the middle of nowhere
Monday, April 20th, 2009by Rach, who is the fourth person to succumb to a bug on this train
Train 5 (day 3) Siberia – Siberia – Siberia
I had always imagined that fictitious place, TheMiddleOfNowhere, to be an endless billowy grass-covered steppe, a flat plain, unobstructed all the way to the horizon. But here we are in the middle of nowhere, smack bang in Siberia, where you can zip along at 60-110km/hr and only rarely see any signs of life, and even then, most settlements are little more than a cluster of run-down wooden houses – and it’s all forest. Birch and pine. Pine and birch.
It’s barely believable.
We squeeze the stiff metal roller blind clips together, wondering what view will be revealed when the blind flies up.
NOTHING has changed. For all fifteen hours of daylight yesterday and presumably right through the night as well, our vista consisted of naked silver birches interspersed with pine trees, or, for a change, pine trees mingling with birches. The first glance stunning starkness slowly transformed into same same sameness as the miles rolled by and the card games continued.
Now we can understand how seven trains a day – since the 1930s – can have been taking timber from Siberia through Mongolia to China. Seven long trains every day. And still there is no shortage of forest. No doubt, this is in part thanks to the Ruskie reforestation effort – other parts of the world hat we have travelled through, places stripped bare of almost all vegetation, would benefit from considering this successful endeavour and implementing a similar location-appropriate scheme. Of course, Siberia has SPACE on its side, but all the same, this place bears witness to the fact that sustainable use of resources is a realistic possibility with good management. At least it appears so from a train window.
Now you might think this is all getting a bit boring. But no! Card games while the hours away, as well as wandering up and down the train and mathematical calculations. How far do we go in ten seconds? How many kilometres until the next stop? (a figure that can be in the hundreds!!) How long will it take us to get there? How far have we gone? In hours terms and kilometres terms? Along the south side of the train there are markers every kilometre with the distance from Moscow….the Lonely Planet guide we were given has information about what will happen at marker 2356 and 1777 (etc etc) The first one we decide to look for is a “small easily missed obelisk” marking the halfway point from Beijing to Moscow via Ulaanbaatar. We start looking at 80km away. We do our maths and with approximately 5km to go, we return to the window, having eaten our bread and jam breakfast. We are 4km past it. Missed it. Easily. We check the GPS, and sure enough, we have speeded up imperceptibly, but significantly, since we did the maths. Ah well, we’ll be more careful with the next obelisk….the one marking the Asia-Europe border.
Didn’t miss that one! And although nothing changes, we feel like we’re heading out of TheMiddleOfNowhere….but it will be another day before we make it to civilisation.
rayres