In Siberia

Farewell to the land of the wind

We have breakfast in beautiful weather at our border camp, the last one in Kazakhstan. The sun’s rays shine through the forest barrier and warm us up. We enjoy the vastness of the endless steppe landscape and think wistfully of the past three months. We have experienced many good things in the land of the wind with its mostly wonderful and friendly people. “Are the inhabitants of Siberia just as friendly?” asks Tanja quietly, sipping her cup of tea. “We had the best experiences during our trip to Russia as far as Kazakhstan and I don’t think the Siberians are any different,” I am convinced. “Are you sad to leave Kazakhstan?” “I don’t know. It was an interesting time, but I’m also looking forward to a change now. I’m really excited to see what awaits us in Siberia,” I say thoughtfully. “Yes, me too. I long for forests. The steppe is beautiful, but I also find vast forests very fascinating.” “Hm, maybe we’ll even meet a bear?” I reply jokingly. “Well, if they really are as dangerous as we’ve read, it’s better we don’t see any,” Tanja replies.

Our tent is dripping wet from the night’s dew. Before we wrap it up, I rub it dry with a cloth. Then we load up our trusty bikes for the last time in Kazakhstan today and push them through the forest strip onto the road. In the nearby border town of Lazovay, we visit another magazine to spend our last tenge. We buy chocolate bars, kefir, milk, cookies, toilet paper, cucumbers, tomatoes, mineral water etc. until we only have change left in our wallets. Then we load everything into our trailers and cycle the last few kilometers to the border. On the way there, I hope that the border officials don’t cause us any unexpected trouble, because a border crossing like this can always be good for unpleasant surprises. For example, one traveler told us that he also had to register in Kazakhstan. With our visa, we were told, this would not be necessary. We will see whether this is really the case. I am also curious to see how the Russian officials will treat us. Some travelers spoke of corruption and bribery. “Nothing works without it,” we heard. However, as they were mostly car drivers and we were traveling by bike, we automatically have a sympathy bonus. On the last 10,000 kilometers of the Trans-East Expedition, we have managed very well so far. Let’s leave aside the Transnistrian border (book stage 2) between Moldova and Ukraine.

Border

“There it is up ahead!” I shout, pointing to the new-looking houses that rise like foreign objects from the middle of the flat steppe. We slowly roll towards the first barrier. Soldiers stand behind them and chuckle at the strange sight of the colorful cyclists. I lean my Intercontinental against the fence and talk to them. “Pass,” one of them demands firmly but kindly. Four uniformed men study my document and ask where from and where to. The sympathy bonus is having an effect. The result is exuberant laughter. The barriers open and we are allowed to drive up to a stone building. Several officers receive us there. “Where from? Where to? How did you like Kazakhstan? Many Germans live here. Do you know that?” asks and says an official in plain clothes who looks like the head of the Kazakh border. “Can we take a picture of you?” he asks politely, whereupon each of the officers pulls out their cell phones and positions themselves next to us to be photographed by a colleague. “Shall I look in the trailer?” a lower rank asks his boss. “Yes, let him open it,” he replies. More interested and amused by the few utensils a cyclist carries with him, they only take a quick look inside. To preserve politeness, at least that’s how it seems to us, I should close the lid of my Zargesbox straight away. We are then asked many more personal questions until we are shaken hands and bid a cheerful farewell.

Now it’s time for passport control. We also receive a friendly welcome there. A woman with three stars on her shoulder speaks English. “They are the first cyclists we have seen at this border,” she says. “Aren’t there any foreigners who come and go here?” I ask. “Yes, we did. A few weeks ago, we had an Australian on his motorcycle and about three months ago, a Frenchman also passed this post on his motorcycle,” she explains. We get our exit stamp without hesitation. Like good friends, the officers wave after us and wish us a safe and pleasant journey. “Come back!” shouts a female officer. Then we are already at the Siberian border. Here, too, we are treated very courteously. There is not even a hint of corruption. On the contrary, the border chief helps us and fills out the entry papers in person. “And remember to set your watch forward by another hour. It’s not 12:00 here as it is in Kazakhstan, but already 13:00,” he points out the time difference. It only takes 10 minutes to complete all the formalities and suddenly we find ourselves on Siberian soil. “Yay!” I cheer joyfully as we cover the first few kilometers on a good asphalt road.

Siberia

“Look at that! It’s hard to believe, but the forest begins just a few hundred meters after the border,” says Tanja. “Indeed. That’s strange. The steppe can’t end in one fell swoop just because Siberia starts here?” I wonder.

The master whispers at our backs, I pedal and follow my thoughts. How nice it is to just let yourself drift. Although we have a destination and our daily tasks to master, our brains are cleared of all the annoying mental baggage that I usually carry with me on a trip like this. My brain energy flows here and there, staying for a few minutes with my family, friends and business connections. Scraps of conversation emerge and vanish. Anger about discussions that have not yet been dealt with arises briefly, distracts my attention from the many beautiful birch, beech and pine trees that soon line the roadway without a gap and then disappears again.

A truck loaded with huge tree trunks roars towards us. It leaves behind the typical resinous scent of freshly cut wood. “Do the trees come from the taiga, the largest contiguous coniferous forest area on earth?” I ask myself, enjoying the change in my thoughts. “We’re in Siberia!” I whisper to myself and can’t quite believe it yet. So far, Siberia has had a mysterious, respect-inspiring sound to me. A sound of loneliness, wolves, wild tigers and leopards, moose, reindeer, polar and brown bears, the cruel cold, the former habitat of mammoths that died out 10,000 years ago, hot summers and dangerous ticks whose bites can cause chronic arthritis, heart and nervous system damage and meningitis.

But for me, Siberia also has a lot to do with human suffering. Under Yossif Stalin, many millions of people were sentenced to forced labor in the Siberian prison camps. Millions of them died because of the inhumane conditions. Just thinking about it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, because the earth here is soaked with grief, blood and death. I repress the dark history of this remote part of the world and wonder if we are exceptionally lucky to have an encounter with one of the animal inhabitants of the vast forests? A small chance on a bike trip, but a chance nonetheless.

Today’s Siberia covers most of the Asian territory of Russia and borders the Ural Mountains in the west, which are already 1300 kilometers behind us as the crow flies. Up to the north, where Siberia borders the Arctic Ocean, it has an approximate width of 3,300 kilometers. It stretches around 5,000 kilometers east to the Pacific Ocean and around 3,700 kilometers from the Urals to China. According to my calculations, it should be 2,400 kilometers from the border of Kazakhstan to Lake Baikal. “Will we make it before the predicted early cold freezes the country? The continental climate here is even more extreme than in Kazakhstan. Extreme values of minus 67.8 C were measured in the city of Verkhoyansk in the north-east. In July, the thermometer climbs to 35 C on some days. A difference between winter and summer of 102.8° C. As far as I know, there is no other place on earth where these extreme values have been exceeded. Although we are not coming to this region, we still have to hurry. In two months it will already be November. So we have to pick up the pace. Apart from that, we have no other choice because our visa expires then too. “These stupid visas limit every journey of our age, except for the weather,” I think aloud.

But for now it’s all about getting into the mood of this Russian megaregion and adapting to it. As we already know the eastern mentality of the people and get on very well with it, this should not be too difficult for us.

Meanwhile, our bikes spin through the first village. It doesn’t look much different from Kazakhstan. Similar poor houses, the side streets consist of mud and dust, a few ruins of the former collective farms crumbling like on the outskirts of every village, old trucks, a shabby gas station, a small hut that is used as a warehouse where you can buy food and a large Orthodox cemetery. Everything as usual, except that this time there doesn’t seem to be a Muslim cemetery. Here in Siberia there are more Orthodox Christians than Muslims, who have mainly settled in the republics of the North Caucasus and the central Volga region, while the Buddhists live in the border areas with Mongolia.

An old Lada overtakes us. The coughing engine snaps me out of my thoughts. I’m surprised that suddenly there are a lot of old Eastern Bloc cars again, whereas in Kazakhstan we noticed a surprising number of ultra-modern vehicles. “Is it because I’m traveling in a remote border region of Siberia?” I ask myself. A rusty road sign tells us that we still have to cover 388 kilometers to Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia, which was only founded in 1893 as a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “Trans-Siberian Railway”, I murmur to myself and although I’m sitting here on my sumo bike, I think about traveling through this huge country with her.

For centuries, Siberia was isolated from the rest of the world. Only the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway made it possible for many inhabitants of Russia to penetrate its depths and colonize it bit by bit. “Denis?” “Yes?” “You haven’t said anything for a long time. Are you all right?” Tanja’s question brings me out of my thoughts. “But yes. I’m just reviewing what I’ve read and heard about Siberia.” “Like what?” “Well, I’m thinking about what it must have been like in the 12th century when the first troops of the Russian state of Novgorod crossed the Urals into Siberia to collect taxes from the local population. The Mongols certainly didn’t like that. They were at their peak at this time and were one of the most powerful peoples on earth. Only after the Mongol Empire had collapsed and a centralized monarchy was established in Russia could the Russians slowly gain a foothold here. It was a time full of battles and wars. To think that the Russians only reached the Pacific coast in 1639? They must have gone to great lengths to cross this land, the many swamps, the dense and endless forests. They could not travel as easily as we do today. Now, in comparison, we pedal our bicycles eastwards on solid asphalt with ease, whereas back then people had no paths or roads to get around. They had to walk or sit on the back of their horses. What’s more, they must have had disputes with one or other of the tribes living here. It is unbelievable how they managed to build fortresses all over the country under such conditions in order to control their conquered territories.

And yet, until the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Siberia’s hinterland was almost hermetically sealed off from the outside world. The only thing that interested the Russians in the 17th and 18th centuries was the lucrative fur trade. Large quantities of the precious furs were exported to Europe and later also to China. They made a lot of money with it. And yet at that time no one could have imagined what an important supplier of raw materials Siberia would one day become. The Russians would never have thought of using the vast resources of their sparsely populated hinterland to take on a leading role in world politics.”

We reach the village of Karasuk. As is so common in Russia, there is a police station in front of most large towns that controls the traffic. When the policemen spot us, they wave us over. They don’t want to check us out, but want to know where we come from and what our next itinerary looks like. We explain in a friendly manner, whereupon they bid us farewell with good wishes. “There’s a petrol station up ahead! We can buy unleaded petrol for our stove there!” I shout. We turn into the large filling station. As soon as we have leaned the bikes against the wall of the house, I am addressed in German. “How can you speak German so well?” I ask. “I live in Germany. My wife and I are Volga Germans. We are here on vacation to visit my parents,” answers Ivan. I ask him which gasoline is unleaded. “Take the A80. That’s good,” he says, calls the gas station attendant and asks him to fill our liter bottle with the stuff. When I want to pay, I have no chance. “I’ll take care of that, of course,” says Ivan with a laugh. “But that’s not possible,” I try to object. “Why? Of course you can. You’re guests in my old home,” he says in a friendly manner.

A little later, he drives ahead of us in his Lada to show us the way to a gastiniza. As so often in recent months, we are guided through the hustle and bustle of a city by a stranger. Ivan and his wife Lena then organize a room for us in the Gastiniza, help us to find a safe place for the bikes and finally carry our equipment into the room. No sooner have we arrived here in Siberia than they are back again, our human angels spreading their protective hands over us. “We wish you a safe and pleasant journey. And remember. It will soon be cold. You must hurry,” they say and disappear as they came.

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