- The numerical order of the pictures is important to get the meaning of the submission -
Traveling in Siberia and Russian Extreme-Orient is a long and difficult journey. Unusual too. This enormous land is only partially documented. Even amongst Russians, the region remains mysterious. Life conditions are radicals. On the M53 Trans-Siberian highway, there is an impression of leaving the known world. Like penetrating the Zone in “Stalker” (1979) directed by Andrey Tartovsky. Considered dangerous, the Zone is feared, but a secret room exists! Only a informed guide can help you to reach this room, where dreams are real.
On the road, seasonal workers comes from all over Russia, to benefit the higher wages. Far from their family, melancholia is palpable. But adrenalin is close too. Even addictive. The polar attraction and the extreme conditions are mighty on adventurous men. The rides are long, and stopped only to smoke cigarettes. Viktor Tsoi, a gigantic soviet rock star, sang one of the most popular russian song: "Pachka Cigaret" (cigarettes pack). When you are lost in hostile environments and far from home, he described with poetry the reassuring feeling of home while opening your pack of cigarettes.
The “Sovoks”, nickname of the dying mining soviet cities, are inhospitable. Buildings do not resist to the frost, which can reach -60°C in the northest villages. The Taiga, enormous as a continent, is treathening. Even to your worst enemy, you would not wish to live here. A part from survival, what could it be to live in a Gulag?
During the summer, mud and water acts as a fence. But in winter times, new roads “zimniki” (from the word, zima, which means winter) appears on lakes and rivers. And after going through depressive places, hidden places are now reachable. The temperatures remains extreme, but the light is pure and the nature untouched.
Peaceful and infinite, the landscapes shows medidative powers. Gradually, your mind become sensitive to the creative spirituality of the nature. In earlier centuries, someone should have thought the same, an ancestral Orthodox cathedral is build here.
It is only after a long road among your fears and the frost, that you finally reach the deepest understanding of the Russian spirituality. Lands. Spirits. Nature. Siberia is not only a mystic crossroad between Budhism and Slavic Orthodoxy. The lake Baïkal, the deepest lake on the globe, is considered as the Jerusalem of Shamanism. For locals, beliefs are not hermetics but permeable between each other.
Definetely, while Andrey Tartovsky wrote Stalker, he could have been inspired by Siberia and the Russian Extreme-Orient. Shhh! It is a secret: the Siberian secret room is magic.
