We drove for nearly all of the afternoon and tried to locate a Tiger Sanctuary half way between VVO and Khabarovsk. At a petrol station a guy drew us a map with directions which turned out to be really good – and this although he did not speak a word of English and we did not speak enough Russian to make our inquiries. Alas, all to no avail – when we finally managed to locate the sanctuary we arrived out of their normal hours and were not able to track anybody down. Bummer, by then we had driven several times through the very small and serene village probably much to the amusement of the locals. We spend the night on a hill a bit off the highway and had our first night camping under Far East Russian skies which we celebrated with some spaghetti!
Next day we made it to Khabarovsk where we stayed in a hotel and explored the lively and in parts quite European city the following morning. Finding a hotel proved to be a bit of an ordeal because they were all rather dear and all smelled quite badly because they were old and you are still allowed to smoke in hotel rooms in Russia, which makes for a rather stuffy room climate. We ended up in a truly Soviet-style hotel with glittering wallpaper, a veeeery soft bed and a bathroom with a shower head adjusted to the wall directly opposite the toilet without a curtain or wall in between – which made for wet feet. Well, it WAS the cheapest option ;o)
Now to the city: A grand boulevard starts leads to (or from) the great river Amur and offers some magnificent views over the vast river, the many monuments located along its shores and the many splendidly rebuild churches.
We met Alex who offered to be our guide for the day but because we were keen to get going we decided to skip sightseeing in order to leave towards Chita. We tried to hunt down a cable to connect car stereo and Ipod (which we stupidly forgot to take with us) which turned out to be quite difficult – the issue still needs to be resolved, hence so far no music!. On the road leading towards Khabarovks and the one leading out of Khabarovsk we were for the first time stopped by the police. On the first occasion Holger had been speeding unbeknown to him, this way we found out about the local speed limits and the office was very nice and laughed when he tried to talk to Holger but found that poor Holger’s knowledge of Russian, err, did not extend beyond ‘Hello, my name is…’ and insufficient for a proper conversation. Instead, he sent us on our way without issuing a ticket and, presumably, whished us well :o) When leaving Khabarovsk the officers just checked our papers, enquired about the route and wished us all the best, telling us that this npart of Russia is beautiful (which in fact it is!). These stops were permanent police checkpoints and same as with Australian booze busses as many cars are checked as there are capacities, but more often than not we’ve just driven through them. Every police officer so far has been very polite and interested.
The roads have been really good so far, only in a few places they were heavily under construction and on one stretch made of rather coarse gravel, Troopy lost a light - but handyman Holgi fixed the problem quickly with the bottom of a 5 litre water canister - has worked fine so far :o)
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