Into Siberia

Celabinsk, Siberia. 28th of June 2008.

It is two weeks since we left Amsterdam.
It may as well be six months.
For us now the road is a way of life.
Arriving, departing, arriving… Our lives’ rhythm is simple, dictated by the rise and fall of hunger, the ticking of kilometre beneath the wheels, the choosing of yet another damp and mosquito infested field as a home for the night.
Somehow, helter-skelter, we have made it to Siberia.

All the challenges, all the discoveries, all the bumps and potholes of this endless road have taken us to this point. Every new breathtaking view behind the saddle of a hill, every word and smile and laughter, every bout of frustration or doubt, everything or event, big or small, rational or absurd, have somehow harmonized each other into the great big symphony which somehow brought forth what now feels like a miracle... for yesterday afternoon, in the green and grey world of thick taiga and pouring rain on the first hills of the Ural Ranges we finally hobbled, skidded and hopped passed by an incongruously elegant, oriental roadside monument heralding our arrival into Siberia.

If it is an achievement though, it is almost impossible to focus onto its accompanying feelings of pride and elation. Unlike what may have imagined our moods to be as we set off on this journey that early June morning with bleary eyes and hearts filled with excitement, we realize now that the journey now simply exist for itself.
We are the wide-eyed passengers of something bigger than what we can control. It is a feeling gaining in depth with each new surmounted obstacle, as more and more we feel the presence of a protecting and guiding hand over us.
What else is there to do but to be the humble, open-heart children of the road?
As we navigate in this unknown sea, deeper into the dark forests, and into the eerie vastness of this fence-free land, days merge into one another.
For us now life is simply lived from one moment to the next.
Yet somehow, as each day goes by and we grow more peaceful and content in each other’s company, a journey within a journey begins to take shape, a journey towards the within.
If in the conceptual stages of the project our instinct dictated us that we must travel in this way in our search of the Nomads of the Far East, as opposed to simply taking a plane, this feeling is now becoming a certainty. More than the physical distance we are covering in this quest, it seems that it is really the inner discoveries we make along the way that really prepares us the most for this experience.
But we have a lot more kilometres to travel and so much more to learn.
This is only the beginning.
We have reached Siberia, crossed the border from Europe to Asia. Entered this mysterious world where in fact neither Europe nor Asia seems recognizable.
For Siberia stands on its own.

Looking back onto the past 5000km it is easy to be overwhelmed by the richness of all the moments this journey already encompasses.
As may be common with many great undertakings all of our biggest challenges seem to have befallen us within the first three days of our leaping onto the road, as if life and the great God of Reality Checks had decided to put us to the test.
Hardly a day out, as we congratulated ourselves at having covered the remarkable distance of 500km, our alternator broke down and left us limping into a roadway truck stop with no headlights and a very shattered dignity. At 2am on a Saturday night and with no town in sight, the prospects did not look too good. The next day being Sunday left us with little chances of finding an electrician to fix the problem before at least the following day. Then of course was the problem of costs. How much was this going to cost? What if it took several days to fix? Because of our strict Russian visas we had to be at the Belorus border 3 days later and still had the whole of Poland to cross.
But one after the other events fell into place, as if by miracle.
The angel of all night-shift Petrol-station-shop worker just happened to be on duty that night. He let us bring the two huge deep cycle batteries, along with our battery charger and plug the whole thing right in the middle of his shop. He even changed swapped the terminal over for us at 5am so that we could sleep.
In Poland, more angels came to the rescue. Five mechanics and electrician worked the whole of Sunday and half of Monday and installed a brand new alternator for 200 Euros. At the Belorus border many angels were also right on cue and we managed to get through for the princely sum of 2 euros and a few hours making new friends among the joyful and patient hundreds of other truck drivers also stuck at the border.
One of them even insisted to wait for us another hour as we waited for our final stamps to guide us to a nearby petrol station he knew of that sold cheaper petrol.
One by one little miracles happen, big and small, many times un-noticed until much later. They are little humble miracles that all combined are really the ones to be credited for our finally reaching so far a-field, one step at a time a little closer to what we have come for. So that today as we wander through the grey, wet and disorderly streets of Celabinsk wondering at the another miracle, the miracle of human’s enduring optimism in a place such as this, we feel overwhelmed with gratitude at being here, safe and sound, our heads full of inspiration and joy.

Amsterdam to Moscow

Anna Blog:

Moskva. 22.06.08
8 days on the road. 2500km and half a world away.
We are a family.
If to be thrown into a truck with four other people and forced to travel 20000km over 5 months may feel to most mortals the worst nightmare they could ever imagine… well to us somehow, miraculously, it seems to be the happiest way of living.
The pleasure we find in discovering how compatible we are is an overwhelming surprise, a gift. If we all knew Ramsay before we left we actually knew each other very little. The total amount of hours spent together before we left amounts to just a few hours. There was no way to tell wether we would actually get along. Of course it only early days and we cannot take this extraordinary affinities that we share for granted.. But as each day merges into the other and each obstacle is overcome we are becoming closer, closer in a way that can only be described as Family.
One thought that struck us most was how happy and perfectly content we can be with so little possessions and limited comfort. If just enough space to sleep, a tiny cupboards to keep a few clothes and four little windows to watch the world go by is enough then why does anyone need such big houses and so many things? It may be a very simplistic, even puerile observation but an observation which nevertheless keeps on occupying our minds.

Imagine a tiny space in which you have to move either bent in half, twisted sideways or tiptoeing on a 30cm wide corridor among feet, bags, cameras and a million different things having been dislodged by the constant hiccuping motion of the truck and which somehow always end up rolling around on the floor. What fascinates me is the way we have instinctively learnt to share the space in such a coordinated motion that we almost operate as one body. During the first part of the journey, as we spend 90% of our time travelling or waiting at borders, life is a boxful of five minds and bodies canned into a noisy and unstable environment on wheels. Countries, life and dreams flash by at the window, as if we were the static ones and the scenes passing by were actually the ones in motion. The wheels of the truck go round and round, while inside five lives are contained. five spirits, five past and present and futures, five minds travelling their own path of thoughts. While marc and Ramsay take turns driving we each find our rhythm. While one or two of us will sit at the front and pore over the obscure Cyrillic map, others retreat at the back and sleep, or read, or write in their diaries, or prepare food on bowed legs in the lurching galley…
Home for the night can be a roadside truck stop, or an open field, or a mosquito infested clearing near a Polish lake, or a crowded border. Home is where the truck happens to stop and we can be sharing a meal together. Every little thing has gained in richness. Bland breakfast cereals have never tasted so good. Sprouting chickpeas in a dishtowel and nursing our bashed-up looking Basil plant like a pet became a symbol of domestic felicity.

In Smolensk, after 7 days on the road and 2500km worth of dust and grime we all went in search of one of the best thing Russia has to offer: a proper Rushki banya.
50 roubles in the hand of an ancient babushka and we were ushered into the past.
The banya is a public bath and sauna in which time has remained locked outside. In the scorching heat of the sauna women whipped each other with bunches of nettle and shared the miraculous candor of nakedness. As the heat would become unbearable we would totter on the slippery floor and sink into a pool of freezing water, repeating the motion over and over. If nakedness could mean vulnerability, in the banya the feeling was of grace, sisterhood and indefinable beauty. Women navigating in a women’s world.
Russia is an extraordinary place, a place in which our mind forever staggers in the deep paradoxes and contradictions of this vast land in which history seems to have build on itself as opposed to write over itself. At any given time three centuries are juxtaposed before our eyes. A horse-driven cart heaped with hay is parked next to a Hummer 4X4, a naked girl in a steaming room is texting on her mobile phone while a wrinkled Babushka walks past with a battered enamel bucket under her thick arm, her body covered in ashes. Yesterday as we walked though Moscow in the almost riotous
Celebrations of both midnight summer night and Russia’s victory over Holland in the football semi-final, as a million young people danced and kissed each other in the street under the Soviet star of Red Square and thousands of luxury cars lined the street beeping their horn over and over, it was hard to believe that not so long ago Russia sat behind the iron curtain fighting teeth and nails for its Communist dream…

One day in Moscow but already we are longing for the open road again.
The road has become our refuge, our way of life.
The instant our old diesel engine rumbles into life our spirit smiles from within.


Somewhere at the end of this road lies what we have come to look for.
Let us find it.