Third stop - Ulan Ude

Dear Mom and Dad,

Today I woke up in Ulan Ude. Things are moving fast. And the weather is changing quickly. At least for the day.

I’m going to skip the train description today. Ten hours was the blink of an eye after 43.

When I stepped off the train car at 7 am it was a brisk 0 degrees Celsius. As I have upheld my tradition of exploration by foot alone thus far, I strapped on my pack and set off in the direction of my hostel, some three kilometers south of the train station. The walking helps me deal with the fact that I am now undeniably a traveler, as I have always sought to exclude myself from that category by pointing to how I live in places for extended periods of time and rarely hop from one place to the next. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the traditional traveler, but in the case of Russia, a surface glance will rarely give you the right impression. I, here on this trip, am thus doubtlessly guilty of much misjudgment. Good thing no one reads this. So, while city-hopping, walking the streets at least gives me if but the slightest feel of what a local inhabitant might see from day to day. It also helps me sleep when I find myself alone in some strange room in the middle of Asia. For the moments when even Tom Waits brings no succor, there’s exhaustion. Exhaustion – it’s free.

And so, at first glance of UU, it seemed much like Chita. Instead of the Chita River, there is the Selenga, neither of which seem to contribute much to city, but rather provide obstacles to construction. There are a few unimpressive parks scattered about the cities. The number of horseback warrior monuments is significantly greater here. Just like in Chita, there is the quintessential giant Soviet parade square with a Lenin – but wait! What do we have here? Not just any Lenin statue, but a giant de-bodied Lenin head. The biggest stand alone Lenin head in the world. Very…impressive?

Other than that (or should I say primarily because of namely that), the city presented a fairly gray portrait of life in the capital of Buryatia. It likely also didn’t help that the sun never did poke its head out over the course of the day. Nevertheless, there was one tourist destination I was intent on visiting.

The Buddhist temple that overlooks the city from it’s northern perch was about five kilometers from my hostel on the city’s southside. So I made the slow climb across town and got a good look at much of the city on the way. After wandering my way up an endless street that slowly cut off into dirt roads with wooden huts jammed next to, between and on top of one other, all surrounded by sheet metal fencing (Russians love fences – a symptom of the ‘mine’ syndrome, a side-effect of capitalism) and all being watched over by packs of stray dogs, I made it to the temple. While the temple itself seemed a little less than nirvanic, white plastic doors and all, the view of the city and river below was certainly the best in town, even if it did offer up the less than pleasant site of near slum-like shacks crowded together and vast stretches of forest on the surrounding hills that had been sheered away.

While the history of the Buryat Mongols is certainly a very rich one, it unfortunately shines through very bleakly to the naked eye in Ulan Ude. Something tells me the clouds are not the only thing at fault here.

Tomorrow morning I’ll get back on the same train I took here to take an eight hour ride to Irkutsk, much of which will go right past Baikal, I think. I believe I’ve positioned myself on the correct side of the train for viewing purposes. Let’s hope so.

Alex