Arrived in Ulan Uday at 6.15am – it is dark and very cold! Ulan Uday is the capital of Buryatia which is a semi-autonomous region of Siberia. It’s main claim to fame is an enormous Lenin’s head in the central square. Buryats are historically a nomadic Asian people who farm livestock. We are in a homestay just off the main square in a Soviet-built apartment block. On arrival we have some breakfast and a couple of hours sleep before leaving to visit a Lamestary (Buddhist monastery) an hour’s drive outside the city. For lunch we sample typical Buryatia cuisine in a local village house. The food is delicious and after lunch our host, a very jolly, traditionally-dressed Buryat woman, teaches us some games involving sheep knuckles – just the bones, not the whole sheep!
Our home stay accommodation is very compact (for which read small) and comprises two bedrooms, a very small living room with a sofa bed which when open completely fills the room, kitchen and bathroom. The flat is clean and comfortable, but basic. There is no hot water when we arrive (apparently it is routine for the hot water to be off and our host heats a bucket of water for us using a portable immersion heater) and there is no ball cock in the toilet cistern!
Four of us are staying here (we are with Jennifer and Bryce) and Bryce is sleeping in the living room. So we are not sure where our hostess plans to sleep while we are here – we’ve been told she will just go out!
The entrance to the block is through a very thick steel door protected by a combination lock. There is also a similarly impressive steel door to the flat itself with a five-bolt lock which has to be locked on entry and exit using a 6-inch, double-sided key turned four times in the lock. Andy calls it a ‘Peckham door’! This level of security doesn’t seem to be uncommon in Russia; we have noticed similar doors on many apartment blocks in the major cities, including our hotel in St Peterburg.
After breakfast and a couple of hours sleep we are picked up by our guide. We are going to a Buddhist Lamestary about an hour’s drive from the city. The monastery turns out to be quite small and was built in 1990 to replace the larger original which was destroyed by the Soviets. The lamestary has a strikingly life-like wax effigy of the Dalai Lhama sitting cross-legged in front of the temple altar.
We are discovering that Siberia isn’t the desolate uninhabited place we misguidedly thought, at least along the route served by the Trans Siberian. There are many sizeable villages and towns and even out here the monks can get a mobile signal and have satellite dishes. The scenery around is very beautiful, and much more dramatic as we travel up a wide river valley with hills on each side. Autumn colours are strikingly vivid particularly the golds and yellows that glisten in the sunshine.
Lunch is in the home of a local Buryat family in a traditional one-storey log house, with outside loo and a Ger tent in the garden. The house consists of two rooms – the kitchen which contains the bed and the living room with a central brick stove which serves to heat the house as well as acting as the cooker.
We are treated to a delicious Buryat meal including noodle soup, meat dumplings (which we help to assemble) a cheese spread made from sour cream and flour, doughnuts, and a locally made spirit.
We have our picture taken in the local costume and then retire to the Ger to learn how to play sheeps’ knuckle games. You may be surprised to learn that sheep knuckles have four distinct faces called goat, horse, camel and sheep respectively. One game involved throwing 40 knuckles on the table and flicking together pairs of knuckles (think subuteo) showing the same face. If successful you collect one of the pair and carry on until you either miss or hit more than one knuckle. Then the remaining knuckles pass to the next player. The person with the most knuckles at the finish is the winner.