Fixing the details

Well we were finally in Gorno-Altaisk and had met Evgania in the flesh - quite moving as I had only talked to her by email or phone for the previous five years. We were shown our home for the nights we were in Gorno-Altaisk and then the process of negotiation about practicailities started. We had been picked up at the airport by Sasha and Amadou (the driver).

Although I was finding it very hard to concentrate because of sleep-deprivation, it was time to negotiate (with Evgania translating), accomodation, transport and the cost of the performance itself.

Sasha had been asked to make arrangments as he lived in Ongudai, the town nearest to the village at the foot of the Karakol valley where Arshan lived, and also knew Arshan.

I'm not very good at negotiating - it's something I prefer to leave to my wife Cristina, but she had not come on this trip because she was in the last stage of pregnanacy. Although we came to agreements that were just about in my budget - I did not feel that we resolved everything well.

I then failed to get any cash out of the cash-point again - this was a real problem as I had to get out my daily limit for each day we were in town to cover everything. I had told my bank that I was going to be in Russia so they did not stop payments.I phoned home, quickly exhausting my mobile limit. Cris would enquire. I then went to the town phone-booth station, bought credit, and then listened in singular frustration as my bank went through it's automatic banking sequence. Eventually I discovered that while I thought my daily cash limit was £400 it was in fact £250. Problem solved!

We also had to get our visa's registered. This turned into one of those visit five offices and then return to the one you started with soviet style processes - it would have been completely impossible without Evgania. Even she started to become irked at one point, but then she has been living in Germany for much of the previous three years and has got used to more efficient systems.

Visas really are a bane of my life. I could tolerate the £100 tax on visiting a country if it was just that. Why it has to be so bloody difficult I don't know. The russians obviously don't want tourists (maybe they are wise in that respect) or perhaps they are just taking their revenge on me as a Brit because my country makes it so damn difficult for Russians to visit the UK.

The photo is Evgania in Moscow airport.

Catching up - London to Gorno-Altaisk

Being struck down with a virus has given me space to start to catch up the Madai Kara story. I'm going to start by recounting our trip. Mark and I left my flat by mini-cab before dawn to give us time to get through customs and security at Heathrow. Soon after the sun rose, we took off to meet it. I always find hurrying around the earth disconcerting, I'd have preferred to have the time to travel by train - about a five day trip that I took once in 1997 as part of a much longer trip to Japan, but that's another story. After the usual hanging around in Moscow we took off to Barnaul in Siberia. The flight from Moscow to Barnaul is longer than that from London to Moscow. I had already hit the first problem.

Rather than carry cash, I intended to use cash-points. This has worked for me before, but for some reason I could not get any money from the machines in the airport. Not to worry, I'd use machines in Siberia.

We arrived in Barnaul just as the night sky was lightening. As we came through into the airport lobby I was half-expecting to see Evgania but was more than happy to see two men with a sign saying 'Richard'. Handshakes all around, back through a small door to retrieve our kit, back again through the small door showing our luggage receipts to ensure we only left with what was ours, and we loaded up the car which was to become our transport for the next fortnight.

Our hosts did not seem to certain of their way as we drove through a silent Barnaul. The city used to be closed to foreigners - I'm not sure why. It is a centre of oil processing and a regional centre. Our way was picked carefully across roads rutted with tram rails and potholes. New blocks of flats, some with garishly decorated facades, demonstrated that the Russian economy, at least here, was on the up.

As we reached the edge of the city and a better road, we began to speed up, crossing the river Ob. Even this far south, the Ob is five times the width of the river Thames in London, and as we crossed the bridge, I saw small figures crouching over holes in the ice as they spent a frozen night fishing. As we finished crossing the river I saw five men breaching the top of the river bank, feet and legs encased in massive felt boots, fur-hats pulled down to the shoulders, their breath clear in the frozen air around them. I could not see if they had caught anything.

As we started to speed across the taiga, the sun rose. Orange light turning the wind-swept, furrowed snow golden. It's rays turned the frozen droplets of water on the feathery limbs of a copse of birch into an exquisite grove of natural chandaliers. I turned to Mark to point out this beauty, but he was asleep and I soon followed.

When I woke we were on the outskirts of Gorno-Altaisk, passing large images of respected local people, including the 'author ' of Madai Kara - Alexei Kalkin.