July 22nd, 2010

Dispatch from the Road: London-Mongolia, Part 7

Drive Like A Woman Editor-in-Chief, Michele Shapiro is setting off on a rally from London to Mongolia. She will be driving with Parag Khanna, Mikhail Zeldovich and Jen Mueller. Jen will be starting with the team in London and Michele will be meeting the team in Moscow and will switch places with Jen. The team will be driving a 1991 Land Rover Defender ambulance. Upon arrival in Mongolia the team will donate the ambulance to a local hospital. Drive Like A Woman will be posting dispatches from the journey.

Click here to read Part 1.

Rest day in Moscow:
-Written by Jen Mueller

“Oh, crap! Parag, it’s after 8!”

I had woken up, looked at my Blackberry, and lain back down before even registering what I had seen.

“Uh oh. I’ll email Misha,” said a groggy Parag.

The last thing that Mikhail had said when we left his apartment the night before was, “OK, I’ll see you at the ambulance at 8:30. Make sure you set your alarm.”

Shoot, shoot, shoot.

David, our host, was in the shower; I was meant to have asked him to call a cab. I began throwing on clothes. Parag stumbled into the kitchen and packed me a quick breakfast. We had both slept fitfully through a Moscow heat wave, and I felt like the haze had entered my brain.

Misha sounded just a touch under frantic when he called a few minutes later. I was still waiting for the cab that had finally been ordered. “Jen, you were supposed to be here already! Look, you’re going to have to go out and flag a taxi down on the street, OK? Just hurry!”

Luckily I had the address written out in Cyrillic. I ran downstairs and waved my arms at oncoming traffic.

Our first day in Moscow had passed in a fog of sleep and work. Parag and I were crashing with Misha’s friend David, an American expat who described himself as having been in Moscow too long to return to civilized society. And then he changed the bed sheets and found us clean towels for us.

In the evening, we had gone to the charming garret apartment that Misha shares with his fiancée Amanda, also an American expat. We climbed out on their roof and looked past the onion domes of the nearby Cathedral of Christ the Savior to the more distant turrets of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square. The sunset made it unbelievably scenic. After a while, we clambered back inside to enjoy some traditional yuppie fare: pan-Asian take-out. (Sushi!)

We also reviewed the plan for the following day.

“I don’t want to be Jinxomatic here, but the ambulance hasn’t broken down in two days,” Parag noted.

“Right, but this is the last point where we can definitely find someone familiar with Land Rovers,” Mikhail said. “My friends know a garage that can look at it.”

We agreed that a check-up made sense. Because Parag had to get registered in the morning (an annoyance for travelers staying more than three business days in Russia and a cash cow for the government), Misha and I were in charge of this expedition.

Mikhail did not give me much grief for my late arrival; the sweltering traffic was punishment enough. It took us well over an hour to reach our destination across town.

Our mission had become a local family project. The secured lot where we were parking our car for free is owned by Misha’s friend Andre. (On a side note, it also happens to be attached to a factory that used to make antiballistic missiles and, before that, bicycles). On the other side of town, Andre’s sons Nick and Anton, both undergrads at the University of Miami, were waiting on a busy street corner to direct us to the garage. They had spent much of the two previous days running around Moscow looking for parts that we still needed, and now they were staring at the Land Rover as if it were a fictional creation sprung to life.

“Thank you guys so much for all your help,” I said as they moved around to Misha’s window.

Anton shrugged with a smile. “It’s not a problem. It’s for the kids in Mongolia, you know?”

The Land Rover was a star attraction at the garage— along with Nick and Anton, about a half a dozen men gathered round, alternately taking pictures, peering under the hood, and speaking earnestly in Russian to Mikhail, who was getting a crash course in car repair.

At some point, Mikhail glanced at his Blackberry.

“Whoa, I have a half a dozen messages from Parag.”

Parag was having quite the adventure himself…

CLICK READ MORE TO FIND OUT ABOUT PARAG’S ADVENTURE AND THE TEAMS NIGHT OUT IN MOSCOW…

Across town, Parag was having quite the adventure himself. His attempts to get registered had taken him to two different offices in a complicated orienteering exercise made even more complicated by the fact that everything here is in Cyrillic. Despite earlier representations to the contrary, neither would help him. Time was running out, both because we were leaving Moscow in the morning and because Parag was scheduled to appear in his pundit capacity that afternoon on Russia Today, a local television station. (“I can’t believe I have to iron a blazer in the middle of a rally,” he had said glumly contemplating laundry the day before.)

It has often been my experience that if you want full-service travel solutions—not amenities, solutions—you can do much worse than a well-equipped hostel. Misha directed Parag to a large central one, and Parag somewhat dubiously gave the spacey-looking girl behind the front desk his information.

Five hours and 500 rubles later, Parag had his papers in hand.

In the meantime, Mikhail and I worked our way back across town to our secure parking. The mechanics had refused to take any compensation for their time or for the supplies they had loaded us up with.

They asked for only a picture with the ambulance.

“This is the thing about Russia,” Misha mused as we looked for a place to stop to get some water, “People can be total assholes, but if you know someone, they will give you the shirt off their back.”

As further proof of that theory, Andre was waiting for us back at the parking lot with a bottle of windshield cleaner in hand. He and I got the glass gleaming, and he then invited us up to his (air-conditioned!) penthouse office for tea and English shortbreads. When the taxi we had called failed to arrive, he had his driver deliver us to Mikhail’s apartment.

Even better, Nick and Anton had committed to finding the rest of the parts that we needed so that we could continue tackling our respective to-do lists. For Misha, this included a business meeting and a doctor’s appointment. I had to find a place to buy a one-way ticket to Moscow from Kazan, an ATM that would accept my card, and postcards so I could start our thank-you mailings to our donors.

All of this was in anticipation of the main event of the day: a proper night out in Moscow.

“Misha!” I had all but wailed two days earlier when this plan was announced. “You didn’t tell me I needed to bring clothes for some chi-chi club!”

He waved his hands placatingly. “Look, you’ll be fine. You can even wear what you’re wearing now, just maybe a fancier top.”

I looked down at myself, then at him.

“Mikhail. This is a bathing suit cover-up.”

Happily, Amanda had loaned me a black wrap dress (stylish but, alas, not so breathable), and with a shower I looked almost presentable. The rest of the crew cleaned up nicely too.

Our host David joined for the festivities. We first hit Bye-Bye Club, where we met up with Misha, Amanda, Parag and some of Parag’s friends for a traditional Russian dinner (translation: vodka shots). Then we moved on to Soho Rooms, a nightclub on the water that apparently has a cousin in New York and has itself been written up by The New York Times for its swanky exclusivity.

Clearly, just the place for us.

It was at Soho Rooms that Misha and I finally met our fourth team member, a friend of Parag’s and a bona fide rally car driver. (She and I are tag-teaming; in a few days I return—sniff—to the States.) Michele had just flown in from New York that morning, but she looked perky (well, perkier than us) and stylish as she met the team and heard about some of our adventures to date. She seemed ready to rally.

As were we. Despite the festive mood and glam surroundings, the team members each retired early with thank yous to our new local friends, who would party on without us.

There was still sleep to be caught up on, and tomorrow we would hit the road again.