Why you haven't heard from me

After asking people to watch this space, I disappeared. No, nothing bad happened. The boat has free Internet, OK for brief emails home but agonisingly slow for anything else. Posting blogs with images would be difficult. This gives me an excuse not to post same-day blogs. I will wait till I am home before releasing them one by one. 

Meanwhile I like to report that we have good weather so far. We did have a misadventure when we left the group to spend an afternoon by ourselves. But all’s well that ends well. And the escapade gives me something to write about. So long for now!

In Search of Captain Hornblower

Of all the Tzars’ palaces, the one I look forward to visiting the most is Peterhof, outside St Petersburg. Why? Because in 1812, as the story goes, Commodore Horatio Hornblower sails up the Gulf of Finland with his Baltic Squadron -- a ship-of-the-line, two sloops, two bomb-ketches and a cutter. Unlike Tsarskoe Selo and the Winter Palace, Peterhof is by the sea. Open landaus take him and his officers from the jetty to the palace, for an Imperial Reception given by Tsar Alexander I.

The road wound through a vast park, alternate sweeps of grass and groves of trees; here and there fountains threw lofty jets of water at the sky, and marble naiads posed by marble basins. Occasional turns in the road opened up beautiful vistas down the terraced lawns; there were long flights of marble steps and beautiful little marble pavilions, but also, at every turning, besides every fountain and every pavilion, there were sentries on guard, stiffly presenting arms as the carriages whirled by.

Hornblower is interviewed by the Minister of Marine, with the Tzar sitting incognito in the room. Hornblower forcefully argues as to why the Russians should stand up to Napoleon.

At the reception hall, he is given the Countess Canerine as  dinner companion.

The countess was the boldest-eyed and most beautiful of them all; under the arches of her brows her eyes were dark and liquid and yet with a consuming fire within them. Her face was a perfect oval, her complexion like rose petals, her magnificent bosom white as snow above the low décolleté of her Court dress.

The Essential Tao of Travel

Paul Theroux, author of The Great Railway Bazaar, The Happy Isles of Oceania, The Pillars Of Hercules and many other travel books, has written a new one, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road.

In it, he lists the 10 Taos of travel:

1) Leave home
2) Go alone
3) Travel light
4) Bring a map
5) Go by land
6) Walk across a national frontier
7) Keep a journal
8) Read a novel that has no relation to the place you're in
9) If you must bring a cell phone, avoid using it
10) Make a friend

In regard to 8), Theroux read Jin Ping Mei (Plum in Gold Vase), a five-century-old erotic tale, while travelling on trains in China and quoted it extensively in Riding the Iron Rooster, By Train Through China. So the Tao must be a new rule. ;-)

But I must say it is a good one. It gives the reader a break, however slight, from his or her environment. I read Oceania in China, and Martin Cruz Smith's Havana Bay in Hong Kong. For this trip, I am thinking of bringing William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, a 862-page Penguin paperback I bought in a charity sale for $1. If I ever get through the tome, I shall leave it in the Viking Pakhomov's library.

Here's my 10 Taos:

1) Leave home
2) Avoid group tours, but perhaps not in Russia
3) Travel light but still bring lots of one-dollar US bills for tips to porters and toilet attendants (in countries such as Egypt and Jordan)
4) Bring a camera, preferably a compact one with big zoom
5) Walk instead of taking the metro
6) Never walk to the USA from Tijuana, Mexico, unless you want a lecture of terrorists lurking in Canada
7) Keep a journal, a blog, a photo record...
8) Bring paperbacks that you can discard on the way
9) Bring a device with Wi-Fi, be it laptop, tablet, video game console, digital audio player or smart-phone, for free emails home
10) Make a friend, failing that, make no enemies

Panasonic ZS8

Applying Visas

One doesn't just go to Russia, one has to be invited. To apply for a tourist visa, one needs printed invitations from a tour company.

There is also a long form to be filled. I was asked some questions that I had never been asked before, such as, "Have you ever engaged in chemical and biological warfare?"

I had to say no.

The Consular Office is not inside the Russian Embassy, but in a quaint two-story house on a leafy street nearby.

There was a roomful of people when we got there. There were two guichet windows opened to serve customers. I looked for a ticket machine but found none. I told the receptionist that we came for visas. Without saying a word, she pointed me to a sofa.

After a while, more people came in, one of them with a stack of passports. Fearing that I might be lost in the shuffle, I approached the receptionist again.

"Is there a number I can take?"

The receptionist was a buxomly woman in a flowery dress with a plunging neckline. I hadn't seen such generous mounds of flesh in a long time. Deep, deep cleavage. She was about 40. Mother Russia!

She seemed to understand what I said, but didn't reply. A standoff. That was getting awkward! I felt every pair of eyes in the room were on me.

"OK," I forced a smile. Mustering what dignity I had left, I retreated to my seat.

After a few minutes, she pointed at me and then at an empty window. No one had jumped the queue after all.

I realised then that I had learned my first lesson about Russia.  I underestimated the taciturn receptionist because of how she looked. She did not need a system to keep track, she had us all pigeon-holed in her head.

Itinerary

Free Internet access in staterooms...

So says the Viking River Cruises brochure. Well, I am going to put that to the test in five days time. I will bring a laptop and post daily blogs while on board the Viking Pakhomov.

Day 1           Fly to St Petersburg
Day 2-4       St Petersburg, Pakhomov as floating hotel
Day 5          Pakhomov sails, Mandrogy
Day 6          Kizhi
Day 7          Kirillo-Belozersky
Day 8          Yaroslavi
Day 9          Uglich
Day 10-12  Moscow, Pakhomov as floating hotel
Day 13        Fly home

Viking  Pakhomov was built in an Elbe shipyard in what was then East Germany in 1990. It was renovated in 2003. It is supposed to have been renovated again for the 2011 sailing season. We shall see. 423 feet long, it carries 210 passengers, watched over by a crew of 114.

If all goes well, at the end we would have sailed the Neva, Lake Ladoga, the Svir, Lake Onega, a small stretch of the Volga, the Moscow Canal and the Moscow River.

The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It starts south of St Petersburg, flows some 2,300 miles until it empties into the Caspian Sea. It is also the largest river in Europe, in terms of discharge. The small stretch we will be on is near its source.

Days ago, the Volga demonstrated its potency. Bulgaria, a 55-year-old cruise ship carrying holiday-makers, sank in a rainstorm, drowning some 130 persons, including the captain and many children. The boat was licensed for 140 but was carrying 208, including 25 unregistered passengers.

The cause is still unknown. The river is five miles wide where the ship went down. The tragedy happened outside Russia proper, in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, some 500 miles south-east of Moscow.