Stephan Orth - Behind Putin's Curtain - Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia [aka Couchsurfing in Russia]

There’s a mattress prepared for me in an army tent of about 130 square feet pitched on a green area next to the church. It smells of methylated spirits and instant noodles, and apart from me there are a travel blogger couple from Finland, a geologist from France, and three Russian backpackers. There’s room for all on other mattresses in the tent.

In the local corner shop, I witness the attempts of a group of Chinese tourists to explain to the vendor that one of them doesn’t want to buy all of the specially priced pack of four fruit yogurts, but only a single one. This leads to considerable communication difficulties: the grumpy lady at the counter doesn’t want to split the product; the customers don’t understand why. Paris syndrome in the house?

The majority of visitors to the island come from China, which is astonishing as the island doesn’t fit the usual criteria for vacation destinations. Tourist research surveys claim that the vacationing Chinese are mostly interested in luxury stores, high-class hotels, and good wireless reception. You can forget about all of these in the dusty Wild West town of Khuzhir; most of the guest rooms don’t even come with a shower. “But in all our schoolbooks they tell us that Lake Baikal is beautiful,” a tourist from Chengdu tells me, adding: “And there’s a popular Chinese song about it, too.” Investors have already noticed the potential; on the southern shores of the lake, at Baykalsk, there are plans for a modern tourist paradise specifically tailored to the needs of guests from the Far East. A pool of Chinese companies headed by Chungjingxin are planning to invest an incredible US$12 billion in the project; this amounts to twice the cost of building Disneyland in Shanghai.

At sunset, everyone gathers for the photo op at Skala Shamanka, a craggy rock extending into the lake that local shamans believe to be the home of the god Khan Gutababai. They’ve decorated a number of poles with colorful materials to make things a bit prettier for the holy resident. They say that people who come here should only have clear and positive thoughts, because everything is amplified here. Well, that’s really great; I’m still annoyed about missing Sergei.

At least I’ve arranged a meeting tomorrow at midday with Russia’s most famous shaman to learn something about his healing powers, his excursions to other worlds, and the legends of Olkhon Island. He’s called Valentin Khagdaev and he seems to be a sort of household shaman of the rich and powerful. According to his website, he looks into the future for the supermodel Natalia Vodianova and helped the pop singer Dima Bilan win the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008. And, of course, he has shaken hands with Putin. In the Soviet Union times shamanism was demonized and persecuted, but now it’s becoming more and more popular in Russia. In Buryatia, the province on the eastern shores of Lake Baikal, the practices of traditional healers are even recognized by the health authorities.

OLKHON IS FORTY-FIVEmiles long and eight miles wide, making it the fourth-biggest lake island in the world. If you believe the shamanistic tales, a whole horde of spirits live here, next to which all the elves of Iceland would look like kids in sheets at a fancy-dress party.

A perplexing peculiarity of the island is its stillness. If you walk along the sandy beach directly at the waterline you can hear the sounds of water, but only ten or fifteen feet inland it’s suddenly completely quiet. The view to the rounded cliffs on the mainland, often cloaked in mist, is also magical. And finally, the fantastic taste of cold smoked omul , a member of the salmon family that only swims in Lake Baikal, can only be explained by magic.

The next morning I call the über-shaman to arrange a meeting place. He is inconsolable—he had totally forgotten about our meeting, is now on a ship, and wouldn’t be returning to Olkhon in the foreseeable future. Dammit! What have the island spirits got against me?

Nineteenth-century poet who succeeded in making himself immortal with four lines. Every Russian knows them, and seldom has a national mythos been better described. A rough translation goes something like this: “Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone, / No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness: / She stands alone unique— / In Russia one can only believe.” [14] Tyutchev, Fyodor. “Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone.” English translation from Wikiquote, “Fyodor Tyutchev.” en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fyodor_Tyutchev .

I’m a bit stubborn; I don’t give up easily. At Nikita’s Homestead, Olkhon’s most famous lodgings, I ask the receptionist whether she can recommend a shaman, telling her that it’s urgent. The woman behind the desk looks at me a bit pityingly, probably puzzling over which horrifying illness I’m seeking to have driven out. “I think one lives at the end of the road, Valentin. The house with the blue fence; you can’t miss it,” she says. Apparently all shamans are called Valentin.

I go there and knock on the garden door. A young woman comes to the door and I give her the name of the man I’m looking for. She goes into the house, and a short while later, a colorful, elflike figure with a carved walking stick greets me. His outfit consists of suit pants and polished patent leather shoes, a kind of Hawaiian shirt, and a stone necklace with a feather in it. He is about four foot nine and has a wrinkly face full of wisdom, glittering gold teeth, and spritely but slightly startled-looking, penetrating eyes.

Bull’s-eye , I think, and explain the reason for my visit. His answer is somehow superb and poetic, because seldom have the opposites of perception and truth, of projection and reality, been put so succinctly. At the same time it is horribly disappointing. “I’m not a shaman,” he says. “I’m just very, very old.”

I give up. Screw Olkhon. In the afternoon I catch the next ferry and leave the island.

Truth No. 17:

Just because every other tourist loves a place, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a good time there.

MAYBE ANGELA MERKELsometimes sits, deep in thought, in her office on the seventh floor of the chancellery, gazing out at the Brandenburg Gate and the parliament building, and asks herself why this Vladimir Putin character is so popular in his country. She could find a possible answer in the Sakha Republic: gifts. There, at the moment, you can get a hectare of land—about two and a half acres—completely free. “A good idea,” thinks Kirill, who has just sent off his online application. He lives in Yakutsk, a thousand miles northeast of Olkhon. “There is so much spare land here. My grandma used to tell us that during the Soviet times there were more cows and horses than people in this region. Sakha has a huge potential.”

Kirill is twenty-six and works as a wedding photographer and video producer. Though he would have preferred to have been a rock star with his heavy metal band Narchim—the name means “ice sword.” Kirill lives with Anya, Wanya, and Bella: his wife is twenty-two, their son one and a half, and the dog is an extrovert chow chow.

“You can also give the passport details of your parents and grandparents on the application to get even more hectares,” he explains. The only catch is that after five years they check whether the land really is being developed and used. If not, it returns to the state. The Ministry of Development of the Far East even has a few suggestions—you could grow strawberries, breed goats or rabbits, start a project linked to tourism, or build up a hunting business. As Sakha is renowned for its subterranean diamond deposits, there is one restriction: mining for natural resources in Russia is the privilege of the state.