In the fall of 2007 I was living in my college town working as a photographer. I had spent a year shooting for different clients in the area, and the time had come to move on. At the same time, Nate, my best friend had the crazy idea for us to live on his family’s boat in New York City. It sounded like a great plan. I broke my lease, packed my stuff and drove down to The Big Apple.
When I arrived at the marina, Nate brought me down the dock to his enormous forty-nine foot sailboat named Tannu-Tuva. Nate told me it was the name of a former country, a place in the center of Asia. It used to be independent and is now part of Russia. I didn’t think much of it for the rest of the day.
That evening, we sat down and watched two documentaries about Tannu-Tuva, the first titled, “The Last Journey of a Genius.” This film chronicled the final adventure of Richard Feynman, a noble prize winning physicist that was known for his quirky sense of humor and numerous accomplishments in physics. Feynman and his friend Ralph Leighton tried to visit Tuva in the 1980’s when the Soviet Union was still intact. During that time, the USSR made it extremely difficult for westerners to obtain the necessary permissions to visit the place. Despite many setbacks, the duo tried everything they could to get there. They wrote letters in Tuvan to officials in the country, curated exhibits with Tuvan artifacts, and invited Soviet museum officials to visit the United States. In February 1988, Feynman passed away from cancer, never fulfilling his dream of visiting Tuva. Three days after his death, the official invitation from the Soviet Union came in the mail.
The second documentary we watched was “Genghis Blues”, an academy award nominated film about the American blues musician Paul Pena traveling to Tuva after learning throat singing and becoming friends with Kongar-ool Ondar, Tuva’s most famous throat singer. They travel through Tuva together and the film culminates with Pena performing at the Triennial throat singing festival in Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva. This was my first introduction to throat singing and it blew me away. Technically, throat singing is when a person vocalizes two or more notes simultaneously. When you hear an audio recording, it literally sounds like someone playing a flute while humming a note. Only when you see a video recording will you believe it.
Nate and his family had many reasons for naming the boat Tannu-Tuva. For Nate, Tuva represents adventure, exploring, and independence. Tuvans have lived the nomadic way of life for generations, always moving with their herds and never staying in one place for very long. When it was an independent state, the official name was Tannu-Tuva. Using their independent name for the boat and not simply Tuva or Republic of Tuva was also significant, because this honored those 23 years of independence that the Tuvans had. This was the first and only time in their history that they were free from outside rule. In addition to this, naming the boat Tannu-Tuva was a way for Nate to recognize Richard Feynman, one of his heroes. There is also something ironic about naming a boat after a place that is literally the furthest from any ocean in the world; Tuva is in the center of Asia!
In 2009, I was on the phone with Nate discussing his upcoming summer plans in 2010. After attending summer courses in Japan for architecture, Nate wanted to take the Tran-Siberian Railway across Russia from east to west. I abruptly asked him, “Mind if I join you?” Luckily, he didn’t mind at all.
When Nate returned to New York for his winter break in December, we immediately got to work researching the Trans-Siberian railway. We met in the New York Public Library and set out to determine which route to take. We also looked at the option of traveling along the famous Silk Route. This would have taken us through more countries that are very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain visas. We contacted two people that run popular travel websites for advice. One recommended the Silk Route, the other the Trans-Siberian. We wrote to Mark (the author of seat61.com) and asked him if he could only do one in his lifetime, which would it be. He wrote:
“Personally, I’d still do Trans-Siberian, as it’s a major route not an obscure one, it’s the famous name, and I’d want to know the reality behind the hype. In terms of what you see, if you take the Trans-Mongolian route I think Siberia, Mongolia and the Gobi desert, then China, give you a lot to see. People more often rave about Mongolia and China rather than Kazakhstan. You can always do the other route in years to come…”
John from johndarm.clara.net recommended the Silk Route, but warned that it was much more difficult to plan and make visa arrangements. He wrote to us,
“For travel along the Silk Route, you will need a specialist travel agency if you don’t want to make your own arrangements. I used Steppes Travel, based in the UK. You can’t travel completely independently in this part of the world, as you will almost certainly need to use some sort of tourist agency in order to get visas, as they require you to have an “invitation” from a person or organisation in the country concerned.”
Once we read that we wouldn’t be able to do it independently, we knew this was not the route for us.
Our railway was set. We just had to choose which Trans-Siberian route to take. There is the official Trans-Siberian, the Trans-Manchurian, and the Trans-Mongolian. We decided on the Trans-Mongolian route because it brought us right through Mongolia.
While planning our trip, we realized that the Trans-Siberian ran somewhat close to Tuva. We never imagined we would ever be able to visit Tuva, but here we were, planning a trip that had us traveling fifteen hours north of the place. We agreed this side route would be well worth it.
Before we left, Nate got the absolute mad idea to get us into a Tuvan newspaper. He thought it would be the ultimate souvenir. And so, I contacted Friends of Tuva, the biggest web resource for Tuva led by Ralph Leighton, and asked if they knew any local journalists. They got us in contact with Dina Oyun. She was interested and told us to contact her once we arrived. We had no idea if we would be successful, but at least we had a contact in Kyzyl.
Fast forward to June 29th 2010. I was visiting my brother in Shanghai, while Nate had been in Japan, North & South Korea for the past month. Before leaving the US, Nate and I made prior plans to meet at a specific guesthouse at a specific time and day. In case Nate could not contact me, we knew where to meet.
I landed in Tianjin, a city about a hundred kilometers away from Beijing, and was struck by how much pollution was floating in the air. I caught a bullet train to Beijing, and the air was no different. I had never seen air so visibly toxic in my life.
After picking up the train tickets for the first leg of the journey, I went to the guesthouse and met with Nate. After we settled in, Nate and I grabbed some dinner and drinks and reflected on the moment. This was the start of our great journey.
At six the next morning, we grabbed our bags and headed out the door. The streets were surprisingly quiet, with only a handful of people walking about. In the distance, you could spot the sun, a little orange circle floating high above us. The pollution was so thick that it clouded the bright sun.
The train was surprisingly impressive. We shared a four-bunk cabin with a Mongolian woman heading home for the summer. Thirty hours sounds like a lifetime sitting on a train, but we found ways to fill the time. Nate brought his Kindle loaded with ten e-books. We also had the paperback version of “Trans-Siberian Handbook” by Bryn Thomas for the majority of the trip, and the Russia guidebook by Lonely Planet on his Kindle.
We went to the dining car a handful of times searching for entertainment and a hot meal. Sitting by himself was Frank, a retired mechanic that fled from the Czech Republic in the 1970’s to Australia. Frank has visited 179 countries. He shared his travels around the world with us, and was the best-traveled individual we met on the trip by far.
The train stopped every few hours at stations along the way, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for half an hour. At the Chinese border town of Erlyan, we stopped for several hours while the bogies on the train were changed to accommodate the five-foot gauge of the Mongolian and Russian railway system. Russia and Mongolia use a different gauge than the rest of the world that requires this switch every time a train crosses the border.
During this stop, we wandered around empty glimmering waiting rooms in the station and took a walk through town with a few of our fellow passengers. We walked passed dilapidated buildings down dimly lit streets. Nate and I decided to get beer and dumplings with Joe, the only American we met on the train. While I knew the word for beer in Chinese, I never learned how to say dumplings. I found the translation after a few minutes fumbling with my iPhone translator, and we were able to place an order.
The dumplings took a long time. Finally, they appeared with a huge plate of dumplings bigger than my head. Now we had to find the word for take-out. After more fumbling with translation software, we were out the door with our dumplings, rushing quickly back to the train.
After returning to the train, my jaw dropped when I opened the door to the dining car. At the border, the dining car changed from Chinese to Mongolian, but since I never saw it happen, it was as if our train was magically changing cars on a whim. We arrived in Mongolia several hours later.
Ulan-Bator, the capital of Mongolia, is quite a strange place. When you picture Mongolia in your head, you certainly don’t imagine skyscrapers. Nate commented how Sükhbaatar Square defied contemporary urban design logic, but somehow it worked.
We stayed with a family for one day and one night a couple hours outside the capital to get a feel for the nomadic lifestyle that Mongolia is famous for. For the first time, I experienced a way of life that requires virtually no money to sustain. Mongolian nomads subsist almost entirely from the land and their livestock. They get their water from a well shared by the community. They have a diet of meat, flour, and milk. They heat their yurts and their food with dried dung from their animals. Most families even have a solar panel and car batteries to power their lights, sometimes even a TV and satellite dish. They do own a motorcycle that requires gasoline, and they do have to buy flour, clothes, and other minor necessities. But for the most part, everything they need can be taken from the land. All of the open land in Mongolia is free for nomads to roam and live on. It’s a truly incredible way of life.
Most people that spend a night with a nomadic family hike or go horseback riding, but I preferred to stay at their home and photograph. Nate and I played basketball on their homemade hoop against the young sons, and later with the two fathers. I’m sorry to say they beat us. During the evening, the teenage boys trained on their horses for the Nadaam Festival, an annual event with wrestling, archery and horseback riding. Younger boys always race the horses because every pound counts, and it was an incredible sight to see them racing around the dirt track.
That night, we insisted on sleeping outdoors. I hadn’t seen the stars in months, and with no artificial light for miles, I had to use this opportunity to gaze upon them. The next morning we thanked our host family and returned to Ulan-Bator.
The day after, we took the 263 service from Ulan-Bator to Irkutsk, a Russian city close to Lake Baikal. This was another thirty-hour train ride, and our car was once again filled with foreigners. As soon as we arrived in Irkutsk, we rushed to the mall where mini buses take off to the lake. We found one and spent the next six hours squeezed in between Russians that spoke virtually no English.
Baikal Lake was more beautiful than I could have imagined. The lake is the world’s oldest and deepest lake, containing 20% of the world’s surface fresh water. We stayed on Olkhon Island in the village of Khuzhir at Nikita’s Homestead. The guesthouse felt like a mini-village in itself, with multiple places to dine and hang out. We wandered around the village at night, but all we could find were empty bars and deserted streets. We made our way back to the guesthouse and got food and drinks at the bar. After talking with two Russians for some time, we were joined by their German friend. We told him of our fascination with Tuva and our plan to visit the following week. His eyes immediately lit up. He told us he lived in Krasnoyarsk, 15 hours north of Tuva, for three months while studying Russian. While he had never visited Tuva, he desperately wanted to get there before returning home. Then, he asked us if we were going to Sayan Ring. Sayan Ring is the biggest music festival in Siberia, only five hours north of Tuva in a town called Shushenskoe, and it started in two days. And most importantly, there would be throat singing. Nate and I knew we had to get there.
We got up the next morning and grabbed the first mini bus off of Olkhon Island. We only had 1 ½ days to get to Shushenskoe, and had no idea where we would be able to stay. Our German friend told us last year there were 25,000 people that attended Sayan Ring, and most slept in tents and sleeping bags. Nate and I didn’t have either one of those, but decided it was more important to figure out how to get there. We got back to Irkutsk, checked into a guesthouse and got to work figuring out how we would get to Shushenskoe. With the help of someone from the guesthouse, we found a bus schedule that showed multiple trips to Shushenskoe directly from Krasnoyarsk. This meant we needed to get a train from Irkutsk to Krasnoyarsk, then that bus to Shushenskoe. Nate went to the train station and got our train tickets and we decided to get the bus tickets later. The next morning, we boarded the train, the third of the trip, and realized we were no longer going to be with tourists. Our car was filled with Russians, and we shared our cabin with a very nice Russian couple. This ride was 15 hours and left us in Krasnoyarsk at four in the morning. The bus we aimed to get left at 10:30 AM, giving us plenty of time to get there.
During the train ride, the lady in our cabin asked us, in very broken English, where we were headed. We told her we were going to Sayan Ring in Shushenskoe, but we had no idea where we’d sleep. She immediately started making phone calls, finally connecting us to the person in charge of foreign groups at Sayan Ring. We texted back and forth discussing housing, and told us he would send someone to meet us at the bus stop. We couldn’t believe our luck.
When we got off the train at 4 a.m., we took a nice walk to the center of town. We had been warned over and over again about muggings in Russia, but I felt safer on this trip than I do in my own neighborhood. After a leisurely breakfast, we took a cab to the bus station around 6 a.m. While waiting in line for the bus tickets, I read the bus schedule and realized there was a 6:30 bus to Shushenskoe! By this point, it was 6:20 am and the bus was filling up quickly. With the help of a few Russians that spoke a little English, Nate bought what he thought were bus tickets and we climbed aboard.
About thirty minutes into the trip, the bus stopped for a bathroom break. Nate ran up to me with my stuff and said, “There’s a problem. There are assigned seats and we are in the wrong ones.” We got on the bus and couldn’t find a place to sit. All of a sudden, the driver walked up to us and started yelling in Russian. Soon after, everyone on the bus was speaking in Russian to each other, and it was clear it they were talking about us. Nate kept showing the tickets we purchased, but the driver shook his head. A girl finally stood up and said, “You don’t have bus tickets, and those aren’t tickets.” I looked at the receipt and saw we only paid $3 for two seats on a nine-hour bus ride. Something clearly went wrong.
There was only one seat left on the bus, but the girl that spoke to us in English was kind enough to sit on her friend’s lap to free up another seat. We paid the bus driver for tickets, and we were on our way. Four hours later, we ran into our German friend that told us about Sayan Ring. What a small world. We both thanked him for telling us about the festival and headed back to the bus.
At around 4 p.m., we arrived in Shushenskoe. The organizer sent his wife and her friends to pick us up and she told us they arranged a home stay down the street. They brought us to a nice cozy apartment and showed us our room. I still can’t believe that it worked out. If they didn’t help us, I don’t know where we would have slept.
When we first entered the festival, I was a little disappointed. I expected something akin to Woodstock 1969, with people high on drugs and jumping up and down. Instead, I saw a mellow crowd filled with families and children. At that time I didn’t realize we had to wait until the evening for Sayan Ring to get wild. A few hours later, I saw Kongar-ool Ondar talking on stage. This was a good sign. We met a few Russians and ended up hanging out with them for the next three days.
The place was packed to the brim with people. The organizers said there were about 35,000 people, many of them staying in the sprawling tent city beside the event. In the evening, the families and children went home while the partiers came out in droves. It certainly helped attendance that the entire festival was free.
For the first two days we heard music from all over Siberia. This consisted of young amateur singers dressed in traditional clothing, many excellent folk banks, and one guy dancing with a knife, but there was still no throat singing. In between every performance they would loop Kongar-ool Ondar’s throat singing from his album “Back Tuva Future” but that was the extent of it. Then, on Sunday afternoon, we saw five Tuvan men sit down on stage with instruments. One man was speaking in Russian to the audience, and I caught, “Republic Tuva!” Finally, I knew we were finally about to hear live throat singing.
It was incredible. I have heard throat singing before on Youtube, but this was absolutely stunning. Five Tuvans throat singing simultaneously. I have never heard anything more beautiful than that. I knew at that moment getting to Sayan Ring was worth it. When I got back to our home stay that night, I checked my e-mail one last time before Tuva. It had been a month since last hearing from Dina, and I didn’t think there was much hope in meeting her. I sent her an e-mail with my phone number and said we would be in Tuva the following day.
Tuva holds a strange place in Russian’s hearts. We asked at least five different Russians what they thought of Tuva, and they universally told us “Tuva is very dangerous!” The day we left for Tuva, we asked a Russian in the bus station what he thought of the place and he let out a wild laugh. “Tuva? It is very dangerous! Even Russians are scared of Tuvans!” He pulled out a big knife and said, “You will need one of these down there!”
We boarded the bus and made our way to Abakan. There, we found a private car and made our way south towards Kyzyl, Tuva. The scenery along the way was filled with fields of wild flowers, rolling mountains, and clusters of beautiful alpine homes along the way. We arrived in the evening and got some food in town. We were told to never be out in the streets after dark, but we decided to risk it and walked around.
I received a text message from Dina asking if we were in Tuva. I told her we had arrived and we were free the following day. She told us to meet her at the House of Government at 3 p.m.
The next day we got into town and wandered around. Since we were meeting Dina at the House of Government, I suspected she was an important person. I had the crazy idea to ask her if she knew Kongar and if I could photograph him, but Nate told me it wasn’t worth it. At 3 p.m. we walked into the building and were greeted by security that didn’t speak a word of English. I looked at them and said, “Dina Oyun?” They smiled and let us through the door, pointing to her room number on the third floor. We went up the elevator and walked to her door.
A woman with short hair and perfect English greeted us as we entered. We spoke about our time on the boat, why we named it Tannu-Tuva, and why we wanted to come to Tuva. During our conversation, I realized that she wasn’t just a journalist for Tuva Online. She was also the Assistant to the President of the Republic of Tuva. During our interview, she took photos of us and occasionally answered phone calls. When we were finishing the interview, I asked her, “Do you know Kongar-ool Ondar? Is he still in Tuva? I would love to take his picture.” She quickly said, “One moment” and speed dialed Kongar on her iPhone. I overheard her say, “Hello Kongar? I’m with two Americans that want to take your photo. Tomorrow? Okay sounds great.” She hung up the phone and said: “You can meet him at 10 a.m. tomorrow at his music school down the street.” And just like that, we were on our way to meeting a national hero.
At the very end of the interview, she told us to meet her outside the Lenin statue in an hour to be interviewed by a local TV station. This was better than being in the newspaper, we thanked her and went outside. The interview went pretty well, and it certainly helped to have several prints of us with the Tanna-Tuva boat to show the Tuvan viewers.
The following morning, we awoke to thunder and lightning, and after several strikes, the lights in our hotel went out. By the time we were walking to Kongar’s school, the rain had stopped, but it was still very dark and cloudy. I was a little nervous about the lighting situation for the photo-shoot with Kongar, but I told myself I could make it work. I wanted natural light anyway, and I was confident I would be able to bring up the ISO high enough to get a picture. Nate and I hired a translator, and she met us outside the school gates.
As we were waiting for Kongar to arrive, I stood there with Nate, wondering what he would be like. In his public appearances and the documentary Genghis Blues, he is a cheerful and friendly Tuvan, never appearing unfriendly. He arrived ten minutes later, and from that first handshake, it was clear to me he was exactly how I thought he would be. He had a bright smile on his face and was happy to meet both of us. We walked down the hall to his main classroom and our translator told him about our boat. We pulled out the photos and he was immediately fascinated by it. He told us he would be in the United States next year to visit his daughter, and would love to take a ride on the boat. We couldn’t believe it. Kongar-ool Ondar wanted us to take him for a cruise on the Tanna-Tuva boat! We happily agreed.
The lights in the school were out and Kongar’s students were beginning to arrive. The five students were rehearsing with him that morning for a performance later in the day. Because Kongar had just met me and was working with his students, I didn’t want to intrude on his morning too much. I did get three minutes of his time to pose, but the rest of the time Nate and I stood back and watched him teach. Later, Kongar showed us some photos of him and his official government portrait, as he is a member of the Tuvan Legislature. I truly do hope we will be able to take him and his family for a sailing cruise around New York City.
After we met Kongar, we spent the rest of the day visiting museums and getting train tickets for the last leg of our journey. The next morning we took a private car to Abakan and arrived in the afternoon. This was our last, greatest, and longest train ride. The 65 Service from Abakan to Moscow was for seventy-two hours. The train would stop along the way for five to thirty minutes. Nate and I bought bowls of instant ramen, salami, tea, chocolate, bread, and bottled water. We were ready.
When we boarded the train, we were lead to third class but we knew instantly something was wrong. We checked our tickets with a conductor and they assured us this was our seat. Nate and I had accidentally booked third class. The difference between second and third class is enormous. In third, there were no doors and absolutely no privacy. The beds were too short for my height, as my feet dangled when I lay down. We tried to change to 2nd class, but the train was booked. Fortunately, we soon realized this situation gifted us with the best experience.
We were the only foreigners in our car and possibly the entire train. The Russians on the train with us were extremely kind, generous, and friendly. For the first time, I was able to photograph Russians on the train. They saw that we were riding third class just like them and were comfortable with us. I got more portraits of Russians on this train than all the others combined.
Seventy-two hours later, we arrived in Moscow. This was the biggest moment of the trip; Nate and I had just completed the Trans-Mongolian railway!
We spent our last four days in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg. We visited the usual sights. The cities were beautiful, very different than the cities in Siberia.
I got a lot of joy from having to find ways to communicate with Russians that couldn’t speak English. It was this challenge of combining hand gestures, acting, and the four Russian words I knew to communicate, and it was incredibly rewarding when I did get my point across. There were many stretches of time when we had to communicate like this. When we reached Moscow we didn’t have to play this game anymore, and communication seemed too easy. I actually missed having to act out words to communicate.
This was my best trip. China, Mongolia, and Russia are such diverse countries that I learned so much more from this trip than my previous trip to Southeast Asia in 2006. It was incredible photographing these countries and their people. I will never forget it.
