Eugh. So the train journey didn’t exactly as planned. I got the train fine, my tickets were fine, and the attendants in the carriage were all very helpful. In fact everything was going swimmingly until some point on day 2 of the journey when my stomach and head began hurting, and I began feeling queezy. At first, I hoped I’d maybe just eaten something funny and it would pass, but no such luck, this was my reality for the remainder of the journey. My theory is that being shut up in a carriage with a lot of foreigners with very different immune systems to me caused me to pick up some bug or other – kinda like fresher’s flu when you go to uni. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant, and it rather tainted my experience of the journey. To make it worse the motion of a train really does nothing to soothe an upset stomach, nor does it help in getting to sleep when it is already difficult due to feeling ill.
On getting off the train all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep on something that wasn’t moving. Unfortunately I had to wait for 1h30 before I could check into my air bnb so I had to huddle in the train station, generally feeling sorry for myself.
Happily, when I arrived there, the air bnb, and the host were both lovely. Tamara is warm and caring Russian grandma who rents out her spare room that her children have moved out of in order to make a bit of money. When I emerged from my initial slumber that I had fallen into soon after being shown around and told her that I wasn’t feeling well, she whipped me up a tasty rice dish with freshly grown vegetables to eat, then took me out to the local pharmacy to get some antibiotics. At the time of writing this I am, I think, starting to feel a little better, which is a relief.
Tamara is also really interesting to talk to, despite speaking very little english, but google translate works wonders! She was telling me how a lot of the shops and supermarkets in Siberia tend to only stock cheap low quality produce since most people don’t have the money to pay the price of high quality items, so in response to this lots of people prefer to grow or forage their own food. As well as the standard vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes & courgettes which she grows on a plot in the country, she also forages for wild mushrooms, herbs to make her own tea, young ferns to eat (which apparently help to rid radiation from the body when eaten, and are popular with the japanese,) and pine cones which she makes into jam, and is very good for colds and sore throats! We also talked about the differences between life now, and life under communism. Suprisingly, (to me anyway) she said that it isn’t necessarily better now, just different – that there are pro’s and con’s to living in both systems.
It’s conversations like this that really reiterate to me the benefits of staying in homestays or with hosts when there is the opportunity, especially when travelling alone. Aside from providing company (and in this case comfort when you are feeling ill), it really gives you a window into the local culture that you would never know about from staying in a hotel or hostel.
Tomorrow, I am going Kayaking in Lake Baikal (“The Blue Eye of Siberia”) which is the worlds largest lake by volume and contains more water than all of America’s great lakes combined! I’m hoping I feel somewhat better by the morning but in any case I will have my painkillers and antibiotics at the ready. I’m not going to let some stupid bug get in the way of this adventure!
Dancing in the Dawn 