Chapter 9: From Russia with no Love

It started at my office at Shaheen Complex, where the afternoon found me buried deep in endless code. Fixated, as if I were to solve a NP problem. Unaware, as I could not hear anything other than the work I was doing. After a third knock on the door, a number beyond which ignorance would be considered unethical, I raised my head up and sighed at my office door. “Come in”.

A$, who also happens to be my cousin, entered with his typical flair and, without any greeting, he came to the point: “Bhai, I need a two week long leave”.  

“Why?” I asked, curious. He told me that he and his friends were planning to go on a trip to Russia. In a mock strict tone, I told him I would only grant it on the condition that he take me along with them. My humorous tone did not seem apparent to him, because the next day, he brought all four of his friends to my office, ready to take me along. I was not one to step away, of course, and was on board at once.  

The plan was spontaneous and now in action: we met each other and I immediately perceived that we had nothing in common except a mission to go to Russia.

The Team:

1. AP  – The WizKid/Planner 
2. Khan – The Driver
3. Moofi – The Observer
4. Chunni – The Entertainer 
5. A$ – The Commander 
6. Armoghan – The Accountant

And so the planning session began. AP and Khan made all the plans; they got us visas, booked hotels and flights, and even made detailed excel sheets. Finally, all the calculations led to a PKR amount for each person for the trip. The amount was submitted to me and we were ready to go. 

The flight we took was Turkish Airlines. The Turkish airport was noisy, but as soon as we reached St Petersburg airport, we felt an ominous silence. I came up with the brilliant idea: all of us should go to different queues to dilute the impact of the sudden appearance of six Pakistanis at the same time at the same immigration counter. When I reached the immigration officer, she flipped back and forth through my passport for a few seconds, and then told me to go and stand in a corner. Soon the airport was devoid of passengers, and the only ones remaining were the six of us – hearts palpitating and standing in that dreaded corner. 

A senior immigration officer arrived at the scene who, fortunately, knew a little bit of English. She checked all our documents thoroughly, looked up, and grimaced. 

“The hotel you have mentioned here is not present in St. Petersburg, even through our hotel searching software.” Consequently, she told us that they had decided to send us back to Pakistan. “Stay here for a couple of hours,” she continued, “Another plane is coming to take you back.”

Not even an hour into the trip, and we had already gotten ourselves deported! We pleaded with her to reconsider, to check our printed papers, as they had the name, address and phone number of the hotel which they claimed was non-existent. “Call them”, we begged her.

She contacted another officer, they searched once again in their app but did not find it. The other officer called the number and, at long last, got connected. After a brief conversation with the person on the other side, the female officer came to us smiling. 

“You are going to Chao Mama for some fun?”, she asked. “It isn’t a hotel, it’s a hostel which can only be found in our hostel searching app, not the hotel one which we were using.” She proceeded to ask us what we had brought for her from Pakistan. Any gifts, or some chocolates? We told her we didn’t have anything of the sort. Disappointed, she told us to stay put in the corner and left. 

An hour passed, and just when we had lost all hope of advancing any further from that corner into the real Russia, the male officer approached us and asked if we had cigarettes. We gave him a pack. That was all that was needed, apparently, and he gave us our passports with approval to enter. In hindsight, being a first time visitor with a group and booking of a hostel named “Chao Mama” was an obvious call for suspicion, and so, must have evoked certain unconscious yet perhaps well deserved biases.

We gratefully exited the airport, and now needed a way to reach our hostel. A tattooed skinhead taxi driver recognised our searching faces and drew near us. We told him of our destination, and we didn’t need to know Russian currency to realise that what he was charging us was too much. In the absence of a better alternative, though, we reluctantly agreed to it, and he went off to get the taxi.

As we moved on a few yards, a person had the hood of his car up, and was examining it. When he saw us, he immediately asked us if we were Pakistani. He told us he was a student, also from Pakistan, studying here. We greeted each other and told him about the amount the other taxi driver was asking. He confirmed that we were being ripped off, and reassured us that he would help us by arranging an affordable taxi, since his car had ignition issues. 

The skinhead, who had arrived with his car, had already been looking at us with displeasure. Now he advanced toward us in a fit of pique and started threatening the Pakistani student for ruining his deal. To our surprise, the student simply brushed away his threats. Then the tattooed skinhead went up to a police officer. After a few words with the police officer, the two of them were now approaching us. The Pakistani student panicked. Considering that he hadn’t found us a taxi yet, and that a scary skinhead together with a police officer was coming after us, he advised us to get into his car and leave the scene before things got a chance to escalate. We immediately flung our bags inside and jumped into his car, which unexpectedly, owing to a stroke of sheer luck, started on the first attempt. All of us fled from the scene as though we were not tourists, but terrorists. Whistles from the police officer faded into the background, and throughout the ride we kept looking back in paranoia to make sure we weren’t being followed. 

We miraculously reached the hostel in one piece. It looked like a page from an artist’s book, magnificent beyond the expectations that the peculiar name has instilled in us. After settling down, I went to the shop right next to the hostel to get some groceries for breakfast. I even bought a large bottle of water, which, unfortunately, turned out to be Sparkling water. That was the first time we came to know about such a thing. So we used it for gargles.

Now that we were ready to explore, we realised we hadn’t really planned anything beyond this point in time. Everyone, it seemed, had different intentions. A$ wanted to go for a cool haircut as he could not get time back home. Chuni wanted to sleep, so that he could go to a nightclub. I wanted to explore the city. 

I left for my venture into the city. St Petersburg is beyond magnificent, with extensive canals along the streets. It was like Venice, but bigger and cleaner. Saviour on the Spilled Blood was quite photogenic and left me in awe. I also visited the Huge Hermitage Museum, which is as grand as several countries’ museums combined together.

Savior on the Spilled Blood

Much nahi to Kuch nahi – Da Vinci

Two days passed like a fairytale – finally, we took the night coach from St Petersburg to Moscow. A taxi took us to our apartment on Arbat street. I was very glad that we had not run into any other significantly deterring problems since our arrival. My assertion was, unfortunately, soon to be proven wrong.

We checked in our 3 room apartment and collapsed on the comfortable sofas. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. It took me a while to realise that, to my horror, I had left my office laptop with highly confidential data, and a lot of money in the taxi. What should I do now? Especially in foreign land, with a driver whose face we had already forgotten? Thankfully, my brain started functioning, and I remembered that the apartment owner would have the driver’s number, considering that driver called him for directions. Luckily, it didn’t take long to find the owner, who called the taxi driver back and asked him about the laptop bag. The driver said that he had no free time today and that he would bring the laptop the following day. The night was spent in incessant prayers for my laptop to return as a whole.

View from apartment window 

Morning dawned, and with it came the driver who appeared like a saviour; he brought not only my belongings, but also some added memorabilia which other tourists had left in the taxi. These prominently included a selfie-stick which we later used frequently on the tour to great effect. Fittingly, this was a time when selfies and selfie-sticks had recently become a global phenomenon. I thanked him and paid him some cash for his troubles. 

Now, free of troubles, we walked to see Red Square, the Kremlin and St. Basil’s cathedral. It was a pleasant evening in August. Moofi was leading us with the selfie stick with GoPro, and A$ and AP were signalling to everyone to clear our paths, as though some VIP was walking the streets. Chuni was wearing a long bath robe style dress, fitting the VIP image. The masoom russians, who didn’t know any better, kept giving us space to reach the Red Square.

St. Basil’s cathedral

A strange observation of mine that I would like to point out is, I barely saw any individual glued to their phones. They were all either pleasantly conversing with one another, playing physical games or enjoying the weather and views. Secondly, the number of people below the ground was more than above – they even have the world’s deepest subway station, about 80 metres underground. Escalators were as steep as 70-80 degrees; using them was like descending into a bottomless abyss. Multistoried subways were stacked on top of another and it looked like an underground palace. Most subway outlets are inside buildings or malls to account for harsh winters.

We soon came across brightly clad newlyweds having a photoshoot. Moofi drew near to them and asked if he could take a few pictures with them for memories. All of us took his pictures from our phones. Once back to the apartment, we edited the groom out of the photographs and sent them to Moofi’s wife. We gave her the unfortunate news that he got married in Russia and would live here happily ever after. For the next few days, Moofi had to spend a lot of money on phone call packages, and gift shopping to undo the consequences of our deviousness. 

We also got to visit VNDKh, Pronounced ‘vendeekah’ — a place where you can spend many days visiting places like the Cosmonaut Museum and the Druzhba Narodov fountain. You can even chance upon Dolphin shows, and captivating places like Museum of Illusions, 3D Imaginarium, Sky Town and many more. 

Meanwhile, AP was busy executing the next stage of the plan: renting a car for the next seven days. He brought bad news, though. He told us that despite calling any and all car rental companies, the unanimous requirement was that we needed to have a credit card to hold the money. The fact that all of us had only debit cards made us realise the gravity of the situation. We offered them cash, but they told us that the KGB would hang them if they did not follow the process. 

Finally, we found a daredevil country head of Avis who was willing to break the rules. One catch, though, was that we had to deposit thrice the total amount. One amount would be returned to us after a couple of days of us returning the car, and the other, after a month. Under normal circumstances we would never have accepted, but we had already overstayed in Moscow, and the boys were going crazy. Apt examples would be them going to forbidden subways at night, picking fights with local skinheads, escaping an imminent gun crossfire between two russian gangs, and ofcourse, spending a lot of money at night bars. So, for the lack of a better option, we accepted his terms. 

The Hyundai vehicle we got was somewhat similar to a Suzuki Bolan with 6 seats. We then started our 2000 km journey. We reached our first destination, an ancient town, Suzdal. It was a beautiful town, one with several colourful churches. Next we moved and reached Nizhny Novgorod, sat at the Kremlin, ate watermelons and took the longest span cable car in Europe.

Later in the evening, we realised that we had not booked any place to stay, so we entered a karaoke bar for the night. We were surrounded by people who were making drunken attempts at singing. This was when my friends remembered the day: August 14th, Nationalism in our veins spiked. A$ and Khan took the mic and started singing our national anthem. Their enthusiasm touched the hearts of everyone in the bar. They even offered free drinks in order for us to keep singing. This was motivation enough, as then the occupants of the area heard, sang, and maybe even learnt a few words of Pakistani milli songs, which we entertained them with till the morning. 

Back in our car, we drove until we could see the outskirts of Kazan, a vibrant muslim majority city. Here, AP immediately booked a hostel. Once we reached the hostel and unloaded our luggage, the Hostel owner, an old lady, asked us for more than the amount she had asked for on the app. As we argued against the obviously unfair notion, she became furious. She proceeded to call a few tall, intimidating Russians who took our bags and threw them out of the hostel. Irked as we were, we did not have anywhere else to stay, so we agreed to pay her whatever she asked and retrieved our poor bags. Our misfortunes faded into the background of our minds when we visited the Kremlin, the Kazan Wedding Palace, the recently opened 1000 year old Kul Sharif Mosque and Temple of All Religions, which kept us captivated. 

1000 year old Kul Sharif Mosque

Temple of All Religions

Then we started moving to Chelyabinsk to see the meteor. I wanted to touch it and get the telekinesis superpower that I so longed for. As we were minding our own way and driving calmly, a Dodge Charger zoomed past us. In the car was a man and a beautiful girl. For some reason, the man laughed and signalled at Khan, who was driving. Khan went crazy and angrily told us that the couple had undermined us. So he stepped on the accelerator, and a race was on. Our van was vibrating and felt like it would go out of control, but a Khan cannot admit defeat. The highway was similar to one in Pakistan’s old bypass roads with no dividers and a decent amount of traffic. Regardless, Khan kept on pushing till we caught up to them after a hundred or so kilometres. We finally availed our chance to send victory signs toward that car.

Finally, driving back to normal, we continued our passage to Chelyabinsk. This too, seemed to be in vain, because despite the aid of google maps, and even asking several people, we could not find the Meteor site. We were to find out later that the meteor site was in the middle of a lake, and the meteor itself was in some museum.

Disheartened at the time, we gave up and drove to reach our last destination, Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg was a picturesque city. The most special thing about it was that a part of it lay in Asia, and the other, in Europe. A popular trend here was to put one foot in Asia and one in Europe, which, obviously, all of us did. 

Asia – Europe

Upon waking the following morning, we found the city empty. We asked around, and finally managed to find out that today was the city’s birthday. All the people were gathered in the centre of the city. We went there, and discovered  a bustling festival, complete with flamboyant concerts, delectable food, and lively chatter.

Next day, we dropped the car back and got the first portion of our money. We went to the airport, flew to Moscow and took the Turkish airline back to our country, where, after a month, we received a second portion. After two months, however, AP got an email for not one, but three overspeeding tickets, a consequence of our race with the Russian couple. “Unfortunately”, it went into APs’ spam email, never to be heard of again. 

Alhamdulliah, all is well that ends well.