MONGOLIA

I was nervous when I had to open the door this morning. I was afraid of that hoard of grasshoppers that have knocked on my door all night long and that were riding Doyle when I got out to see how things were at about 2 a.m. Anyway, I didn’t sleep well. My underpants kept me too warm and the cooler in my room was kind of bothering me. I couldn’t sleep even when I turned it off. I washed the lights for the first time since I had left, as it made no difference, lit or turned on. I had my traditional coffee and cola and left. Today we’re singing Bolero. It’s instrumental, but works just fine. I tried to improvise some lyrics in French and it turned out to be quite good. Ravel is a moron.

I don’t want to be afraid of this country anymore. It should have been cool. Honestly, Russia was one of the parts of this road I couldn’t wait for. And judging clearly, the wait has been rewarded. Well, with evil included, which, anyway, it’s everywhere in this world. I must get rid of the stress and see the glass half full, but how? How? I don’t have the smallest of idea. I found the thought that I can’t wait to get out of this country somewhere in my head. And I don’t want to think about this. No! I look over my Russian map, which is quite small and with every day that passes I still feel I’m standing still. It’s very difficult to negotiate with this repulse. I know everything comes from those militia crooks. When I pass by one of them, I clutch my teeth, and I think my ass cheeks as well and I say “no, no, no, no, no…” Well, no. Today I went by ten patrols and none of them wanted something from me. And I still can’t say I’m feeling better.

My ass starts to flatten. If up to now I had to stop every 60-70 kilometres, today I put my feet on the ground after 150. Which is good, but has a downside. In Russia, you can drive really well. Whether it’s on a motorway, a national road or a secondary road, it’s all the same for a motorcycle with fairly good suspensions. Cars make room for you, drivers are all right. I only had one incident, but I didn’t get nervous, when a gentleman wanted to go pass me while I was going past somebody else at the same time. No worries because what I said about Ukraine is true for this place as well. In fact, you can land a plane on just about any of these roads, that’s how large they are. Two lanes as large as four. So we both went past the other car, in a superb tripling like in the manual of don’t do this at home stuff.
Traffic, however, is a burden. As big Russia is, that’s how many cars it has, trucks too. If you ever find yourself parachuted here, don’t go over the continuous line. Even if there’s a snail in front of you and a one-kilometre queue behind it, behave for as long as needed. Everybody does the same and they all know what for. I thanked them in my head several times when I saw the militia hidden in the bushes. Another curiosity is that 90 percent of the cars have smoky glass windows and about 10 percent have the wheel on the right. I rode behind one of those 10 percent, feeling very nervous every time he wanted to go by a truck.

I’ve realized that even sweat is different here. My T-shirts, when they dry, you can punch nails with them, a thing that has been unknown to me before.

I made my first stop at one of those places I usually stop at. Me and the truck drivers. There are many of those around here, with a CAFÉ sign on them, anyway, with different letters, but where it turns messy anytime I ask for a coffee. Here I met some people from Azerbaijan with whom I ne ponimayued a lot. I also ate. I noticed that all these places serve food exactly like mom makes it. Not my mom, because they probably don’t have beans, though I don’t know how to ask for it either. Nor Mother Russia, but “Mom”. I tried to tell them several things, I made like a chicken, like a pig, but they didn’t get me, so I had to do the trick I always do when I’m hungry and my talking partner doesn’t understand me. I say “borsch”. This way I know exactly what I’m saying. And on top of that, it’s very very good. These truckers ask me how things are going with the police and I put my hands over my head and say that Russian police is only looking for money-money. They laugh loudly. Oh, well, this is the thing, why can’t I laugh as well, when I meet a dude that asks me for a motorcycle tax? This is how I wish I were. After I finish my borsch, I go outside and all these people I don’t know all wish me well, I can tell by the smiles upon their faces.

From this point on, I ride through a tundra or taiga or steppe landscape, God knows, but it’s something I saw in the botanic manual at some point. Well, it’s exactly like that where I’m going through. A lot of birch trees. A Lot. And listen, if I hadn’t been through that shitty episode, I would have camped with no worries. There are many places where you can camp, hidden, between the trees, near the lake or the river. But I have no guts. My mind is going mad. I only think about what it would be like to put my tent there and lots of ugly scenarios come to mind. I read about it in a book about long-distance motorcycling so I’m not surprised that I’m feeling this, but I’ll be damned if I can stop. And there’s one other thing, Gheza. You see… I’m totally alone. I find myself realizing this once in a while, when I stop singing in my helmet and every other meter I ride on my journey makes me feel more lonely than the meter before it. It’s the thought I throw away every time, before it gets deeper. It’s better this way, “not knowing”.

I stop at another truck parking lot and I’m surrounded by some guys that look a bit dangerous, in my opinion. But it’s again my tormented mind. It’s better anyway that I stop at this kind of places and I’m not sitting like a dumb ass in an empty parking lot. I tell the story about where, how much and less about why I am going as I drink a cup of water to heal my thirst and then I leave. Today I don’t have to deal with such a sun like yesterday’s. When I woke up I almost screamed with joy when I saw clouds on the sky. It’s not much colder than yesterday, but at least the sun is not that powerful. Marcel can easily not die.

At some point, before Doyle uses its gas reserves, I need to find a cash machine to refill my pockets. To find a cash machine around here, you have to go a long way off the main road. Because Russians are smart, they ‘ve built roads some good kilometers off the cities. The Romanians, as communists as they might have been, they didn’t learn to do that. So I pick a larger city on the map and head manly towards it. I pass by the monument of the truck hero, I guess, and stop to bring my homage.

I find the ATM at the edge of the city, and on my way out, when I hop on Doyle, a very old man comes to me and embraces me, takes my hand to his chest and leaves very happy. So do I, by the way. After every such episode I slap a “see, Mihai?” on the back of my head.

And at dawn I pull over to one of these motels, with CAFÉ signs. The missy inside doesn’t understand a word, but has a very pretty smile she abuses. She takes me outside, to her friends, hoping they will understand me, like men do. I was manlier than them so clearly we didn’t understand each other. Anyway, seeing I didn’t get a word, I have a vague feeling that they started to make fun of me. But I kept smiling in return. They gave me a feminine voice on the phone, which knew a bit of English. I say what I want and the motel lady tells me to follow her. She takes me about 50 metres closer to Volga, where a gentleman waits for me. I find him a bit weird, but again, maybe it’s just me. He gives me a double-room for the equivalent of eight euros, he takes the key to the room and goes away. I tell him I want the key, but he explains something like “No, you don’t want it.” I say yes, I do and he tells me maybe spasiba in the end, I guess. It’s clear now, he’ll come to get me at night, damn it. Needless to say, I gave him a higher bill and he didn’t give me change. Then I did some low-level fixing to Doyle, which has leaked some 200 milliliters of oil off its pressure sensor. I tightened it up a bit and said my thanks again to the German who made this engine in a way that if you want to tighten up a screw, you need to take it to a garage, otherwise you have to detach half of it to reach the screw.

Then I ended up having two beers at the neighbouring motel and borsch again, plus chicken breast with mashed potatoes I took at – exactly – the Russian roulette from the Cyrillic menu. Now I’m getting ready for a nap, with Volga’s mosquitoes and their thirst of blood from Dracula’s country.

There was a storm last night. I left the two windows open and I jumped out the bed twice when the wind smashed them to the wall, thinking that my host comes “to give me the change”. I’ve upheld a chair on the door and I though it was the one responsible for the noise. It was so powerful that I saw how the plates in the fake ceiling were moving. I pack up and go back to the motel to drink my coffee and, if I’m lucky, to get something to eat. Yes, I’m lucky. Below you can see how you order two fried eggs when you don’t know Russian and nobody knows anglisky, frantsusky or italiansky.

I also made friends with Flocea, this is how I named it to make it sound as Russian as possible, as it followed me everywhere, grabbing my arm or my foot out of friendliness. He told me that his existence is centered around the word “blana” and if he had a motorcycle he will go to Dobrogea to see the bustards. I left him lying in the parking lot, waving his tail goodbye.

I also saw how tobacco is severely harming Russians.

Now I have my second coffee for today, somewhere at the edge of a railway, where, every time a train goes by, a voice of a lady says something through a megaphone, coming from nowhere and of which intensity make motorcyclists shiver, I tell you.