Songs and Whispers

Acrumpled and broken strand of asphalt rises at the northern edge of Ulan-Ude, wanders through the dark woods of the Khamar-Daban Mountains, and finally settles into a band of fertile bottom land in a narrow stretch of coastal plain approaching the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. A rattly old Toyota van skitters along the road, passing lonely farms and tiny villages that gather up out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, domed churches that seem miles from any worshipers, and an occasional solitary babushka by the side of the road selling whatever she’s been able to squeeze from the earth or gather in the woods. There are seven of us riding this highway on this raw morning in October of 2000, crammed into the van and bobbing like buoys to its irregular rhythms—James and me from Boston, our guide Andrei Suknev, his colleague Igor and our driver Kim, all from the city of Ulan-Ude, and two young women who have also signed on with Andrei for a few days—Elisa, from France, and Chanda, from Canada. We’re all eating pine nuts that we bought from one of those women at a wide spot in the road—they’re called orekhi here—and washing them down with lemon soda from a huge plastic bottle. Andrei is showing us how to crack open the nuts’ hard shells with our front teeth and excavate their soft and pungent meat with our tongues. At an austere restaurant in a tiny village that Andrei tells us is called “Noisy Place,” we eat a lunch of rice and some sort of meat, dry bread, and a peculiar variation on borshch, and we pee in an outhouse across the road. We get back in the van and rumble on. We’re heading for a remote national park on Baikal’s eastern shore, but at the moment I’m not quite sure where we’re going. I’d asked Andrei to take us hiking and camping on the lakeshore, to introduce us to local residents, communities, and culture. He’s promised to do that, but he hasn’t provided much beyond the barest details, and none of us has been asking for more.