Bendy, throaty Mongolians

A random and last minute decision to check out some traditional Mongolian dance and music by the Tukem Ekh ensemble turned out to be the best $10 we could have spent! The contortionist alone was worth the dough (thanks to Google images for the pics- I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor to contemplate photography)...

 

But the music was also surprisingly good- the instrumentals strangely reminiscent of bluegrass or perhaps Irish folk music. 

We went there specifically to see some Mongolian Throat Singing- which until this morning I had never heard of. Check out this snatch of video taken from the Lonely Planet series to see what it's all about:

Singing from the...throat

The sounds the 'singers' produce are truly bizarre- deep bass that you can feel in your chest cavity and strange, high whistling noises that sound like nothing human. Call me crazy, but I like it. Here's some more if you do too. 

Snow turtles at Lake Baikal

I’ve been hoping it would snow ever since we arrived in Russia. Even though it’s only October and technically still autumn, I’ve read enough gloomy Russian novels to know that there was a good chance we’d get some snowfall, especially in Siberia where, according to a local girl I spoke to yesterday, summer consists of only 20 days good weather per year. It gets down to about -40°C here in the depths of winter and Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake at 1642m and containing approximately one-fifth of the world’s fresh water, freezes to a depth of 3 metres.

 

Yesterday when we arrived in Lake Baikal it was sunny and glorious, but still cold enough to freeze your nose every time you faced the wind. This morning when we woke up the sky was white-washed and snow was falling!! This is only the second time I have seen snow actually falling from the sky (first time was in Holland one Christmas) and it is VERY EXCITING!!

We took a walk down to the lakeside to buy some smoked omul (a cousin of salmon and trout and endemic to Lake Baikal), washed down with a stout which I am pretty sure was brewed with snow and smoked fish in mind. After buying a bottle of Russian brandy and some hot chocolate for later cockles-warming, we were ready for the walk home.

 

It snowed steadily the whole time we were down in town, so much so that I was able to make what may well be the world’s-first snow turtle (a snow baby turned out to be rather hard to execute and there really isn’t enough snow to justify a full on snowman just yet)!!! Who knew snow could be this fun!!!

Crossing continents, Bikram style.

Today we officially passed from Europe into Asia. I spent about an hour looking out the window waiting for the obelisk to mark this momentous occasion, but I must have either been looking the wrong way, or chose an inopportune time to blink and missed the fucking thing. 

While the countryside has been beautiful- autumnal birch trees, pine thickets and winding rivers- the villages are nothing short of grim; clusters of hunched, wooden houses with a muddy track marking the only escape route. 

The first major city east of the Urals is Ekaterinburg, where we're spending one night before embarking on the 60 hour marathon that will take us to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. Always the master of understatement, Lonely Planet suggests that you need to be a student of Soviet Constructivism to appreciate the architecture here. 

Just to prove that it ain't all onion domes and tsar-funded glory

So far we've been riding platskart, (third class), which is basically a carriage divided up into nine groups of six bunks to form a massive dormitory. The bunks are surprisingly comfortable and you can set your watch to the train time table. The only problem really is that the carriages are coal-heated to close to 30 degrees, resulting in 54 sweaty, smelly people and 100% of the Russian male population down to their tracksuit pants (or less if you're (un)lucky) within 10 minutes of boarding. 

Tomorrow night we're upgrading to kupe (second class), where we'll be four to a compartment, luxuriating in comparative privacy...and hopefully less man-sweat. 

You know you're in Russia when...

...the shelves devoted to vodka outnumber every other product in the supermarket by about 10 to 1.

Stuff Russians like...stretch hummers

Some things transcend cultural, linguistic and religious barriers...like Hummers. Cashed-up bogans the whole world over just love that shit, don't they? Combine with a wedding party for maximum effect.