Torgashinskiy Khrebet

On Friday, I took a bus all the way to the other end of town – a place called Oktyabrskaya. I was meeting some friends here, and then walking to a place called ‘Torgashinskiy Khrebet’. It took an hour and a half. Only here’s the thing – everywhere in Russia is called Oktyabrskaya. It became obvious that I’d got the wrong Oktyabrskaya as soon as I got off the bus and saw that none of the ten people I was meant to be meeting was in fact here. Not one. I opened the transport app on my phone and typed ‘Oktyabrskaya’ again. Then I scrolled past about fifty Oktyabrskaya cafes, hotels, bridges, and districts, before finally finding ‘Oktyabrskaya bus stop’. But, to my dismay, I now saw that there was not just one ‘Oktyabrskaya bus stop’, but three. Three ‘Oktyabrskaya bus stops’. Which town planner could possibly have decided that it would be a good idea to build three bus stops with the exact same name – a name, by the way, which is also used for bus stops in every other Russian city as far as I can tell? In fact, you know what, I think that sentence deserved a ‘?!’

I ordered a cab. When I got in, the driver said ‘so, you’re going from Oktyabrskaya to Oktyabrskaya – that right?’

‘Yes.’ I said grumpily.

‘Guess you’re not a local then’, he smirked.

Then the driver asked a barrage of confusing questions, including ‘so, you allowed to distil your own alcohol at home in the UK?’

‘Um. No.’

‘Wooooooah. Haha. There’d be chaos if they banned that in Russia. Suddenly everyone would have to start buying their alcohol. People would noooot like that.’

I arrived at the right Oktyabrskaya only twenty-five minutes late, and feeling a bit sheepish. Danil was organising the walk, and he strode ahead immediately in the direction of the nearest distressingly large hill. Most of the walk to the top was spent by me listing British stereotypes of Russia to the immense delight of two of Danil’s friends, Vlad and Nicole. The one which drew the biggest smiles was ‘people here play the balalaika’, which Vlad assured me was patently untrue, even in the countryside, where guitars and ukuleles are much more popular.

The walk up the hill

At the top of the ascent was a dense birch forest, and finally an open hillside with yet more bonkers views of rolling hills covered with autumnal birches and verdant pines. It was even more impressive because this was a grassy hillside without any trees, so it afforded an almost panoramic view of the surroundings, with only the city behind us blocked by the trees which we’d walked through to get here. Danil did that trick which Russians seem to love, and casually said ‘oh yeah and bears often walk along here so watch out’ as he turned around and headed back into the woods to set up camp.

Danil + 'Greater Krasnoyarsk'

It was a windy day, so lighting a fire was difficult, even though we’d come armed with a small barbecue, coal, firelighters and paraffin. When we finally got it going, we all sat down around it and warmed ourselves, and then we cooked chicken on skewers over the fire and ate it with wraps which were a bit like pitta. One guy got out a guitar as it was getting dark, and his sister started singing along, it was like we had our very own band. I tried to join in at points, but I couldn’t commit to the songs, because so many of the other people there wanted to talk to me. Being English here really does come with huge social credit, which I find strange. The person I got along with best was probably Ahmed, who studies at the university here, and is originally from Djibouti. We bonded over the shared experience of having to learn Russian while in Russia, and then we found out that we both speak French. French speakers in Krasnoyarsk are like gold dust, so I felt pretty blessed to have found him. Again, my attempts to communicate in French were scuppered by my addled brain, which has taken a few tiny little similarities between the hugely different languages and run with them. For example, the impersonal third person singular subject pronoun ‘on’ in French and the personal third person singular subject pronoun ‘on’ in Russian have now merged in my head, so any hope of saying ‘he’ or ‘we’ in French or Russian is now doomed to failure.

When it got dark, I felt for the first time since arriving in Siberia that I wasn’t properly dressed for the cold weather, a feeling which I’m expecting to become very closely acquainted with come winter. Then we all stood in a circle around the fire and made wishes before putting it out. I wished for more lovely experiences like this while I’m here in Russia. It sounds cheesy. It probably is cheesy. But I’ve been here for five weeks already – heck, we’re already applying for my visa invitation for the second half of my time in Krasnoyarsk. Did you know that some schools start October half term next week? How time flies, or as the Russians say ‘how time flies’.

The advantage of having lots of hair is that it can be windswept