Train Keeps a Rolling

Khabarovsk to Ulan Ude - 48 hours

Travel can be an enlightening experience. Especially if your accidental acquaintances are interesting and talkative people. Otherwise, the miles and miles of birch forest leave only the oportuntity for introspection. It's better to find something else to do.

I've got all of my worldly possessions (in this hemisphere, or even continent) strapped to my back in an army surplus rucksack. Reading material is little more than deadweight. Still, something to read was sorely missed during some of my down time. So, in Khabarovsk I stopped by a shop before the train departed. They had the standard Russian bookshop selection of Jack London, Agatha Christie, O. Henry, and a few others that have been favorites here for a very long time. In fact, one cabin mate on the train from Vladivostok was reading a collection of O. Henry stories in Russian. The nasty twists of fate at the end really appeal to a Russian sense of impending doom.

I settled on a Graham Greene title "Stamboul Train" about passengers on the Orient Express. I realized why I hadn't heard of it after a couple of chapters - it's remarkably anti-Semitic. Still, the main thing is that I underestimated so many factors in this choice of book: length of book, length of trip, number of hands of "doorak" (a Russian card game my cabin mates taught me) one can play before suddenly, and inexplicably forgetting all the rules. The book lasted 24 hours - half the trip. That's still a lot of time leftover for staring out the window.

Actually, it was a lot more interesting than that. I spent the time well with my fellow travelers who were quite curious about life in the US. I was equally curious about their experiences, and pumped them for information on what to see in their part of the world. I played cards, I helped out with the crossword puzzle, and on 3 separate occasions I was treated to a long discourse about how things were better under socialism. They poked fun at me - saying I had arrived in Vladivostok on a submarine from America as the "first wave" - but were so genuinely hospitable that it made it feel like traveling with old friends. I sampled their salo - pork fat back - and shared chocolates in return. When they reached their station, they bid me a warm farewell and lots of luck on my trip.

These are the memories of travel that everyone wants to recall. Not the hotel clerk who called the cops; not the restaurant car waitress who screamed at me for asking for carbonated water; not the train attendant who interrogated me when I took out my camera. They all have a place in the story, of course. I'll just put them on the opposite side of the ledger page from the folks with whom I shared the train to Ulan Ude.