Leaving Irkutsk, I go through the tortuous controls of domestic travel in Russia. First a po-faced woman at the door to the check in area has to examine my ticket and passport and compares the passport mugshot with my face and the coupon is stamped as OK to proceed further. This is called Registration and not to be confused with Check in. Registration only ever starts two hours before departure and then check in closes at least 40 minutes before departure and they even make an announcement informing everyone.  Those of us who managed to hit the window of opportunity can look smugly at each other.

Once you have been through Registration, there is no going back to the outside world. At the check-in counter (this should be really be in quotes, as it’s not like anywhere else), you shows your stamped ticket to the gorgon behind the desk, a fat unsmiling woman wearing a flowered housecoat/pinafore, hair all unwashed and looking like it would take something heavily industrial to remove the grease. She appears more ready for a morning watching television or peeling potatoes than checking in airline pax. She indicates, with a very operatic flourish, that I have permission to place my bag on the scales. Only trouble is there is a 9 inch high bar between my side of the scale and hers, so you lump the bag up and over and then she wants my hand baggage on top and declares that I am 5kg overweight and sends me off to the cashier several places down.  I pay the whole USD7, which ain’t much, but it is all wrong and IATA would not condone adding my hand baggage to my checked baggage but what the hell.  I return to my new ex best friend and she looks carefully at my hand written receipt and in exchange, gives me a boarding card. No such luck as a seat number or a cheery greeting or farewell. Just a grunt.  I stand with everyone else (as about 10 seats available for about 50 people) and then another move is initiated and we go through yet another control, where another woman looks at our ticket, our boarding card and us and ticks us off her list. I’m grinding my teeth of course and promising never to complain about any airline check-in and boarding staff in the west. Finally, I am allowed to proceed and don’t put anything away as who knows who will need to look at something next. I meantersay, you are exhausted by all this and you have only gone about 50 feet.

Many shops here, several selling odiferous dried fish, which is just what you would NOT want to sit next to or even have overhead (and none of these old rattle trap planes has closed overhead bins, we are still in the days of shelving) and thus it is quite normal to have things bounce out on take off or landing. I do may own private security check each time to make sure I am not about to be decapitated. Many salacious and explicit sex newspapers in the ‘bookstore’. Absolutely amazing what is on sale and I see one middle aged, quite pleasant looking woman, happily reading one, the side facing me showing a couple quite intimately linked, all in living color to boot. Oh dear oh dear.  Later, on the plane, looking between the seats to the row ahead, someone is looking at even more graphic evidence and I feel like some prurient Victorian vicar.

Our plane eventually turns up an hour after we should have departed. It has come from Moscow, through the night with the 5 hours time difference, so a sleepy gang is disgorged and separated into those getting off and those in transit. I realize that nothing is posted on the gates as to which plane is going where and once in a while the p a system shrieks into action and various people get up and get on buses and disappear around the corner. Fortunately, I had noticed a man coming in off my plane who was in transit and was wearing a bright red shirt just like mine, so I keep him in sight. He slumps in what to him is 0300 and know that when he gets up, so do I. And about another hour later, by which time the metal seats are becoming very hard and I have watched a group of Germans try to board practically every plane in a panic of being left behind (and I don’t blame them, I would not want to be abandoned here, but at least they would have company). A loud p.a. and the red shirt jumps up and so do I.  We are boarded by a woman actually in a uniform but wearing dizzily high heeled boots, with a spike coming out of the heel at the back – how she manages to stay on them all day is a real Russian mystery.

I find a seat with a sleeping guy by the window and no one in the middle and plonk my backpack there and am ready to out-glare anyone who thinks they may want that seat. The aircraft is pushed back by something that looks more like a farm tractor. They rev the engines up somewhat mightily and then let the brakes off and we are shot out of a gun, but even so, it always takes too long to get into the air. VERY grumpy looking crew, as they too have come through the night and are clearly wishing the next three hours were over quickly. One exceedingly miserable looking and disheveled flight attendant, sits at the back of the cabin and as usual is not strapped in. The standard cold cuts and cheese on a tray no less and then a foil which turns out to be a large piece of hot sausage, goodness knows what went into it and tastes horrid, so I abandon and play some Mozart, which is a great comfort in such inhospitable surroundings. Here we did have some boarding music which lurched from Johann Strauss waltzes to some quasi Italian Take me Back to Sorrento (fat chance). Everyone in a great slump as I seem to be surrounded by pax ex Moscow, so at least it is quiet.

The boys up front always get their own big shiny kettle of tea taken up to them after take off. This huge kettle, is a feature of all Russian flights and holds a huge amount of liquid and crews over here would veto it immediately on safety grounds, as the handle is wobbly and of course it’s far too heavy, but here it will fill an awful lot of small cups without the trudge back to the galley. Carpel tunnel syndrome does not translate into Russian!

And when we do land, the biggest difference is that in our world the moment the plane is on the gate, everyone jumps up and decides they must be first off, whereas around here, we all sit very quietly and wait to be TOLD to get off… smazing. Of course, in places like Iran, everybody starts to stand up while the aircraft is still decelerating, so I just hope none of them go traveling dans la Russie or they are in for a shock.

Khabarovsk turns out to be okay. Well, it was better than Irkutsk.