The beginning. The road.
I had planned for a long time to go to Siberia. I had to postpone it all the time because of different reasons which prevented me from going earlier. In sum I "went" there since 1996 and came only now, in May 2003. At the end of 1995, I heard for the first time about an ecopolis building on the Siberian lake Tibercul, about new people trying to live on principles of love and mutual aid in harmony with nature around them and about Vissarion who leads them. Many of my friends went there and back or went there for keeps. And now I was able to see everything first- hand. Well, from where will I begin? Maybe, I'll begin from the road. Or a little earlier.
The whole last summer Moscow gasped in smoke, and peatbogs around Moscow glowed. This spring after a few hot days everything began the same. The Day of the Victory in the Second World War approached. But on the eve of it I was going to Siberia. The train from Moscow to Abakan departed from the station as usual at 11 p.m. I prepared very long. I took very many different things which we don't need in our common life in the city: a sleeping-bag, bedding made from foam plastic, protection from mosquitoes and many other different things which were necessary in taiga as I thought. You see, me, Moscow born and bred, homebody, for the first time I went so far away from my home city.
The train, a carriage with numbered reserved seats. Three days and four nights with constantly changing different people. To say the truth, the road seemed to me like a little nightmare. I passed the cities of Perm, Sverdlovsk, Tumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Achinsk. I saw bogs, rivers, lakes everywhere around the railroad. And also "the product of vital functions" of people - dumps, scrap-heaps. On the train's radio, they played the same thieves' songs which bored me to death during the trip. I was glad that I could put on my headphones and not hear the radio. Vladimir Kapunkin sang about angels in my music-player.
Vladimir Kapunkin and his wife Tatiana. |
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Abakan. Kuragino.
At last, early morning and long-awaited Abakan. I scrambled out of the carriage and tried to tie all my things together for I could carry them all. When I finished with it and looked around myself I found that I was quite alone on the station platform. I went slowly to the exit. Any native ran up to me offering to take me to Kuragino (the centre of the region where I must go to) for payment similar to the one which I paid for my ticket from Moscow to Abakan. I refused, I was going to go by a suburban train for the sum 20 times less. But at first I must find this suburban train and to get a ticket on it. So I must find a ticket office. But it was difficult with so many things which were suspended on me.
But miracles have began already. A man came to me and proposed to take me to Kuragino for fully acceptable sum. In his car there were two else women and a man. And we drove on. On the road I began to talk with women and knew that we have many mutual friends. One of women even was living in the village where I went to. She could help me to find my friend Paulina in which house I was going to stay. |
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We got to talking on the road. From our conversation it became clear that all of us knew and trusted Vissarion long ago. It gave us strange warm feeling of cognation. It seemed like closed friends who lost each other long ago, met again.
It was 8am. ( The difference with Moscow is 4 hours = 4 am in Moscow.) We needed to go further to Imiss and one of my new friends needed to go to Petropavlovka. We decided to go by bus, it was going there at 3pm. We bought some food in a shop near the bus station and had a bite. Then one of my new friends stayed at the station with our things and other leaded me to show Kuragino. I needed to visit our communicatory centre which was here. Though my Moscow friends explained to me how to find it, I bet I never could find it myself without any help. Everything here is so differ from things which we got used in the big city. Also buses driving only few times a day do not add you self-reliance.
Kuragino is a big village, in essence the centre of a region. Buses go from there to villages in different sides and to cities Minusinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Abakan. There is a railroad station here from which you can go by suburban train to other regions' centres and to Abakan. But on the surface it is wooden houses with gardens around them. Though rarely you may see stone one- and two-floors houses. There is a hotel "Tuva" which was named by the river running here. (Marvellous, full-flowing, wayward river of amazing beauty which I saw when it flooded. But people waited the higher water.) There is a big house of the post office, from which I phoned to Moscow not once when I came to Kuragino. There are some computers with connection to internet in the post office. Exactly from there I sent a letter to my friend from Canada. And once also from there I remind to my English-speaking friends about myself posting a subject in the open forum.
So we were walking in Kuragino till it was time to get the bus to Imiss. The problem with buses is that they go to the place you need only once or twice a day. If early in the morning you go from any village to Kuragino and there is not enough time to do all your affairs till the return bus (it goes at 3 or 4pm), you have to stay for a night in Kuragino till the next bus. Though natives say that you may go by any passing car, also they say it doesn't cost much; but I didn't risk this way, because I felt like a little girl lost in the woods who was unsure about orienting herself.
Everything there was for me absolutely new: from the place which was surreally beautiful like it was painted with a magic brush, and mountains and rivers looking like a fantastic dream; till buses going once a day and the big village which proudly called itself "Centre".
