Ulan-Ude

With only one whole and two half days to see all Ulan Ude has to offer - and with 2 of the main things on our list being some way out of town - Helen suggested we hire a driver and guide. It was an excellent plan.

Alexandr, the Russian driver, is clearly a man who enjoys his work. His biggest grin of the day was when he negotiated his way into (and, to our great relief, out the other side of) a rapidly closing gap between two approaching trams. I cannot image anything that would induce me to drive in Russia. Even if being chased by a bear, I think the bear would be the safer option.

He'd learnt a little English at school 55 years ago. In those days they had no expectation of needing it to speak to anyone, so learnt only to read and translate. Still, we managed to exchange the odd word.

Not that we lacked conversation. Galtan, the Buriat guide, talked virtually non-stop at high speed for 5 hours. He's fluent in at least 4 languages (and dialects of several of those - he took great pains to point out that he'd learnt the Queen's English at school, and if he accidentally slid into American at any point that was just because he was a little rusty). He has lived all over the place - from Seattle to Malaysia - and I think could have an intelligent conversation about any subject (we didn't try him on science but I think we covered virtually everything else). And as a Buddhist Buriyat with a girlfriend who is Russian Old Order, he was the perfect person to tell us about local culture.

We started at the datsan - a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and university founded with Stalin's permission as thanks for the Buriyat service during the Great Patriotic War. The university has 4 departments - philosophy, Tibetan medicine, sacred art & magic, and fine art. It also has quite a lot of curly tailed dogs, lounging on sunny temple steps and doing regular rounds of the complex to clear up offerings of food.

After a detailed grounding in Buddhist doctrine, temple etiquette, educational systems, attitudes to gender in relation to human embodiments of deities*, history in Russia, place in pan-Mongolian culture and colour choices (Galtan is *very* thorough) we moved on to the Ethnographic museum. That was a little disappointing. It is at higher altitude, so the snow melt lags a little behind the rest of the region. Combined with a shortage of staff, this meant quite a few of the buildings were either inaccessible or closed. Tramped round what we could - with 1 drenched foot each after a snowdrift mishap - and still managed to come away much better informed, even if we hadn't seen quite as much as we would have liked.

Rounded off the day with dinner in Shashlikoff, which had an actual vegetarian menu (under the guise of 'healthy bites') as well as a few fattier veggie options scattered through the main menu. And a bill so small we both checked it twice to make sure they hadn't left off half the dishes. They hadn't. Tasty food too, so consider this a recommendation if you ever find yourself in the area.

* It makes no difference. After all, the human may not have been the same gender - or indeed species or even class of being - last time round.Read more