A Day of Contrasts
Randy, one of our tour leaders, told me an interesting story this morning. He said when he checked out of the hotel the reception said he owed for parking the vans in their hotel lot. He said he had paid the attendant when he checked in the day before, to which the hotel said there is only a night guard, who does not collect for the hotel. Randy still had to pay.
We did another group ride to get through rush hour of this city of 600,000. It was a little scary at times, being on the road with the trucks and cars that didn’t want to give way to each other, let alone forty bikers. We made it through the city and then some 30 km down a busy highway with no shoulder. Needless to say, the only sightseeing was the edge of the road and the wheel in front of you. What a relief to turn out on country roads…even if they were a little rough.
The country side was beautiful with farmers working their fields by hand with tools that could have been a hundred years old. Rarely did I see a tractor, and then it was an antique clunker. The fields have gotten progressively shrunk in size to around 5 acres. Most of he road traffic was either large road trucks, or wagons pulled by a horse or cow.
Tonight we stayed in an old Soviet high rise hotel. It was listed as two star, but had no hot water until night, a primitive bathroom, and no A/C on this hot day. We opened up the windows, only to find that the room filled up with mosquitoes in the evening…but we signed up for the experience. This is an old steel town with closed factories. Our hotel is on a new plaza with an impressive fountain...an attempt to draw tourist.
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