“Where do you want to go?” I inquire. On the outward journey we had already noted that there weren’t many chances of finding accommodation on this stretch of the road.
“I saw a house with a banya in Inya,” she says.
“Inya is ninety miles away and it will be dark in forty-five minutes.”
“Then just to the next valley. The sunset of the century awaits us there. Hang tight!” The sky is already turning red; she accelerates just a bit more.
“Blin! Does the road have to get worse right here?” The road becomes bumpier, the tires flicking up small stones. A 40 speed limit sign induces Nadya to slow down to 85. A tiny Jesus figure dangles beneath the rearview mirror. The way he’s been jolted about today, it’s a miracle he hasn’t thrown up.
All that racing didn’t help one bit; the sun sinks behind the mountains.
“Shit!” says Nadya.
Twenty minutes later we reach the next Mesta yest wooden cabins. They seem to be brand new and comfortable, but unfortunately they’re all occupied.
An elderly man with a military cap approaches us and says that he has some equally attractive accommodation in the neighboring village of Aktash. Wooden cabins and a banya only five minutes from here. “And beer?” asks Nadya.
“In the supermarket, yes,” he replies.
We accept. He calls his son, who then waits for us at the gas station. A dour character driving a UAZ Jeep. We buy some drinks, then follow him down an uneven dirt road full of potholes.
“Just the right terrain for his car,” says Nadya sarcastically. Polya bobbles like a tiny boat in a heavy swell; rearview mirror Jesus hops up and down.
The accommodation touted as “equally attractive” proves to be an overgrown garden with a few warped forms that vaguely resemble wooden cabins. The dour son opens the door of one of them. “Fifteen hundred rubles a night, the banya is out of order,” he says as his two customers’ jaws drop all the way down. The first room is a cramped kitchen; beyond it is a bedroom with five single beds and an electric heater. The décor is colorful, but shows a glaring lack of sensitivity for shades that actually go together. It takes me a few seconds to grasp the concept, and then I get it. The mauve/red/green/pink/light-blue/yellow bedspreads, quilts, and carpets have been combined thematically rather than chromatically, following the principle that everything with flowers on it is fine.
The photos on the wall are also in violent breach of the “less is more” principle. A harsh naked bulb dangling from the ceiling illuminates cute kitten pictures, Japanese bird sketches, and a cocktail still life (a cocktail still life!). A forest and river motif has been framed by plastic ferns to accentuate the effect.
A Russian animated TV series about a hedonistic young girl with ADHD and a kindhearted bear who, after years of working for a circus, now enjoys peace and quiet as a retiree. As expected from a pair of such varying backgrounds, their friendship is shaped by many conflicts of interest. Not only children enjoy the episodes. The most popular one has had over 2.4 billion views on YouTube, making it the most viewed cartoon in the world.
“We’ll take it,” I say.
“I’m not staying here a second,” says Nadya.
“It’ll take at least an hour before we find somewhere else.”
“If I drive, forty minutes.”
“Maybe we could get him to lower the price a bit?”
“Okay,” she turns to the landlord. “Hey, my friend here is a bit stingy and thinks that it’s too expensive, can we do something about that?”
The son calls his father and then offers us the room for 1,200 rubles. Nadya resigns herself to her fate. At least we got some beer—two bottles of Barnaulskoye.
“Did you call me ‘a bit stingy’?” I ask.
“Well, I had to give him some reason or another for asking for a discount,” answers the negotiating expert. She then crawls beneath her floral quilt with her cell phone and beer and says no more.
THE NEXT DAY, the only other cabin guests are having breakfast in a kind of wooden pavilion in the garden: a family with a fully laden small car who have been traveling in the region for a while. This is good news for us, as we’re having a slight problem planning our route. We want to leave the highway soon, turning to the west to reach the mountain village of Tyungur. According to the map printed in the guidebook, there is no road there. Nadya’s navigating system, however, shows a road some forty miles long and tells us that the trip will take two and a half hours. We ask the father of the breakfasting family. He consults his crumpled map and tells us that it seems perfectly possible. The alternative would involve a detour of more than a couple of hundred miles.
So we follow his advice and take the turn. At first it seems like a good decision; we are again following the Katun River, which snakes through the valley in a particularly attractive way.
Truth No. 12:
Nature has a better sense of aesthetics than people.
Today Nadya is wearing a pink T-shirt with “I love evil” printed on it. She gives me a mogul slope driving lesson: “If you drive fast on a bad road it’s better for the car,” she says. “Then you just fly over all the holes and you don’t feel so sick.” Sound advice, but it still leaves quite a bit of scope for interpretation as far as ideal speed is concerned.
The local sheep, horses, and cows all look remarkably healthy, but are also remarkably assertive about who owns the dirt road. The enchanting bobak marmots have better survival instincts and hurry to get out of the way.
A large puddle, unfortunately, can’t be scared away. We stop to look at it more closely. Now Nadya’s Mickey Mouse rain boots prove their worth. She sinks so deep into the puddle that she only just avoids the water flowing into her boots. “You wanted adventure—well, here it is,” she says, then gets back into the car and drives with gusto through the obstacle. In a village, I suggest asking someone about the state of the road ahead. Nadya prefers to press on. The navi device continues to stubbornly insist that we’re on the right route; common sense soon suggests the opposite. The surface is no longer just bumpy—it goes up and down steeply. We get out and walk on a few hundred yards to better judge the conditions. The route goes down steeply for a while—pretty uncomfortably, with large boulders—but further down, alongside the river, it looks somewhat better. In an emergency we would have to wait a long time for assistance; we’re already twenty miles off the highway and there’s no cell phone reception.
“Let’s try it,” I say.
“Let’s turn back,” says Nadya.
“You’re the one who wanted adventure,” I say.
“Will you call the rental company to tell them that we’ve trashed the car?” she asks.
Okay, we turn back.
About halfway home we come across another car. Locals in a four-wheel-drive Toyota. They just laugh when asked if it’s possible to drive to Tyungur.
“With that car? Are you completely crazy?”
The family from earlier this morning are sitting in the next car we encounter. “We’ll take a look for ourselves,” they say as we try to dissuade them from going on. Stubbornness, thy name is Russia. But still, they have four-wheel drive. “There’s a Russian saying,” says Nadya as we drive on. “The bigger the car, the farther the tractor has to go.” In other words: if a road is leading to disaster anyway, then at least in a small car it happens quicker.