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The train from Moscow to Byisk takes 63 hours and costs $40.My friend Vladislav D. and I prefer hard sleeper without separate rooms (platskartnii vagon). Our closest neighbor, a 16 year old girl fed us with food carefully supplied for her journey by her parents and told us a bunch of stories about her tough life. From Byisk we took a bus to a remote corner of Altay, village Yst-Koksa. The bus ride was 10 hours long and cost $8. After initial fight for seats the atmosphere in the bus became peaceful and friendly. Especially touching was the care which the entire bus took care of a straw hat of a young lady from the old believer village Mylta.

Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part II)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 18:19:28

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ahead like crazy. The Kazakh man shouted something to her which she understood and she stopped abruptly. I flew over the horse's head and hit the ground with my forehead... hard. Fortunately it was again on a little patch of grass where my forehead hit the ground. My face was not so lucky and was scratched pretty severely. I was disoriented for a while, but otherwise OK.

It was a surreal picture. Vladia and I were laying down next to each other. Vladia was vomiting and I was bleeding from my face. Our horses were roaming around. The Kazakh man caught our horses and we continued on our way down, very slowly.

The next two days we moved to the lakes area and Vladia was fishing on the lake shore. He caught enough fish for a good dinner.

The next day started very slowly. Our driver went to collect berries. When we start to drive eventually, it was pretty late. We do not know where to go and driver had no suggestions. Everybody get a little irritated. Eventually we stopped to ask for suggestions from a huge local man. He spoke pretty good Russian and showed us a big fish which he just caught in a nearby river. We decided to stop there. He presented the fish to us for dinner. We responded with offering two bottles of vodka. I made a fish soup. He brought his lovely wife and we had a very good time. The man we met, his name is Bokenbay, was vacationing with his wife, Ainur at his father's urt. He, himself, was an international class boxer. He won first place in the European boxing championship in 1991 for heavy weighters. He represented Mongolia. His wife is a ballerina in a local Kazakh theater. We spent the night in his urt. He killed a sheep in our honor. The next day he took us to a pretty place not far away from his father's urt. There was a perfect mountain view there, nice waterfall and again nobody except for us. We had a picnic and made sish-kebab This time we brought four bottles of vodka altogether and again we ...