July 27th, 2010

Dispatch from the Road: Rally London-Mongolia, Part 9

In some ways, the story of team Ambulance to Mongolia began on a snowy Russian playground more than twenty years ago.

Kazan in those days was a hard-scrabble place.  Despite its substantial scientific community (including many nuclear physicists), the city was in rough shape.  Most people lived in cramped concrete block apartments that had fallen into disrepair, and gangs of petty criminals controlled the streets and fought each other, defied the police, and terrorized the locals.

So it was unfortunate that Misha’s snowball found the face of the son of a neighborhood gang leader.  It was even more unfortunate that when the 18-year old older brother came looking to avenge his brother’s bloody lip, Misha fought him off with the nearest weapon at hand: a sled.

It was not until Misha saw the big guy a few days later with his jaw wired shut that he first sensed there could be adult-proportioned consequences for his child’s play.  And there were:  the gang leader issued an “attack” order for the scrawny 12 year-old, something that no one in Mikhail’s family took lightly.  To keep him safe, they kept him home.

He missed the next six months of school.

“And there is the school.”

Mikhail pointed, and we turned appraising eyes towards a building glowing in the setting sun.

“Wow, it is strange to be back.”

Misha’s family left Kazan for the United States when he was 14, but his ties to the place remained strong.  The city was the one stop he knew would be on our team’s route.

It was also the promise of visiting Kazan that had, in part, enticed Parag to join the team.  The capital of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, Kazan has a history that goes back more than a thousand years yet touches on themes that seem eternally modern.  In the 1550s, the city was sacked by Ivan the Terrible and its mostly Muslim residents persecuted; in 2005, it saw the completion of a mosque that is reported to be the largest in Europe outside of Istanbul.

Kazan is also emblematic of modern Russia: from its perch on the banks of the Volga (largest river in Europe!), Kazan and Tatarstan have fared well under the longer economic leash allowed the provinces by the current administration in Moscow (though a regional proposal a few years ago to switch from the Cyrillic to Latin alphabet was too much for the national government to take).

It is not the city that Mikhail’s family left in 1991.  In fact, cleaned up and with its wide boulevards and pastel buildings, Kazan reminded us of a seaside town.

So all in all, a worthy destination.  First, though, we had to get there.

It is about 650 kilometers—or, as I have come to think of them, “clicks”—from Vladimir to Kazan.  We indulged in a quick photoshoot in front of Vladimir’s famous church (results to be posted soon) before setting off on what was a slog of a drive.

The roads we were on now were basic double-lane highways, with frequent potholes and only occasional passing lanes (and these almost always on uphill stretches).  Most of our fellow travelers were tractor trailers, some pulling a double load. In a heavy ambulance without a lot of pickup (read: any at all), maintaining a good pace could be both difficult and stressful.

“I totally get the trucker diet,” I said, not for the first time on the trip.  “It’s so much work wrestling this thing that you think you’re burning up more calories than you probably are—and that you deserve to eat anything you want, regardless!”

I remembered actually grunting as I slammed the ambulance into third gear driving through Poland.  Parag had cocked an eyebrow at me from the passenger seat.

“Some things require a woman’s touch,” I told him. “This … is not one of them.”

Happily, Michele was also willing to throw her weight into the work.  And I mean throw: with her slight 5’3 frame, even things like opening the back door and releasing the parking brake were going to take oomph.  But after a day of watching us put the Land Rover through her paces, Michele was ready to roll, and she eased out of a gas station like a pro.

FIND OUT HOW THE REST OF THE DAY’S JOURNEY WENT…

I sat in the passenger seat working on blog posts and providing Michele a second set of eyes from the left side of the car.

We had each developed our own style for passenger seat duty.  Parag would seem focused on his computer, but I only had to turn my eyes to the side mirror and he would lean forward to check the blind spot (in this manner, he largely finished his PhD dissertation on the road—congrats, Parag!).

Mikhail, our navigator, would crane his neck from the Blackberry in his hand to the road signs up above, alternately beseeching the driver to “Go very slow—slower!” as he waited for the GPS to sync up or, ambitiously, to “Punch it!” if a passing opportunity presented itself.

Michele had only had a few turns in the passenger seat, but she had already successfully caught her sunglasses in midair when the wind pulled them off.  She was largely silent save for the occasional appreciative, “Nice” when an uphill pass was accomplished.

Michele made several good passes of her own; so many that when my turn came to drive we actually ran to exchange seats so that we would not have to re-overtake the trucks behind us.

The last 300 or so clicks of the day were mine to drive.  Either Michele or Parag could have spelled me, but we all knew that this was my last dance with our ambulance, whom we had begun calling Betsy (short for “Betsy Badass,” an invention of either Mikhail’s or Parag’s depending on who is telling the story).

(And while I’m on the topic and taking my last nostalgic turn behind the wheel: somehow the crew who had left from London had each earned nicknames too.  I’m not sure how it happened—though my finger twitches towards Parag—but I had begun responding to both “Dr. J” and “J-Lo,” Misha was “DMZ,” and Parag himself “PKK.”  As if we needed another layer of joke-ready stereotypes for our intrepid team.)

My last drive was not entirely uneventful.  In addition to perfecting my technique of leaning forward when passing (to make us go faster, of course), I too was pulled over by the Russian police.  This time being flagged down was truly a puzzlement, as we were wedged in a line of trucks and decidedly under the speed limit.

The cop that came around to Misha’s window was young.  I handed over my international driving permit (thank you again, AAA); he neglected (to Mikhail’s amazement) to ask for my U.S. license as well.

Again a quick conversation with Misha, and we were done.

“He was just curious,” Misha explained. “He asked whether we had been on the road a long time.”

“Way to go, Dr. J and DMZ!” Parag called from the back, where he and Michele were perched watchfully.  “We had a little covert video action going on back here!”  Michele was grinning and holding her Flip cam. (Stay tuned for footage.)

Mikhail began pointing out landmarks.  He and his sister had gone to summer camp on those islands in the river . . . these buildings were brand new, wow . . . those apartment complexes hadn’t changed . . .

“… and right down this street was Giuseppe’s Pizza! At least, I thought …? Yes, here it is!”

Our hotel for the night, somewhat improbably, was a mock-Italian structure, including both an attached pizza parlor and a series of arched Mediterranean-hued corridors covered with landscape paintings.

On a normal night, a 10-hour, 650-km drive may have merited pizza and beer, but this!  This was our last night together as a team!  Our one night in Misha’s hometown!

“The end of civilization!” one of the guys proclaimed, and I gave a little self-pitying noise of protest.

And so we showered and strutted down the main strip in Kazan to what has to be the nicest restaurant in town.  A curved marble staircase led up to the dining room, which was full of ornate tables in red and gold.  At one end, a dance floor dominated.  It could easily hold a wedding party.

We were the only ones there.

So … it was a feast just for us.  And I mean feast:  they actually moved us to a bigger table to accommodate all the dishes we ordered from a menu that was voluminous and, hurrah, in English. (“I think you can find that appetizer back on page 76,” Parag joked.  “War and Peace took less time to read,” Mikhail agreed.)

We ordered mostly traditional dishes, including broth with meat pies, dumplings that took 45 minutes to prepare (sorry, guys!), and two different kinds of horse sausage (yes, that is exactly what it sounds like).

We left full and sleepy.  On the way home, Michele stopped to record an on-camera, in-location interview with Mikhail about his hometown.

I marveled as I watched them to think not only of the Dickensian circuit Misha’s life had taken from that long-ago winter playground, but of the happenstances that had led each of us from our hometowns, in four different cities and across three far-flung continents, to be together in this outpost of civilization on this warm summer night, united by the spark of friendship, still-unfolding experiences, and an ambulance named Betsy.

And here, alas, my own story spins away from the tale of team Ambulance to Mongolia.  After a sleepless night of packing and writing postcards, I caught an early taxi to the airport to return to Moscow for my flight home.  Michele will take over the blog updates from here.

I was very (!) sad to leave, but my part of the adventure did have a happy ending: after a few nail-biting hours, I made it off the standby list and scored a business-class window seat back to IAD.

It was my first time in such plush accommodations on an international flight.  I played with the (fully reclining!) seat and explored the (on demand!) video system and decided that yes, thank you, I would like a glass of champagne.

And when the plane hit turbulence, I closed my eyes and imagined I was once again riding eastward in our ambulance.