Chapter 5 - Siberia: Krasnoyarsk and Stolby Nature Reserve

In 2018, we embarked on an ambitious journey to go from Europe to Asia mostly by land. It was a fantastic trip, and I shared the highlights of this trip on a now-defunct blog. I'm republishing these travel stories here, for myself, to share with family and friends, and hopefully to inspire some strangers.

This article was originally written and published on September 6, 2018

Read Chapter 4 - Three days on a train to Siberia

Day 1 – Arriving in Stolby, walk of death, meeting an army of kids

We arrived early in Krasnoyarsk, at 6:38 AM from our 3-day train. We were really looking forward to breakfast and a shower. Beejal had spotted a nice vegetarian restaurant online called Veggy. “It’s 20 mins away,” she said. It was at the end of Lenin avenue, which was a good 45 mins walk with our big bags. For the first time, we were visiting a Russian city that is not some massive metropolis. First impressions: again, it’s vast. Similar to what I would associate with North America, big avenues and streets, and a grid-like plan. We took some pictures in front of the great Lenin statue in the center of town.

We walked towards the vegetarian place. A lot of pavements and roads have construction work going on, and it gives a weird vibe to the place. The sun is already quite high in the sky and it’s 20 degrees, it’s warm. After what felt like an endless walk, we reached the cafe. It was worth it. The fact we’ve just spent 3 days on a train eating noodles probably helped, but the food was just amazing. Green, fresh and colourful salads, creamy porridge, lovely coffee. We loved it!

They had WIFI and we sent a few messages to our family and checked out which bus would bring us to Stolby Nature Reserve, the main reason for our stopover. We took bus 50 and asked the locals where we should stop. Quite a lot of young people were stopping there and we just followed them. On the bus, we got a glimpse of the Yenisei River, which runs through the city. It’s a large river, and it creates some small islands in the middle. From afar, the city looks a bit grim and industrial, but we are heading towards some proper Siberian Nature, so it’s all good.

After getting out of the bus and following the kids towards the entry of the park, we now mentally prepare for what we know to be 7km walking mainly uphill with our bags on our back to the cottage where we are staying. It’s close to midday and it’s warm, but a cold breeze is blowing and we enjoyed some welcomed shade from the trees. It took us 1h30 to get there. We are staying in the main cottage, and we have a room to ourselves. Elena, the administrator, is lovely but does not speak the slightest word of English. She explains to us that the "day administrator" is here from 10 – 17 and the "night administrator" from 20 – 08, which as you have guessed means there is a 3 hours gap where you are stuck outside. We’ll deal with it. We get a very welcomed shower, probably one of the top 3 showers of my life, and some lunch, and then off we are to explore Stolby!

We followed the trail to the main Stolbs, which are these strange rock pillars, raising above the boreal forest. They are impressive. Perfect for climbing and perfect nature spot for locals to enjoy. They are also surrounded by the East Siberian Taiga, or boreal forest, the biggest continuous forest on the planet stretching for thousands of miles across Russia and Central Asia. There are inhabited by bears, moose, elks, bobcat, all sorts of birds, squirrels and chipmunk. It is beautiful, calm and quiet.

After a few hours of walking, we decided to get home before we would be stuck outside, past 17:00. We arrived at 16:50 and of course Elena was not here and we had to keep ourselves busy for the next 3 hours. We decided to go for one of the furthest trails, deep inside the park. I had seen and taken notice of the signs warning us about the bears. I'm a bit of a scaredy cat, and I decided to make some noise during the walk to warn bears of our presence. I had read somewhere on the internet that bears are shy and would avoid people given the chance, and that most bear related accidents happened when hikers surprise bears. Therefore I was regularly clapping my hands during all of our walk, to Beejal’s great pleasure.

Once we got back, safe and sound, with still 1 hour to kill, we bumped into 2 ladies, one of them spoke a bit of English.

– “Are you waiting for the keys?”

– “Yes”

– “You want tea?

– “Yes, sure, thank you”

– We are with a lot of children, hope it’s ok”

– Yes sure, no problem.

And so we followed them. And they told us they were managing a summer camp of 25 kids from 7 to 16 years old. Some of them apparently had a tough upbringing, but not all of them. We met with the army of children, all really curious to meet 2 foreigners from Western Europe. One of the kid actually spoke Spanish, and we asked for her. We met with Alina, a 13 years old Russian girl from Krasnoyarsk who spent some time in Spain as a kid and spoke perfect fluent Spanish. For a while, I asked her if she was a Spanish girl in Russia or a Russian girl who knew Spanish. She was really lovely, asked us a lot of questions, did some translating for her friends. It was such a sweet and unexpected thing, to be speaking Spanish with a Russian teenager deep in Siberia. The kids were really lovely to us, brought us tea and sweets. We sat around the fire in the outside kitchen, and the night was falling. After a while, around 21:30, we were exhausted and hungry and attempted to go for our dinner. They obviously invited us to their dinner, but we told them we were vegetarian and managed to get back to our place. We were knackered, it had been a long day.

Day 2 – Climbing around, meeting the kids again, birthday boy

In the morning we woke up, tried to have a shower but the electricity was out. Alina, the lovely Spanish speaking kid, brought us a kettle full of hot water and tea bags for our breakfast! Can you believe that? “Hola, quieres un te?” Incredible kid.

The summer camp crew had invited us to a walk today and told us to be ready by 10:00am, which we did. Of course, trying to get 25 kids ready is like herding cats and by 11:20am, there was no sign of things going ahead, so we decided to head o to one of the longest paths. It should bring us close to many stolbys. We then spent most of the day walking the trails, climbing the stolbs, trying to get on top to get a gorgeous view of the thick forest.

Day 3 – Back to Krasnoyarsk and a Decathlon mission

Last day in Stolby. Today we have to go back to Krasnoyarsk, enjoy the city and chill out. We packed up, said bye and walked the 7km downhill with our backpack. We managed to get the correct bus and arrived in town not far from Veggy the amazing vegetarian cafe we visited last time, just in time for lunch. Again we plowed through the dishes and loved all of them. Then we walked back closer to the train station to check in in our hostel. Probably one of the worst room so far. Beejal was excited we got a private room this time, but surprise! it was the a windowless room. No freaking windows! I lived for a few months in a room with no windows in Madrid, the flat was fun, I loved the city but I swore to myself never again!

My trusty Burton red backpack has been failing me recently. After almost 10 years of continuous use, in the US, India, Thailand, during all my studies, both zips have now become useless and the bag opens at random. Despite my reluctance, I have to get a new bag. Beejal supported me mentally in that decision. We decided to visit the only sacred place to us: Decathlon!

Yes, Decathlon is present in Russia! Our faithful favorite shop in the universe is here! We checked out the way on Yandex (the Russian google map / citymapper) and took the local bus to the shopping mall area. It was interesting to see this part of town. There would be no reason for a tourist to visit this place, it’s just the more recent part of town, but we could see what normal life is in Krasnoyarsk. Again, gigantic avenues, insane traffic, and after 45 min we reached our destination. We enjoyed Decathlon as always. There is some ridiculous comforting feeling you get when visiting a chain you know from your home country while abroad. The products, the layout and the smell are the same, and after 2 weeks in a foreign land it was pleasant. I bought a new 20-litre bag, small enough that I can fold it in my big bag and we headed back to town.

The bus dropped us not far from Rada, a vegetarian “yoga” Indian inspired cafe in the hip part of Krasnoyarsk. We were waited on by Daria, who I guess was a young student working here. She was really excited to see 2 foreigners in the cafe and to speak English to us. She was really lovely and gave us an English menu. We ordered a veg Solnyanka (a hearty Russian soup made with sausages and veg – we got the veggie sausages version), some Pelmeni (Russian dumpling), rice and sabji (the Hindi word for vegetables ). The food was good, hearty, with no spices and a lot of dill. For dessert, we ordered some laddu that according to Beejal were not laddu at all! Daria came to ask us where we were from and what brought us to Krasnoyarsk. She was really excited by our travel and even gave us a hug when we left So sweet!

On the way back from the restaurant, we realised we were in the cool part of town. It was 21:30 and people were going out, the cafes were full and bustling. Just a really nice atmosphere. After half an hour walking, we were back to our hostel for a windowless night.

Day 4 – Leaving Krasnoyarsk and train to Irkutsk.

In the uneventful morning, we went for breakfast at Traveller’s coffee, a nice Russian cafe chain. I got a giant pot of coffee and porridge, and Beejal managed to order a dish without bacon. Again, I am surprised by how easy it is to eat vegetarian food in Russia. It’s not available everywhere, but asking if a dish is vegetarian (vegetariets?) is really easy and people seem to understand immediately what it means.

After our late breakfast, we went to the train station, enjoying some wifi and saying goodbye to Krasnoyarsk. Next: a 19 hours train to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal!