Itin Update - The Taj Mahal

We are currently in India... getting further and further behind in blogging. I have been keeping a lot of written notes, so hopefully we will catch up, but in the meantime I will keep trying.
We are in Dehli, headed out to see the Taj Mahal tonight in Agra.

I did just post some more Russia entries. We finished Tomsk Russia and next will be Olkhon Island and Irkutsk.

Tomsk, Russia – 09/14 Grom returns

(Michelle) Friday morning, Grom returned from the mountains. He and his father both work as hiking guides in the Altai Mountains. If we EVER come back to Siberia, we are going on one of Grom’s tours. The Altai Mountains sound wonderful.

Grom has been gone in the mountains for many months, so when he came in, he popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. He was still a little antsy though and decided he wanted to see his own woods a bit now that he was home. So the 4 of us went out for a walk in the local Tomsk woods. We found a spot when Grom’s dad had built a fire pit long ago and had some beers there. Grom is a very charismatic person. He was a lot of fun to get to know, even if it was for just one afternoon. We had to leave for the train in the evening, but before we left, Grom’s mom prepared us one last meal. I am never going to forget the food that we had from Grom’s mom. Amazing.

Dennis took us back to the train and made sure we got on ok. We were cutting it a little close, but we made it with a few minutes to spare. On this train, we are again in the Platskartny (3^rd class). This time, we weren’t so lucky as to get the set of two bunks that sit against the wall, we were in the “four pack”, but still lucky to get bunks where we have one up and one down (and only have to share the bottom seat during the day with each other). This time we are not the only tourists; there is one other couple from Australia – Bill and Liz. We will end up seeing quite a lot of Bill and Liz over the next couple of weeks. They were not as fortunate with their train seats as they go two up bunks, which means when the two women on the bottom bunks decided to go to bed at 8pm, they lost their seats. This train was not as nice (older and not as clean) as the first one we had. (On a side note, we really got the best trains from the start – Russian trains were great to ok, Chinese trains were ok to bad and Vietnam trains are horrible.)

(picture note - Dennis, Grom (back) and Grom's mom)

(TJ) We got lucky that Grom got home when he did, great guy a true mountain man. I think that he was heading off to Austria to be a guide there since the season was ending in Russia. I can’t say enough about the guys from Tomsk, a very generous group with their time and hospitality, great ambassadors for Russia and Tomsk.

(Train note…..Europe-ok to awesome, Russia…..ok to a little bad, China…..little nasty to bad, Vietnam….don’t bother)

Tomsk, Russia – 09/13

(Michelle) In the afternoon, Dennis took us to meet up with one of his friends Boris. So we sat in a forested sidewalk path that led to the building where Boris worked having a couple of tall boys and snacks. The snacks were some sort of dried fish product, not really that tasty. As we were leaving, everyone had to hit the toilet, so we went into his office building. I will say, for an office building, the ladies bathroom was not up to office standards. It was similar to a gas station bathroom. I feel bad for the ladies who work in this office. Perhaps there aren’t any. TJ said the men’s room was fine.

We decided to head down to a bar that they used to go to from time to time. There was a band playing and they were actually a pretty good cover band. We made some more friends and had quite a few beers. It was a good thing that Dennis dragged us out of there around midnight or so, it turns out that Grom’s mom was waiting up for us with hot food. It never occurred to me that that would be the case, as I am not aware of any mother who waits up for “kids” with hot food. I guess we are out of town guests, but I wish Dennis would have told us, as we would have left a lot earlier. I think he is used to it though. He didn’t seemed surprised at all. Regardless, the food was AWESOME. These little baked buns with either meet or cabbage in them (I know it sounds weird, but the cabbage ones were sooo good). There was also some sort of jello looking salad that normally I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole because jello salads scare me, but it was so good. I was amazed at Grom’s mom’s hospitality. She always made sure we had food even though she was working full time herself.

(picture note, picture from the bar, Constantine on the left, then Dennis, me and then Boris).

(TJ) The dried snack were calamari pieces, they were heavily salted somewhat similar to a beef jerky type snack. I really liked them, they are the type of thing that once you open the bag you know you are not going to stop eating them until they are gone, especially if you are drinking a tall boy in the woods. The food that Grom’s mom had prepared for us was awesome as Michelle said. I had a great time going to the bar listening to the cover band. I’ve got to say I was surprised that most if not all of what they played were covers of English songs. It’s surreal to be sitting in a bar in Siberia and you’re watching a band belt out Nirvana or Bon Jovi. It either shows how pervasive American culture is or how much smaller the world is getting.

After going out, Grom’s mom had awesome food waiting for us. In addition to the awesome salty cabbage buns she also made some that were filled with ground beef and other filled with mashed potatoes. I don’t remember what the Jello thing was only that it was very rich and had multiple layers of things like cabbage, fish and potatoes and I think it had black olives on top. I tried one slice and am pretty sure that I ingested close to 2000 calories. Let’s just say I slept well after the late night food binge.

Tomsk, Russia – 09/12 Evening

(Michelle) After we left the park, we headed over to a local university pub for some drinks on the patio. The September Siberian weather was decent, a little chilly but not cold. The feel of this town is so much friendlier than that of Moscow or even St. Petersburg. Being a university town, we are actually meeting tons of people who speak English – which is very different than our time in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Even strangers at this bar were talking to us (probably to practice English). Some of Dennis’ friends met us out, so we got to meet Constantine and Kirill, who were very nice and funny. Kirill was telling us a very funny story about his car being stolen and being found again – I guess that happens even in Siberia, but he has a pretty shitty car, so I think he was pretty surprised it was stolen. They way he told the story was so funny that I had to take a picture of the car before he drove us home.

They asked me about my job. I tried to explain to them what employee benefits were. Perhaps it was a language barrier, but they all spoke really good English and I tried to say it 4 different ways and they still didn’t really get “employee benefits”. I wanted to find out more, do they not have any benefits as employees here? Unfortunately, I think the confusion on the topic was too great, so we moved on.

Constantine is probably one of my favorite people I have met on this trip so far. He looks heavy metal (all these guys are into a little metal), long hair, dresses all in black. He is really quiet at first, but his English was great and he is incredibly intelligent. He comes from a long line of intellects. As I was telling him how surprised I was that Stalin’s grave stone is just out there in the Red Square for people to see, he mentioned that his great-grandfather was killed by Stalin: the sole reason being that he was a smart man.

(TJ) This was a great night, Denis and his friends were nice enough to take us out on the town. All of them spoke great English; I don’t think we have had too many opportunities to be able to listen in on group of locals talk about all sorts of issues and topics about their country and the world at large. In talking to this group of people I got divergent views on many different historical issues and current issues. It was great to be able to ask questions and here five different answers than just a sound bite that fit what ever direction the story was going. Not only that but we had great time out, great group of people, the most hospital people that we have met on the trip so far.

Tomsk, Russia – 09/12 Daytime

(Michelle) When we got to Grom’s house, we found on the table some wonderful tasting bliny for breakfast (I mentioned them before, their like crepes) that Grom’s mom had left for us. After eating and showering, we were like new people. We relaxed for a bit, while Dennis showed us the wonderful world of the Tomsk FTP site that had all sorts of free movies and tv shows you could download. He showed us a British comedy he really likes called the “IT crowd”. We liked it, so we watched a couple of episodes.

By the afternoon we were ready to go out and see Tomsk. Dennis took us to the main history museum there. It is located on the spot of the original Tomsk fortress on Resurrection Hill. The museum wasn’t anything memorable really, but the view from the rebuilt wooden tower is pretty nice. We then walked down to the main square directly below the hill. There are four obelisks in the square denoting various important Tomsk historical dates (Tomsk recently celebrated its 400^th birthday).

There is also a humorous statue of Anton Chekhov. He is a famous Russian writer who once traveled across Siberia and made a stop in Tomsk. He is quoted as saying that the town and the people of Tomsk were all quite dull. So, in retaliation, the town made a statue making fun of Mr. Chekhov.

After that, Dennis, TJ and I grabbed a couple of tall boys and had a drink in the park behind the WWII memorial. The park overlooks a nice little river valley. We had discussions about history, movies, war and childhood memories. Dennis speaks excellent English. He was an exchange student in Seattle, but unfortunately he was stuck with a very odd Mormon family (not that there is anything wrong with being Mormon, but some of the religious stuff was a bit much for him. Religion aside, they were odd in a number of other ways).

(picture note – check out the picture in the statue or obelisk – it is of the building directly behind it).

(TJ) You should definitely check out the IT crowd, they should play this on PBS like they did for Coupling. Hilarious British comedy, my favorite episode revolved around “Gay: A gay musical”, nuff said check it out.

Denis was kind enough to take us on the tour of Tomsk that he has probably been on 10 times. The town has some great architecture, some buildings look as if they could have been from St. Petersburg and others are the more traditional Siberian architecture. The Siberian architecture is similar to log cabins but they have very ornate wood trimming (aka gingerbread) to roofs, eves, window trim, shutters and door frames. The gingerbread really adds to the appeal of these houses, the ones that have been restored look spectacular. I took tons of pictures of these houses here and in Irkutsk; in my opinion the houses would look great as cabins in Wisconsin or Minnesota. The restored ones are rare however and there are many that are in bad shape that I think will ultimately be torn down instead of being restored with Tomsk’s growth.

Moscow-Tomsk, Russia – 09/12 The Trans-Mongolian Train

(Michelle) After the 3^rd nights sleep on the train without a shower, my hair was looking pretty AWESOME. I don’t think there are words to describe it. I was so obsessed about getting into the bathroom though, I didn’t even think about taking a picture of it until it was too late – I had already wet it down in preparation for our arrival into Tomsk. The bathroom situation on the train is one that you have to be very careful with. Whenever we are within a certain distance from a station, they lock the bathroom door and it stays locked for a while after the stop. This means that relatively often, there was an hour so that you couldn’t use a bathroom at all. We understood why you wouldn’t want people using the bathroom at a station (because the toilet just empties onto the tracks), but we couldn’t figure out why they had to lock it in advance and keep it locked for so long after.

So we are meeting our next couchsurfer – Dennis. He is supposed to pick us up from the train station. We actually contacted a guy named Grigory (Grom) first. He happens to be out of town, but opened his house (where his mom lives) to us and sent his friend Dennis to pick us up. Dennis showed up minutes after we got there and took us to the bus stop. We rode the bus for about 30 minutes until we got to Grom’s house. Tomsk is a university town of about 500,000 people, so it is not real small.

(TJ) Michelle’s hair was pretty nasty; I think that we were both donning our hats after the first night on the train. My biggest complaint about the train was the bathroom, it seemed like it was locked for at least a quarter of the trip. This inevitably leads to some pretty antsy people for hours at a time and then a rush for the door when the attendant finally decides to open the door. I think the attendants would play a game to see how far they could push people, almost to the point where people were thinking about trying to open windows to pee out or were eyeing empty bottles. Once in the bathroom by the third day it was pretty nasty, the floor is wet (with what??) and needless to say you don’t want to touch anything, I felt bad for the women. I guess the lesson is try to time your bodily issues with when we will be at a station and the you can pay a few rubles and do your business. This is good rule of thumb for any train trip.

Once we arrived in Tomsk, I was a little worried at how we were going to find who were supposed to be staying with. After only waiting for 2 minutes Denis picked us out of the crowd and got us on to the bus and to our humble abode for the night.

Moscow-Tomsk, Russia – 09/11 The Trans-Mongolian Train.

(Michelle) Last night, as we were getting to know our neighbors late into the night, I didn’t realize that TJ had polished off a whole bottle of vodka by himself. He paid for that today, as today the air conditioning was no longer on in the train. It wasn’t hot outside, but with the windows shut (you couldn’t open them in more modern cars where they generally use air con) it got really hot in the train. The scenery on this trip has been simple, yet comforting. We are starting to see some of the Siberian wood houses today – we will have a lot more pictures of these houses in Tomsk and Irkutsk.

(TJ) I forgot to mention drinking is another thing you can do on the train. In my defense the bottle was small and it was not all drunk in one day. Yes the train was hot, but not nearly as bad as being trapped in hot airplane with a killer hangover.

Moscow-Tomsk, Russia – 09/10 The Trans-Mongolian Train.

(Michelle) We started pretty late last night, so we went to bed right away for our first night’s sleep. The provodnitsa gave us sheets for the bed. It was apparently included in our ticket price on the leg of our trip (on our second leg we were confused as to why they were charging us for sheets, it wasn’t much money, we just didn’t know what they were asking for at all).

You may ask us “What was it like sleeping in an open room with 50 Russians?” My answer is – quiet. I had envisioned there would be some guys staying up late drinking vodka, but we didn’t have any of those in our car. I also thought there would be a lot of early risers making noise, but even at 9am it was really quiet in the car. Now, that’s not to say we didn’t have any “questionables” in our car. Oh no. There were two of those. I managed to get both of them in one photo. The guy closer in the photo wasn’t too bad, he was just sort of a lingerer. The guy behind him in the blue shirt was a total perv. At one point, he walked by my bunk with his hand out so he could “accidentally” touch me. I saw him talking to several other girls on the train and they all looked extremely uncomfortable, so I am probably lucky that I couldn’t speak Russian, or who knows what would have come out of that mouth. Everyone else on the train all seemed pretty normal though.

We entertained ourselves with watching people, watching scenery, reading books and playing cards. TJ still hasn’t beat me at cribbage at this point during our whole trip (he did finally beet me later on in China and then he refused to play anymore after he won). We were the only tourists in our car (and possibly on our train – we didn’t see any for the whole 3 days. We were lucky in that sense, as many travelers we met along the way mentioned being in cars that were full of tourists. Not that there is anything wrong with tourists, but we enjoyed being the only ones for this part of our trip.

Finally, later on in the day, we broke the ice with our 6 pack. There was a couple with a 2 year old girl, an older man and an older woman (the older man and older women were not together or with the couple). The 2 year old found TJ to be an odd figure worthy of staring at (quite common for TJ), and pretty soon her mother tried to speak to us. It turns out that Ksyusha took a little bit of English in high school. With the help of lingo (the super electronic translator), we were very slowly able to communicate. We shared some food and stories about where we were from. The older woman was soon eager to have Ksyusha translate for her – sadly, the main “cultural” thing that she wanted to know was if alcoholism was as big of a problem where we were from as it was in her town.

(TJ)

I concur with Michelle’s post, with the exception of the cribbage comment, we have played after I won, I think that I have now one twice.

Moscow-Tomsk, Russia – 09/09 The Tran-Mongolian Express

(Michelle) Leaving around 11pm, we started the 3 night/2 day train ride. We will be on the train for about 60 hours until our next stop of Tomsk, Russia. We wanted to go to Yekaterinburg first, but for some unexplainable reason (ok, it was explainable if you knew Russian) we couldn’t get those tickets, so on to Tomsk.

As TJ mentioned, the food list is somewhat limited for a trip this length. There is no fridge, so could only buy things that could be eaten without refrigeration and if it needed to be cooked, it had to be something that only required you to add hot water. Every car on a train in Russia has a big hot water tank for the passengers to use for food and tea, which is great for a person who is as hooked on tea as I am. I think on the Russian trains you can borrow cups and silverware, but I decided to buy my own tea cup so that I wouldn’t have to ask.

So, what can you make with hot water? Mostly Ramen, although TJ found some instant mashed potatoes that he was pretty fond of. The train stops every couple of hours or so (I think it was anywhere between 1-4 hours between stops) and at each stop, there were people selling ramen and other stuff outside of the train. I had read this would be the case, so I was actually a bit disappointed because I was envisioning a large food selection at each of these stops and it was mostly just ramen, beer and bread. I know, what am I complaining about, what’s wrong with ramen, beer and bread? I certainly survived on that for 4 years of college.

When we bought tickets, we had several options of car class. First class (SV) would be a private compartment for 2 people. Second class (in Russian – Kupe) is a private compartment for 4 people. Third class (in Russian – Platskartny) is an open car that is partitioned off into groups of 6 beds, 2 sets of bunks facing each other and 1 set of bunks on the foot of those bunks against the opposite wall, with a walkway separating the group of 4 bunks with the 2 against the wall. Can you guess what class we were in? Kupe costs 2-3 times more than Platskartny, and we’re not the Rockefellers. Luckily on this long journey – we scored the set of bunks against the window in the middle of the car. The best seats in the car!! If you are on either end, you are right next to the doors of the bathroom – not a good spot (we’ll get that spot later on in the journey), if you are in the bunks facing each other, you can only really see the people across from you. Sitting on the bunks against the wall, we could see a lot of what was going on in the train. Was there anything that interesting going on? Not particularly, but it was still fun to look. The bunks against the wall are built so during the day, you fold the bottom bunk away and it turns into a table with two chairs – like being in a camper, and I love campers. The provodnitsas (car attendants) kept our car relatively clean. This first Russian car was probably the cleanest train car we would be on for the rest of our train rides through China and Vietnam.

(picture note – check out my grocery store sweatpants).

(TJ)

60 hours on train can seem a little daunting when you first think about it. I was imagining a smoke filled, filthy cabin with people giving me the evil eye while my eyes were on our bags. Fortunately as Michelle said it was not the case. Most of the people were friendly enough with a few exceptions. It would be nice however if there were a few other things to do (perhaps a dining car). Basically you can do 4 things, look out the window, read, eat and sleep. Watching a movie on the computer or doing anything on the computer was nixed by Michelle’s fear of the computer being stolen, she didn't want anyone to know we were carrying a computer. On this train there were pretty much only Russians, which is relatively rare as we would later find out. So talking with the neighbors was difficult but not impossible.

So what to do??? I probably slept a good 12 hours a day, ate 4-5 times a day, read about 8-10 hours a day. The other hour was probably spent looking out at the same pine tree scenery that spread out for thousands of miles interspersed by some small villages or perhaps a abandoned factory every once in a while. I knew Russia was big, but unless you are riding across it, you only then realize really how big Russia is. We were riding for 3 days and probably crossed maybe a little over a fourth of the country. The lesson here is, don’t invade Russia, bad idea, it never ends.

It was really not that bad for me since I enjoy reading. I guess we also played cribbage a few times, which I got sick of relatively quickly since Michelle almost always beats me and just happens to get phenomenal hands almost every game. If you don’t mind being a little grubby by the end of three days and eating ramen and mashed potatoes I’d recommend it.