just before we left?), so there may be significantly more.

The first thing to strike you about this town, is the lack of cars – and what there is, are mostly old Ladas. The town has the feel of “old Russia”, still back in the Communist era, and struggling to come to terms with the new regime. They have rebuilt an arch that commemorated Nicholas II’s visit in 1905 that was removed during the Stalinist era, and the opera house is being renovated at present by courtesy of the Mayor and his friends who have put up the money. Apparently some buildings were “tarted” up for Princess Anne’s visit in the early 1990’s (they still mention it!), but apart from this there was no obvious rebuilding and refurbishing as in all the other places we have visited - and the only development we saw was a few blocks of flats, in the old flat style of post war Russia. They have lots minor earthquakes in this area which rattle the kitchen utensils and only does small scale damage – about 4 or 5 on the Richter scale - but there hasn’t been a large one since the middle of the 1850’s.

The most imposing monument in Ulan Ude is a huge (and I mean huge – 6m x 6m) bronze head of Lenin in Lenin Square (every town and city in Russia has a Lenin Square). The legend has it that it was supposed to have a body too, but they ran out of money – or perhaps the body is still running around Russia looking for the head!

We visited a village about an hour’s drive outside the town and were entertained at one of the local houses, first to a buffet of local village food with wine and lots of vodka (they tell us it’s exceedingly good for you, particularly after you have eaten!) and then to an elaborate ceremony whereby they married two of our party, dressing them in the traditional costumes and singing and acting out a typical ceremony. It caused much hilarity and included drinking even more vodka! Luckily the rain stopped just as we reached the village (although they had B&Q style outdoor chairs and gazebos ready just in case).

We set off on the train again in the middle of the afternoon, traveling towards the border with Mongolia, and all the accompanying form filling that crossing a border with Russia entails.

The train passed through mile after mile of really beautiful countryside – flat plains edged by tall mountains – similar to that around Thirsk where you have the Pennines and North York Moors on either side of the Derwent valley. There’s hardly any settlements, just vast open spaces of grassland with bushes and blue skies (yes, the sun is shining again). There are a few people fishing at the lakes, but there’s no animals grazing (probably because it’s so cold in the winter – from September to June – that they couldn’t exist outside.

We had an early evening meal, and at 19.30 reached Naushki – the border crossing from Russia to Mongolia. Everyone had to be in their cabins. It was a similar procedure to when we entered Russia from Poland, except that here we had to have forms in duplicate for both Russia and Mongolia. A lot of pen-pushing and hanging around waiting while guards, police and customs officials checked passports and forms to get out of Russia. Looking out of the window, huge moths with phosphorescent bodies were attracted to the gantry lights – it was like a Son Et Lumiere show. On to Sukhe Bator, an hour down the line, to start all over again to get into Mongolia. When it was all complete they returned the wrong passport to me and had visions of having to remain in Mongolia for ever! But it was soon sorted out and I am back traveling again. The whole procedure finished about 02.15 and then we were allowed to sleep!