I've finally made it out of Russia. It has been a long time coming. The end of it may have been the best part though. After close to 3000 kilometers of plains the mountains rose suddenly and beautifully, and I was so happy to see them. I followed serene river valleys for the last 400 kilometers up until he border. Besides the wonderful scenery I had great interactions with so many nice people. I'm going to just list them off here.
On my way into Novosibirsk a businessman man stopped me at a cafe and gave me a box of cookies. He lived in Novosibirsk and offered to help me around town with anything I need. His son took me out for lunch on my way out of town.
At another cafe a few days later I stopped to look for WiFi and made friends with the whole staff. They had me put on a performance for them with my guitar. In return they gave me a new t-shirt (mine is in tatters), sushi, tea, a bracelet and baked bread stuffed with meat.
Later that same day I went through a town having its 180 year anniversary. I made friends at the festival and was given soup, soda, horse and lamb meat, bread and I found an English speaker from the town to answer all my questions. I was even offered a place to stay for the night before it I wanted to keep moving and declined.
The next day as I was setting up camp near a river a car pulled in to where I was. Two guys and a girl came to make a campfire and cook some shish kabobs. They gave me a kabob and beer and we stayed o late doing our best to communicate.
A couple of days into the mountains I had a personal best of 4 separate drink offers in one day. Two men on horseback riding between towns gave me a shot of homemade whiskey with my breakfast. At lunch a British tourist with a group tour gave me a beer to cool down. Very soon after lunch a car waved me down and out came two local guys out sightseeing and drinking for the day. The gave me a couple of shots of vodka. One of the men is a captain in the army and wrote me a note for the border guards telling them that they need to let me through. Not long after that a van full of kayakers stopped me. They told me that they would be camping 50 kilometers down the road so I told them I'd meet them in a few hours. It was actually over 60 kilometers away but when I got there they gave me food and beer and I got to use the camp ground sauna. I took a day off in that pretty spot and was given stew the next day as well.
Then I met Mark. A cyclists from New York City who biked across Russia (opposite direction as me) and is now heading towards Burma by way of Tibet. He gave me company for 3 days before we headed our separate ways.
At the time of writing this I am 2 days into Mongolia and a group of Russian tourists on a fishing trip just tonight invited me for dinner and lots of drinks.
What a way to leave Russia. I'm glad to be into Mongolia, but what a friendly country Russia was.
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