The sun has yet to rise, and I feel the bitter cold under five layers of wool and fleece. I’ve just arrived in Ulan-Ude after being on the train for two days. This is my first stop in Russia, where I’ve set off to for a taste of Siberia and the shock of its arctic conditions.
I see faces that look like mine and suddenly remember, years ago, when my friend’s Russian father told me that some Russians look Chinese. Now I see who he was referring to.
I hope to blend in as I walk confidently out of the station at four in the morning toward my hostel. But barely around the corner and I’m lost. As I drag my suitcase up and down slippery staircases, I wonder, which ludicrous engineer thought to coat the edge of these steps with metal, in one of the iciest places in the world?!
Gliding down the streets with steam radiating from my body, I look like a ghost in the dark. It’s negative 20 degrees Celsius out here and I’m sweating.
At last, after thirty minutes of berating myself for choosing a suitcase over a backpack in these blistering conditions, I see Lenin’s head—a 25 foot, 42 ton, bronze statue—Ulan-Ude’s much joked about centerpiece and popular tourist sight. My hostel is across the street.
I check-in, take a long hot shower and go to bed without the white noise of a rumbling train.
A few hours later I get up and set out to explore the city. Except for a few cars on the road, the streets are empty. Locals don’t come out until the sun is overhead.
Ulan-Ude is the administrative, political, economic, and cultural center of the Republic of Buryatia in Eastern Siberia. It’s a sprawling industrial city built on a hill that’s tiresome to walk around when sidewalks are blanketed with snow.
The Buryat people are indigenous to this region of Siberia and have Mongolian roots from when they were a nomadic people. They have high, wide cheek-bones, small dark eyes, thick black hair, and plump round faces, and look more Asian than Russian because technically, they are. They also have their own language, but Russian is the official language used throughout the country.
Before coming to Russia, I learned the Cyrillic alphabet in order to read street signs. So, when I stumble upon a lodge that looks something out of an old Western with a sign that reads шарбин (pronounced sharbin), I am elated.
As I proudly sound out this word, I realize it’s also a Chinese word. In China, 馅饼 (also pronounced sharbin) is a flat round pancake with meat filling and is one of my favorite foods. In Buryatia, шарбин is the same thing but with different spices, and it’s flatter and bigger.
We may have the massive country of Mongolia separating us, and we can’t understand each other’s languages, but we eat the same food. Suddenly I feel more connected to these unsmiling people.
To contrast the blinding white terrain of Ulan-Ude are neon-colored single-story wooden houses that look more like countryside cottages than city dwellings.
Pillows of snow topple over the rooftops, but I’m not worried about them falling on my head, as I imagine it feeling like an avalanche of marshmallows.
I stop by the Museum of Buryat History which has a small display and not much in English, but still interesting to see. As I continue to walk around the city, I notice statues, museums, and posters for theater events on every other block. Across Russia, as I will soon understand, the arts are a significant part of the culture.
After an exhausting morning of exploration, I return to the hostel for some warmth and recovery.
Back at the hostel, I’ve met a middle-aged Korean man backpacking alone; two Korean university students taking the train across Russia; a French couple who quit their jobs to travel the world; and Max, a handsome German fluent in Russian and pursuing a Master’s degree in Vladivostok.
When I come out of the shower all prepared for a good night of slumbering, I bump into the two Korean students, Jeongmin and Tai, and Max cooking up a storm in the kitchen. How can I resist a bubbling pot of Shin Ramen with cheese? The four of us eat, drink Chinese baijiu, and sing Korean drinking songs until three in the morning.
A fantastic start to my trip.
The next day Jeongmin and Tai, the French couple (Blandine and Raphael), and I hop on a minibus to take us 23km outside Ulan-Ude to Ivolginsky Datsan, the most prominent Buddhist monastery in Russia.
Ivolginsky Datsan is a stunning ranch-like complex set in a valley surrounded by mountains. The Datsan is composed of temples for worship, a library, a dormitory for the lamas, a center for Buddhist learning, a Museum of Buryat Art, and even a hotel.
We meet a friendly English-speaking monk who invites us into a temple to sit and chat for a while. We talk about the state of the world, about Buddhist philosophy, and he encourages us to visit the “undead man”.
The “undead man” is a miracle. According to the friendly monk, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov was a lama who died and was even buried underground but then had miraculously returned to the Datsan where he stayed for 15 years before disappearing again.
Even now, nearly a century later, Itigilov sits in lotus position inside a glass case displayed in the main temple. His body is not fully dead. He still has hairs and his body sweats even though he’s been dead for nearly a century. Believers come to worship him and pray for blessings.
Itigilov was the head of Buddhism in Russia, the 12th Khambo Lama, before the Soviet era. When Itigilov was 75 years old in 1927, he announced his oncoming death and called for all the lamas at the Datsan to meditate with him. He died in mid-meditation sitting in the lotus position.
Before his passing, he had requested the lamas to bury him in the position he died in and also to exhume his body 30 years later. Because the Soviet Union restricted any type of religious practice, Itigilov’s body had to be secretly exhumed. It wasn’t until 2002 that he was publicly unveiled at Ivolginsky Datsan.
Itigilov is only exhibited to the public seven days a year on Buddhist holidays, so I am not sure why we are allowed to see him on January 6, 2018.
On our way out of the temple, each of us is given a colorful Buddhist ribbon. Mine is now tied to a tree by Shaman Rock on Lake Baikal.
This powerful experience moves our stomachs to hunger, so we head to the local restaurant for a buuzy brunch. Buuzy is a Buryat specialty that is equivalent to the Chinese baozi, steamed buns stuffed with meat. Another food in common!
Bellys warmed, we head back to continue exploring the Datsan. As customary, we walk clockwise around the complex. We find a gate that opens out to a snowy pasture and we step out, curious about this vast area of land behind the temples.
All of a sudden, a large, slow-moving creature appears out of the bushes and walks toward us. It’s a cow. She moves slowly and deliberately in straight lines and takes no notice of us as she passes.
Another miracle.
Before I came to Ulan-Ude, the Russia in my head was of a white population of European descent. It was hard to picture the Asian Russians that my friend’s dad told me about.
Ulan-Ude, with its food, its people, and the centrality of Buddhism, is a confluence of Asia and Europe with Russian characteristics. As I’ll come to discover, no other place in Russia is like Buryatia.
But a country with eleven time zones is bound to have some ethnic and cultural diversity, right? I just didn’t understand the extent of that until I crossed the border.
Thoroughly exhausted and emotionally fulfilled from the last 36 hours in Ulan-Ude, I pass out for a final night at the hostel. Tomorrow morning I have a scenic seven-hour train ride to Irkutsk, my favorite city in Russia.
Beijing to Ulan-Ude by Train