The family consists of two parents, an aunt, a daughter of twenty years old at most, and a grandchild. “Why do Russian women have children so young?” I ask Nadya.
“Women’s bodies are healthier then and that’s better for the children,” she replies. “On top of that, when you have a child at eighteen, most of the rough stuff is behind you by the time you’re twenty-three and then you can study or get on with your career.”
“But the men often seem to disappear. In no other country have I seen so many young single moms.”
“It’s better to get a divorce with kids than without them. The men have to pay 25 percent of their monthly salary for child support. Also you don’t fall into such a deep hole as you have something that gives life a purpose. After marrying, many women try to get pregnant as soon as possible.”
Nevertheless, there are few countries with higher abortion rates than Russia. Statistically, every woman here has at least one abortion in her lifetime. This has a long tradition: Russia allowed the procedure as early as 1920, becoming the first country to do so. Nowadays, as the population is declining, the Orthodox Church actively campaigns for large families and President Putin introduced a fat bonus of 429,409 rubles (US$7,400) for every woman having a second child.
But back to the dirt road. Now we suddenly have to cover three hundred extra miles to reach our couchsurfing destination for tonight. And that’s not our only problem. In Ust-Koksa and its surroundings, a foreigner needs to have registration, which must be applied for weeks in advance—a formality I hadn’t bothered with. As I talk about this with Nadya I imagine our conversation would make a good skit demonstrating the difference between clichéd German and clichéd Russian responses.
GERMANY: “Let’s have a plan in case we’re stopped.”
RUSIA: “If you worry about it too much it’s bound to go wrong.”
GERMANY: “I’d be less worried if we had a plan.”
RUSSIA: “Hey, it’ll be okay.”
GERMANY: “We’ll say we were just traveling past and took the wrong turn, okay?”
RUSSIA: “I want an ice cream.”
GERMANY: “Ice cream? Here? We haven’t passed a single café for hours.”
RUSSIA: “An ice cream. Chocolate.”
(Not ten minutes later, in the next village, a small roadside kiosk materializes with a fully packed freezer.)
“Told you!” says Russia.
A PLACE WITH GOOD KARMA
I’M A CITY person and have never stayed with anybody who had a real well in the garden. It has a long, bowed wooden pole for a lever and a bucket hanging from it—a technique thousands of years old. About twenty-five feet below, the water from a very special river collects. “The Katun is thought to have stronger healing properties than the Ganges,” says Irina, our host in Ust-Koksa. “People who bathe in it feel something.” Beside the house are a barn filled with what look like prehistoric implements and a small outhouse with a pit toilet.
“My landlord is an eighty-seven-year-old Old Believer. I pay just two thousand rubles a month,” she says. Two thousand rubles is around thirty-three U.S. dollars. Old Believers are followers of the opponents to the ecclesiastical reforms instigated by Patriarch Nikon in the mid-seventeenth century. A group of them founded Ust-Koksa in 1807 after they had to flee from the established church to the mountains. To this day in Siberia there are a number of remote Old Believer villages without electricity or running water. I would have dearly loved to stay with one of them, but this minority group is not particularly well represented on the internet, so I’ll have to make do with the second-best alternative—the tenant of an Old Believer’s house.
“You’re my first guests,” says Irina as she prepares a self-picked herbal tea. The staunch vegetarian is thirty, has a rosy complexion, and is dressed like a hippie, in vividly colored clothing. She came to Altai a year ago from Saint Petersburg because she wanted to escape the big city, and now she works as an artist. She specializes in round wooden plaques decorated with old Russian ornaments and painted flower-tendril creations with stuck-on colored stones. Apart from these she is particularly interested in Maya calendars, chakras, power places, and the TV singing competition show The Voice.
And herbal remedies. They are the most important economic industry in Ust-Koksa, at least until the small airport reopens and brings in more mountaineering tourists. For two months a year, many locals tramp off into the wilds searching for rhodiola, or roseroot. Here it is known as golden root and is thought to help ease stress and depression. Recently a study of U.S. scientists stated that its active ingredients increased the life span of fruit flies by 24 percent. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the plant is a bestseller beyond Siberia. Red root, a member of the sweetvetch family, is similarly sought after and is said to be good for the nervous system and libido. However, the red root plant needs to grow for thirty years before it can be used as a herbal remedy. Its stocks are so limited that it appears on the Red List of Threatened Species and cannot be legally picked in the wild. For a small stake in the profits, however, local officials will often turn a blind eye, and the pharmaceutical company buyers won’t ask any awkward questions. “Many people earn 100,000 rubles”—about US$1,600—“in a couple of weeks from picking roots,” says Irina. “They then don’t have to work for the rest of the year.”
Rents and the cost of living are low in Altai. You can buy a house for less than 500,000 rubles, one like Irina’s—without a bath or sewage pipes but at least with electricity. One of her friends even has a proper shower: “Every now and then I invite myself over to her place for a shower,” Irina says. I can only dream of such house prices in Hamburg. If the Siberian winters weren’t so extreme, I would seriously consider moving here.
One of Russia’s most famous landscape painters, Nikolai Roerich, had the same idea ninety years ago. Besides painting, he excelled as a philosopher, author, and politician and had a spectacular white beard. His house was in the neighboring village of Verkh-Uymon, which today houses a museum featuring his work. “That is a place with good karma,” promises Irina.
Roerich saw a great future for the region. “Who has said that Altai is cruel and unapproachable? Whose heart has become fearful of the austere power and beauty?”[8] is quoted on one of the displays.
The paintings in the exhibit try to capture the spiritual aspects of a mountain excursion, with exaggerated colorfulness. Many depict the mountains of the Himalayas in India and Nepal, but the local Belukha Mountain also serves as a motif. The museum guide tells us of the mysterious happenings surrounding the creation of one painting. “Actually, it’s a two-day trip to that spot at the foot of the mountain. Roerich, however, only made day trips when painting. Maybe the spirits helped him.”
You often hear stories of supernatural beings here. “Belukha is said to be the gateway to the mystical paradise Shambhala, also known as Shangri-la,” says Irina, full of respect. She is planning a hiking tour to Akkem Lake, near the four-thousander. “But first I have to find my inner peace. You should only go there once your body and spirit are in harmony.”
Originally Nadya and I wanted to make a tour to Akkem Lake, but Irina warns me about staying too long without a permit. “It’s border country and if they catch you the officials don’t have a sense of humor.” I decide to return another time. When body and law are in harmony.
8
Roerich, Nikolai.