Tuesday 13th & Wednesday 14th September
We
really weren’t hanging around. With only 4 days left on Will and Isaac’s visas
and still a lot of ground between Omsk and the border, it was time to send once
again. Barely 10 hours since the last overnight stint ended, at 3pm we set out
for another gruelling pilgrimage towards Moscow. Once again the cocktail sticks
were deployed on the eyelids to maintain at least some visual recognition of
the road ahead. Fortunately, the one thing keeping us on our toes and therefore
awake at the wheel was the maniacal driving of the Russians.
Driving
in Russia can sometimes feel like getting a Tabasco sauce enema, uncomfortable
and ready to erupt into rage at any moment. In Russia, if you hit someone with
you car you have to compensate them for any harm caused even if they can’t
prove it was your fault. This means that Nikolai and his mates throw themselves
at your car to try and win a sweet payout. Even the wildlife get in on the
action. For that reason most car users fix a camera to their dashboard to
capture all these hilarious incidents and upload them to YouTube for some cheap
laughs.
 |
| Looks totally legal to me |
Everyone
seems to be in a rush all the time. No gap is too small, no overtake too
dangerous; if it saves them 3 seconds then it’s worth it. Russians also believe
that the horn is some kind of magic nitrous boost button. There’s nothing like
cruising along the highway at peace and almost dozing off when your ears
suddenly get sexually assaulted by the honking horn of trucker behind you. On
one occasion we gracefully shifted over to the hard shoulder allowing him to
pass but were met by a fully erect middle finger slung out of the window.
Charming.
If
there’s one saving grace that we did enjoy about driving on the roads of Russia
it was the overtaking thank you game. Every time we pulled over for a slightly
more pleasant driver to pass us they returned the compliment with a friendly
double flash of their hazard lights. Observing this trend amongst other road
users it soon became apparent that this was some kind of unwritten etiquette.
We soon found ourselves overtaking cars just so we could give them the thank
you flash then allowing them to re-take us and return the favour. It made us
feel all warm inside. The tension during the intermediate “Thank-you Thinking
Time”, or the TTT, (from the overtake to bestowing the gratitude) was almost
too much to bear. But once the magic signal appeared it was met with great
cheer.
By
this point, day and night had completely converged and our body clocks were
totally out of line. The fact that watching car hazard lights provided the
greatest entertainment for us just proves how delirious we had become. To make
things worse we were travelling across such vast distances that time zones were
changing with us. Since we began our trip home in Irkutsk, the time difference
with the UK had changed from 8 hours to 2 hours in just 2 days. In the space of
one day we had crossed 3 different time zones, gaining more and more hours as
we went. Effectively we were chasing breakfast; it was very surreal. When we
finally did settle on an agreed breakfast it was at a Subway in Chelyabinsk,
still 1800km out from Moscow. Shattered and in the pits of existence, we barely
uttered a word to each other as we devoured our foot longs.
The
downside of 24 hour driving is that eateries are closed at unsociable hours.
The upside is that we had gone far enough west for 24 hour fast food joints to
become commonplace. By this point Harry, Ron and Hermione were slaying
horcruxes left right and centre on the audiobook. In a similar fashion we
decided to hunt down the 7 parts of the fast food soul in a bid to become Lord
Burgermort. McDonalds, Subway and Burger King were ticked off no sweat so we
set our sights on Helga Hufflepuff’s Bargain Bucket and Salami-zar Slytherin’s
Locket at KFC and Pizza Hut respectively. The 6th gorgecrux, Rowena
Bacon-slaw’s Lost Diadem from Wendy’s, proved to be particularly elusive presumably
because they serve the Coke of Invisibility, one of the Deathly Marshmallows.
Onwards we travelled into the darkness until we were caught up in a heavy traffic jam thanks to some road works. Rich, who was driving at the time, saw this as an opportunity to have a quick nap but was rudely awoken by a cacophony of horns from up his backside. It was only one cycle of the traffic lights we missed; don’t know what all the fuss was about. As we continued to crawl along the highway it soon became apparent that we were all totally spent and so were the cars. Calling it a night, we found the YES! Hostel in Nizhny Novgorod and turned in for bed bringing the second stint of 37 hours and 2177km to an end. A top effort but never again!
Posted by: Rich