No, not really. But I thought I'd get your interest!

It's 9.30 in the morning and I'm in Ulan-Ude (if you look on the map, it's just to the east of Lake Baikal, close to the Mongolian border). there's just been a big thunderstorm, which was fun, and it felt distinctly like 'Asian rain' (although those of you in britain may disagree!). I't now 5 hours ahead of Moscow time, which makes me 8 hours ahead of the UK, I think..I keep losing hours, it's very disconcerting, though it does of course help time on trains to, literaaly, go more quickly..

So..Tomsk. A very nice town. With nothing, apparently, to do with Wombles. It's a little way north of the Tran-Siberian line -look for Taiga andn go up a little. I'm going to be reallly, really lazy and quote from wikipedia, which gives a nice summary of its interesting history.

'In 1604, Tomsk was established under a decree from Tsar Boris Godunov, He sent 200 Cossacks under the command of Vasiliy Tyrkov and Gavriil Pisemsky to construct a fortress at the bank of the Tom River overlooking what would become the city of Tomsk. A tribal leader, Toyan, accepted Russian control and ceded the land for the fortress to the Tsar.

In 1804, the government selected Tomsk to become the center for a new governorate which would include the modern cities of Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk and eastern Kazakhstan. The new status brought development and the city grew quickly.

The discovery of gold in 1830 brought further development to Tomsk in the 19th century. However, when the Trans-Siberian Railroad bypassed the city in favor of the village of Novonikolayevka (now Novosibirsk), development began to move south to connect with the railroad. In time, Novosibirsk would pass Tomsk in importance.

In the mid-19th century, one-fifth of the city's residents were exiles. However, within a few years, the city would be reinvented as an educational center in Siberia with the establishment of Tomsk State University and Tomsk Polytechnic University. By World War Two, every 12th resident of the city was a student.

After the Russian Revolution the city was a notable centre of the White movement, led by Anatoly Pepelyayev and Maria Bochkareva, among others. After the town's capture by the Red Army, Tomsk was incorporated into the West Siberia region and later into the Novosibirsk Region.

As in many Siberian cities, Tomsk found many factories relocated there to protect them from the Nazi invasion. The Soviet government then estabished Tomsk Oblast with Tomsk as the center.'

(Wikipedia)

All in all, it's a studenty town, styled as the 'Oxford of Siberia'. This of course means nice old buildings with green parks full of drunken students on a saturday night. Tomsk is also famous for its wooden Siberian architecture, beautifully made and elaborately carved houses. It also has a wooden fortress which I climbed up to admire the views, and there met two very funny men with an array of terrifying looking weapons. They were obviously there to do demonstrations for tourists, but it was late on a sunday afternoon and they were more than a little inebriated, which was a bit alarming considering the number of sharp-edged things they were brandishing. One of them told me that his name was Nikolai Nikolaivich (I love these russian names!) and proudly showed me his family tree showing his descent from the original settlers of Tomsk. We had a very amusing time creating poses with the different implements and they sent me away, after much giggling, with some old coins, a photo of them fully-costumed, and I promised (at least I think I did as we didn't actually speak any of the others' language..) to tell people that they run winter hunting expeditions.

It was not, however, until I discovered the beach that I had any sense of a Siberian town as tame and convivial. Tomsk is built on the incredibly wide Tom river, and, on an afternoon in which the rain was lashing down, I walked along its wild and windy shores, staring across at the wilderness beyond, and imagined what it must have been like to be guarding that high wooden fortress on such a stormy day, scouring the river for signs of attack..Incidentally, the Cossacks were a bit of a mystery to me before, but I've now been enlightened. They were, in fact, a special type of russian soldier, who lived in self-governing communities in the southern and eastern edges of the russian empire. Known to be fierce warriors and great horesmen, their lifestyle was 'semi-asiatic', and Gogol described them like this:

'The Cossacks are a people belonging to Europe in terms of their faith and location, but at the same time totally Asiatic in their way of life, their customs and their dress. They are a people in which two opposite parts of the world, two opposing spirits, have come together...[they had] the swiftness of a tiger out of hiding places when they launched a raid.'

Anyway, this was all very well, all this historical ambling and musing, but the fact was that, well, I was a bit fed up with not having anyone to talk to. What was it like, living in Siberia? These are things yoi cannot know by looking. What I really wanted was an actual conversation.

You should be careful what you wish for..

It began on the day I was leaving Tomsk. Having spent the morning rather grumpily watching the world service (making full use of - a television!), I set off to the train station to leave my bags as my train was in the evening. Of course, the left-luggage place, at which I arrived at 12.30, was closed from 12-2, which seemed to echo my current mood. A Russian girl was also standing outside the barred window looking flummoxed, and to my surprise she spoke to me in perfect english, and we agreed the only thing to do was to sit in a cafe until it opened.

Her name was Marsha, and she had come to Tomsk to sit univesrity entrance exams, which seem to be pretty tough..she had gone to an 'english' school which explained her language skills, and we had a very interesting conversation about many things including russian politics, history and literature, and she put me straight on a few things (apparently drinking vodka is quite all right..). She told me about how Siberia, and Asian russia is viewed almost as a different country by western russia (they think they all live in huts), and that Tomsk was very friendly,a s far as Siberian towns went (people were friendly), but this was unusual - in her town, for example, they would deliberately send strangers in the wrong direction! (not going there then). She loved the president and I think was a bit offended when i commented on the current, er 'difficulties' out two nations were experiencing..
She struck me, like most other russian girls that I've met, as being a mixture of a kind of haoughty glamour(they all are until some indefinable age at which the hair-dye and lycra come out), intellectually clever, and giggly in a teenage sort of way.

It turned out that we were on the same train, even though she was going south and i east (they seem to constantly attach and detach carriages, which can be confusing when you come back to your train after a stop to discover that your carriage is in a totally different position in the train to where it was before!), so we walked around Tomsk a bit together. The problem with making friends, (and this sounds awful, I know, but true!),paticularly ones from other countries where communication is bit more of a strain, is that, after an hour or two, you quite want to get rid of them, so that you can carry on with whatever you were doing at the time..This can be hard to manage if poeple don't take hints..but eventually we parted ways promising to meet at the station later. Which we didn't as I arrived only the last minute, and couldn't see her. I felt a bit bad about this, until it occurred to me that it was unlikely I would want to spend an entire day with a 17 year old english girl either!

On the train, I discovered my place (the bottom bunk this time), and as I staggered in flinging my rucksack down with relief, I was stared at with some bemusemnt by three russian men. Oh dear, I thought, these are my companions for the next 40 hours.

Then the following things happened.
Everybody started talking at once. We quickly ascertained we couldn't understand each other. The the girl from across the way (Platskarntney carriages are designed so that there is one long corridor, divided into sections, with space for four people to sleep on one side of the corridor and two on the other, so effectively you have open compartments grouped into sixes) said something in english. Hooray! She didn't as speak it as well as marsha, but considering, she told me, she hadn't tried to speak it for 5 years, it was pretty impressive! Her name was Elena, and she had just been to Tomsk - her first trip away fom her home town of Chita- to visit her boyfriend, and spent much of the trip gazing into the distance with a wistful expression. I felt for her. It's hard being 19!

So, back to the others..on closer inspection they turned out to be an old man with a gold tooth and a twinkly smile, and what I presumed was his son, who must have been about 40, who had one of the kindest faces I've seen. He had very dark hair and I wondered if he was part Buryat. The Buryat people are indigenous to this region, and the largest indigenious group in Russia (Ulan-Ude is in the 'Buryat Republic', or 'Buryatia', as in the person who called out to me cheerily 'welcome to Buryatia' in the street last night!) Ethnically, Buryats are similar to Mongolians. Traditionally, they vary in region between nomadicism and agriculturalism, and whilst some have adopted Buddhism, others retain shmanic practices. Of course, in his usual charming manner, Stalin cracked down massively on these practices, destroying almost all the Buddhist temples (which are now slowly being revived), and having more than 10,000 Buryat killed.

We also passed by the Tuvan republic (we were joined by a Tuvan woman for a little while), and I longed to run off and discover its mysterious mountains and legendary throat singers..

But back to the train..the third member was a young lad by the name of Dmitiri, who spent the entire time I was there in a state of perpetual astonishment and incredulity about what I was doing (I hope I helped to burst a few of his preconceptions!). All of them agreed that this was highly unusual, and never before had they witnessed such a bizarre phenomonena s a foreigner on a train...especially not one a s crazy as me!

Inexplicably, the train stopped for 6 hours in the small town of Taiga, and Elena and Dmitiri invited me to come for a walk with them, which I did. We bought some beer and sat in the town square drinking it, me feeling like a proper russian, and then they conceived the idea that I should play something on the violin. So I dutifully took i out onto the railway bridge and played a few jigs, to the amusement of passers-by...At this point it was about 11 at night and we decided to go to a nearby outdoor cafe, where, wih russian pop music blaring, they ate kebabs, we drank some more beer, and we met some more young russians with whom i had a strange conversation (through my patient translator) about the relative merits of russian and british film, and thel all agreed it was the first time a foreigner had ever ever been seen in these parts. Ever.
I don't seem to have been able to make any russian friends over the age of 21, and I'm starting to feel a it old..they asked me who were the most popula bands in britain and I wasn't even sure! But hey, who says you can't be a teenager for ever? (-;

Back to the train, and we were at last on our way. The countryside after crossing the great Yenisey river began to get more interesting, comprising mostly of the beautiful taiga (forest, Yes, and also the name of the town), which at night was shrouded in strange swirly mists under the full moon.. Chekhov travelled this way in 1890, on his way to Sakhalin island, where he interviewed thousands of prisoners who were subject to appalling treatment, helping to eventually bring about the end of corporal punishment. It took him an incredible 2 1/2 months (and this was considered quick at the time!), of what must have been a very tough joureny, considering his poor health, to cross Siberia, along the Trakt (Great Siberian Post Road), by an impressively efficient sounding relay sytem of coaches (the American journalist George Kennan described it as 'the most perfectly organised horse express service in the world'). Here are his impressions of travelling through the taiga.

'The entire time I travelled through the taiga, birds were pouring out songs and insects were buzzing; pine needles warmed by the sun saturated the air with the thick fragrance of resin, the glades and edges of the forest were covered with delicate pale-blue, pink and yellow flowers, which caress not merely the sense of sight. The power and enchantment of the taiga lie not in titanic trees or the silence if the graveyard, but in the fact that only birds of passage knwo where it ends.'

Makes you feel as though you're missing out a little, looking through the window of a train. Maybe it's just not slow enough?

However, two days of inertia on a train (I don't know people manage 7 days!), where the furthest you can walk is to the toilet (or the occasional sations stop) was quite enough for me...we settled into a little routine of sleeping eating, and so on. Russians are known for their generous attitudes towards sharing what they have, and every meal turned into a kind of mass picnic where the son (they told me their names, which I of course forgot), thrust edible items at me at every opportinity, mainly pieces of white bread with endless varietes of sausage. I felt as though I'd been adopted. He also went to incredible lengths to try and communicate, reading through my phrasebook with much patience. He wanted to know answers to important questions like, did I have a car? and how much did I get paid? At one point, after much searching, he said, triumphantly, 'you - nice!' (or ni-ch,a she pronounced it). I was very touched. From some people such a phrases could be construed as lecherous, but from him it was like a kindly uncle. His father spent most of his time sleeping, reading from a large tome that, I discovered was a treatise on the origins of language, and separating small piles of medications into bits, an elaborate process that seemd to require the reading of lenghty handwritten instructions each time.

The younger man was a fisherman in Lake Baikal, which the train passed on the second day. This is, as you may well know, the world's deepest lake. It has a unique ecosytem - due to the miilions of tiny crustaceans (epishura) and the warm water vents, it has exceptionally clear and pure water, which is home to over 100 species of plants and animals, including the Baikal seal (nerpa), the world's only freshwater seal, and also the smallest), and unusual wading species and wildfowl, such as the white-winged black tern.

I sampled some of this wildlife, when, at a station stop on the edge of the lake, everybody poured out to buy freshly cooked fish from the traders on the platforms. As the train was evidently going to smell of fish for some time to come, I decided to join them. And it was quite tasty. It is always fun to see what you can buy at a station stop. There always drinks, biscuits and so on, but also sometimes old woman with pot of wild red berries, or indeterminite homemade square things in plastic bags which may turn out to be anything at all. Mostly I have been existing on trains on a diet, which, after some experimention, I have honed to rye crackers, honey biscuits and grapefruit juice. (Without the last I fear I would have contracted scurvy by now). With the occasional additions of such exciting things as a cucumber, a fish, a chocolate bar and so on. Most people seem to live on instant noodles, but at this i draw the line..I have heard rumours of such an exotic thing as a restaurant car, but never actually found one..

Given the wonder of lake Baikal, it seems crazy in a way that I didn't stop there, but due to diminishing time on my russian visa and that it takes a while to actually get to the lake from the main town of Irkutsk, (and, of course, that that's where everybody else stops..) I decided against it. The trainline runs right along the southern shore of the lake, giving a fine view of its vast, dark cloud -topped waters backed by forested mountains. However, I was little sorry not to be able to visit, in Irkutsk, the museum of the house of the Volkonsky family (or rather, of Maria Volkonsky: Sergei lived in a shed in the garden.)

Let me tell you the fascinating tale of the Volkonsys and their Siberian legacy

The Volkonskys, one of Russia's oldest noble families were descended from a 14th century prince, who was made a saint for his part in Moscow's war of liberation against the Mongol hordes. In a long line of military commanders and governors, both Sergei and his father Grigory continued this tradition. Grigory Volkonsky was made the governor of Orenburg (in the Ural mountains) from 1803 - 1816. He was notorious for his harsh treatment of uprisings but also had a deep love of the people and land that he governed. He travelled all through central Asia becoming an expert on Turkic culture, history, language and wildlife. He was also something of an eccentric, perhaps due to a shrapnel wound in his head, he was known to walk around at - 30 degrees in his dressing gown, handing out food and money to the oor, and to go naked to church to pray! It seems it felt utterly at home in Siberia, refusing to return to St Petersburg 'I love this nomadic way of life' he wrote, 'the quiet life of the Asian steppe suits my temperament.'

No wonder then that his son was also a unique and wonderful character. Let's go to 1825. Sergei by now having become disillusioned with aristocratic attitudes, was one of the leading Decembrists, the group who plotted to overthrow the government, but were brutally suppressed. They had been affected deeply by fighting alongside ordinary citizens in the war of 1812: Figes explains

'Nothing in the background of these officers had prepared them for the shock of this discovery [that the serfs were 'ready to defend their motherland with scythes' whilst the aristocrats 'ran off to their estates' (Glinka)]. As noblemen they had been brough up to regard their fathers' serfs as little more than human beasts devoid of higher virtues and sensibilities.'

This shared feeling created a strong bond between the renegade officers, a 'cult of brotherhood' that
'evolved into the cult of the collective which would become so important in the political life of the Russian intelligentsia.' (Figes). Volkonsky, was a serious young man, who, having attained brilliance in battle, pursued Napoleon as far as Paris, where, it seems, he was further influenced:
'His brief encounter with the West..confirmed his conviction in the personal dignity of every human being - an essential credo of the Decembrists which lay at the foundation of their opposition to the autocratic system and serfdom.'
However, this sentiment was combined, as with otehr Decembrists, with a move towards abandoning foreign influences (incredible as it may seem, the aristocracy at that time spoke almost entirely in French, and the Russian language as yet lacked much of its vocabulary), towards more 'Russian' pleasures, such as lunches of cabbage soup and rye bread..

Despite such noble intentions, as history tells us, the Decembrists failed in their insurrection, and the conspirators were either put to death or sent to Siberia. This was an absolute exile: Irkutsk marked the point of the borders the penal region of Siberia, beyond which all rights as a russian citizen were removed, as discovered by the wives who loyally followed their husbands east. Thwy were also disowned and rejected by their families, who were too afraid of angering the tsar and aware of their own shame in the small circle of Petersburg society to have any sympathy.
It is hard to imagine what an awful journey it must have been. It took the prisoners three months of walking, down the highway known as Vladimirka, to the prison colony of Nerchinsk, on the Russian- Chinese border.

Pushkin, who may have been in love with Maria, and supported (passively) the Decembrist cause, wrote these sorrowful and inspiring words. (my russian friend marsha disliked Pushkin, calling him what we would call 'chocolate-box', and I'm inclined to agree but he was an apt social commentator and the first 'nobleman' to abandon public service to make art his profession.). with apologies to him for omitted verse.

'In deep Siberian mines retain
A proud and patient resignation
Your grevious toil is not in vain
Not yet your thoughts' high aspiration

When love and friendship reaching through
Will penetrate the bars of anguish
The convict warrens where you languish,
As my free voice now reaches you

Each hateful manacle and chain
Will fall; your dungeons break asunder;
Outside waits freedom joyous wonder
As comrades give you swords again.'

Once there, life was not much better, condemned as they were to an existence of imprisonment and hard labour. However, despite this, and after gaining a measure of freedom, they created their own community, and learnt to cope with an entirely new way of life.

'Siberia brought the exiles together. It showed them how to live truly by the principles of communality and self-sufficiency which they ahd so admired in the peasantry. In Chita, where they moved in 1828, the dozen prisoners and their families formed themselves into an artel, a collective team of labourers, and divided up the tasks between themselves...Volkonsky was the gardener-in-chief'

'Like all Decembrist exiles, Volkonsky saw Siberia as a land of democratic hope. Here, it seemed to them, was a young and childlike Russia, primordial and raw, rich in natural resources. It was a frontier land (an 'America')whose pioneering farmers were not crushed by serfdom or the state, so taht they had retained an independent spirit and resourcefulness, a natural sense of justice and equality, from which the old Russia might renew itself.'

(Figes)

Some, like Maria, became immersed in the building of a new society, setting up schools, a hospital, a theatre. Sergei, named the 'peasant prince' on the other hand, had no interest in society, preferring to spend his time working on the land - Figes says that

'He dressed like a peasant, grew his beard. rarely washed, and began to spend most of his time working in the fields or talking with peasants in the local market town.', and the writer Belogovsky comments on how normal it was
'to see the prince on market days sitting on the seat of a peasant cart piled high with flour bags and engaged in lively conversation with a crowd of peasants whilst they shared a grey bread roll.'

Unurprsingly, marital relations were rather strained! Volkonsky became an expert on agriculture, importing seed and textbooks, and spread his knowledge to the peasants, who came to him from miles around for advice. He had an extraordinary ability to enter the world of those people he once viewed as serfs. They seemed to have a genuine respect for him, calling him 'our prince.'

This quest was shared by many, though none as successfully as Volkonsky, for example, Tolstoy, a distant cousin of Volkonsky. His most famous book, war and peace was inspired his relative's story. His life was a constant struggle for this kind of authenticity, much of it 'playing' at being a peasant (and seducing the women), but in later years he found his own mystical-religious path that praeched equality, and gained a substantial folowing of his own. Figes explains:
'This very 'Russian' quest for a 'Life of Truth' was more profound than the romantic search for a 'spontaneous' or 'organic' existence which motivated cultural movements elsewher in Europe. At its heart was a religious vision of the 'Russian soul' that encouraged national prophets to worship at the altar of the peasantry.'

So there we are again..the Russian Soul. reminds me of that episode of Northern Exposure where they all become very dark suddenly, and drink vodka and sing mournful russian songs..

Um..where was I. Oh yes. So, after two days and suffering from slight cabin fever, I bid farewell to my bizarre little travelling family, supplemented at time by various chinese guys who occupied the top bunk and spent most of their time sleeping or shouting at each other in chinese (probably just commenting on the weather..). I was a little sad to leave them, but I couldn't take much more nodding and smiling, i was starting to feel like a performing monkey. Must learn Russian next time..And disembarked to Ulan-Ude, where I am staying in a vast, cavernous youth hostel, though I haven't spotted any otehr guests yet..It promises to be an intriguing place. It also is home to - not just the usual statue - but the world's biggest Lenin head. Really, it makes me want to get out a spray can..

This will be my last post from Russia (I hope, unless I'm languishing is some russian jail for overlooked visa regulations or something). I've spent 2 1/2 weeks here, and although I've had many interesting experiences and met some wonderful people, I still don't feel like I have much idea what 'Russia' is all about. How can you define such vast place? In a way, the most intriguing russia i've found j\ahd been in the world of the imagination, and I'm happy to have learnt a little about Russian history and culture, about which I was largely ignorant. It's also left me with a real desire to read more russian literature. It's a question, I suppose, how much you should absorb yourself in learning about a place, as opposed to simply experiencing it. I think this depends on how long and how deeply you intend to immerse yourself in a place: passing through on the surface as I have, I think this is the only way you can really get a sense of it - living somewhere is totally different- more immediate.

But I'm happy to be leaving (and excited about mongolia). Here in Ulan Ude, on the cusp of russia and mongolia, everybody smiles. It's very nice. And no more russian train tickets to buy! woo hoo!

Oh, and, special offer, one battered annotated copy of 'A cultural history of Russia', free to a good home.
Pick up from Ulan-Ude.