Goodbyes

Sunday was my last day with mum and dad. They flew home early on Monday morning. I was keen to fit in as much as possible, so I asked to meet them at their hotel early in the morning. We had a quick breakfast at my favourite cafe, and then I virtually dragged them onto the bus to Stolby. Although they’d found their way to the national park earlier that week, I was really keen to show them certain viewpoints before they left, and those viewpoints were about a two-hour walk from the entrance to the park. Mum and dad did a very admirable job of not moaning as we practically jogged up into the hills and then I proceeded to get lost in a poorly planned attempt at a shortcut. The only good thing that came of this was we found a rock formation under which the Krasnoyarsk Bolsheviks had their secret meetings before the Revolution, and I also got to show mum and dad my new party trick of getting birds to land on my hand. After re-tracing our steps all the way back to the first ‘stolb’, I charged ahead again along the route that I knew, and soon we were on a familiar (infuriatingly indirect) track along the top of a forested hill. It’s a brilliant path, because you get a feeling that you’re high up from occasional glimpses of gently sloping wooded valleys, but generally the thick layer of forest around us hid the majestic taiga from view. So there was a building feeling of anticipation throughout the whole walk. People kept on stopping us to ask how far until ‘Perya’, the stolb which is used as a waymark by most hikers, my responses ‘about fifty minutes’, ‘an hour’, ‘maybe an hour and a half’ drew gasps and gawks from the people who asked the questions. They all seemed to think they were almost there. One of them, struggling up a hill with a family and a dog in tow, grumbled ‘last time we ever come here!’

And finally, when we were all bored out of our minds of the endless pine trees and windy track, we came to a rock formation which we climbed fairly easily, and which gave us a great view of the taiga. It’s the same one that Eldar showed me when we went to Stolby around a month ago, and it’s probably my favourite bit of the national park. I hope that Jurassic landscape never gets old.

We climbed back down and had lunch – salami sandwiches and apple cake which I made the day before. Both of them were stodgy and not particularly flavourful, but we all agreed that stodge was exactly what we needed at that point, and I don’t think salami sandwiches with semi-stale bread have ever tasted so good.

After another lengthy walk (about an hour), we came to the ski lifts of Bobrovy Log resort. We took one down to the bottom. It’s rather strange that the first time I’ve ever been on a ski lift, I had no skis, and there was no snow. But the mechanical assistance was a very welcome break from walking, and it was nice watching people coming up in the opposite direction, like a family clutching a small dog, and two very young brothers, one asking the other what happens if he falls out, the other hitting him for being stupid and promising him he’d be fine.

Then we went to the zoo with Kiril. They had polar bears, brown bears, black bears. Lots of bears, really. They also had some tigers. The poor things must have been freezing, and they were pacing their cages like mad. It was awesome seeing them, but I don’t think Siberia is the place for a tiger. It IS the place for a snow leopard, though. I was pretty keen to see one. In fact, snow leopards have been my favourite animal since I read about one of them in a zoology book that belonged to my grandad when I was a little boy. It might be pushing it to say that my interest in Siberia comes from that, but I reckon the two are connected. But alas, the snow leopard was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they’d mistaken it for a tiger and taken it into an enclosure to keep it warm over the winter. Or maybe it had escaped and was on the loose, trying to find one of its favourite animals, a human.

And wot?

On the drive back to the centre, Kiril played us his favourite Russian folk/dubstep song at a very high volume, which my parents loved. Then we had dinner together at the pizza place we went to when mum and dad arrived. That evening, Cicely just about caught her train back to Novosibirsk (2GIS, the transport app, did its best to screw her over, but in vain). And then I had to say goodbye to mum and dad too! It feels like ages since they left now, but it was a very sad moment. They were leaving early the next morning, so I didn’t even get the symbolic closure of waving goodbye at an airport, I just left their hotel and that was that. I think it’s amazing that they came to Krasnoyarsk. I’d be daunted by the trans-Siberian railway myself, and I speak a bit of Russian! So proud that they managed it. Next time they'll have to go all the way to Vladivostok…