Paris-Beijing E-Class Experience – Day 4 of Leg II
Paris-Beijing E-Class Experience Day 4 – Kazan to Perm
The night before, Johannes Reifenrath, head of Global Communications in DaimlerChrysler, and also out ‘road boss’ gave us a quick briefing about the day ahead of us. It appeared that we had a 700 kilometre stage in front of us, and this would be a tough stage; heavy snow was forecast, and the previous day, some of the cars had suffered punctures from going into very large potholes. “Please try to avoid the potholes, because some of them are very deep, and not only will they damage the tyres, they can break the suspension as well”, said Johannes. “Tomorrow morning, we will be giving a demonstration on how to change a flat tyre. And if the weather gets really bad, we may have to put snow chains on the car. We will also be showing you how to fit the chains on,” he added.
Right on cue the next morning, Johannes personally talked and walked us through the tyre changing process and also showed us how to fit the tyre chains onto the tyres just before we got into our cars and set off the road to Perm. As usual, the outside temperature was between zero to minus three degrees Celsius, but having learned our lessons from the previous two days, all of us were well bundled up, with thermals underneath, sweaters and jackets on top. In Moscow, the organizers had placed a ‘shapka-ushanka’ (a furry Russian hat that has flaps to cover the ears, in our hotel rooms, and this really is very comfortable. Karl, our nursemaid, now turned ‘partner’ swears by it, and had it on all the time. Me, I held on to the ski cap, not wanting to dirty my ‘shapka-ushanka’ as I wanted to keep it as a souvenir of my ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ trip across Russia.
When we set out this morning, the weather seemed fine; the skies were clear, and I thought that it was going to be a long and boring drive; although the roads were quite busy, it was not really a problem getting through. The roads today were actually a little better than what we had gone through for the previous three days, attesting to the fact that the territory of Kazan was actually a very rich state, floating on revenue from its oil wells. The houses in the villages were much better and bigger than before, you could see the hat there the people were more affluent around here.
At around ten in the morning, what I thought to be a light drizzle turned out to be a snowfall; little flakes at first, and as we went on, the flakes got bigger and bigger The roads got wet and with the heavy traffic, it was tough going. Another thing we noticed about the particular road we were on, the M7, was that it was also the main thoroughfare between West and East Russia, and the weight of the heavy trucks plying the route have, in many places, worn two deep grooves into the road where the wheels travel. If you get caught in one of these grooves, the wisest thing to do is to probably stay in it until you find a place where the ground is more solid to get out, because if you try to get out where it is deep, this can throw your car off line, and in the treacherously wet conditions, you can fly off the road. Visibility was poor, and there were many accidents on the road. Thankfully, none in our group of cars were affected.
The police were on the ball as usual, and even though it was snowing, they were out in force. Fortunately, we had radio communication, and the front cars relayed information back to us on where the speed traps were; not that we were speeding. Pradeep, Karl and I kept under the speed limits all of the time. Even then, we were stopped along the way by a police car. We were quite surprised, as Pradeep was driving, and he is one person who will stick religiously to the speed limit. Anyway, what transpired next was quite comical; none of us could speak Russian, and the cop couldn’t understand any English. Gesticulating wildly, (I think) he accused us of committing some offence, but Pradeep calmly said, “I am sorry, I cannot understand you.” After more hand actions, it dawned upon us that he wanted to see Pradeep’s license, which we duly produced. The poor cop took a long look at it, leafing through the pages, and I could see the bewilderment in his face, as he clearly couldn’t understand a word of what was written on it. After a while, he muttered something, gave it back, and asked us to go away. Later on, we figured out why he had stopped us; all our number plates had been covered up by muck from the road, which had frozen over, totally obscuring all identification numbers. The cops are in radio contact with one another, and with so many cars, all decorated with the Paris-Beijing stickers and flags of the various driver’s countries, one car must look pretty much the same as another, and the cop had clearly confused our car with another. The stories were pretty much the same down the line; Giorgio, from USA was stopped, but they let him go too, when they saw a whole bunch of identical cars coming through. Like I said before, this is a once-in-a-lifetime happening, and the cops have never seen so many Mercedes cars in one place at one time before. Now we all had two excuses to use if we were stopped again; just say “Sorry, I cannot understand you,” or claim it was somebody else who was speeding.
In the early afternoon, as we approached the border to a new state, Utmurtskaja, we got word on the radio that there was a ‘Welcoming Reception’ waiting for us, and that we could stop if we wanted to. We thought that it was a naughty prank by one of our participants, that there was in fact a police roadblock waiting for us to give us a whole bunch of speeding tickets. However, it was a genuine gesture by the mayor of Utmurtskaja to hold a small reception for us at the border to his city. It was a gesture that touched our hearts; in the middle of nowhere, in the minus 2 degrees cold, he had a group of dancers dressed in traditional costume to wait for us to turn up, and treated us to tea and pastries and cakes. While we feted, the locals put up a show of local dances and music. We had a great time, thanks a lot, Mr. Mayor. He even had the local police to be part of the welcome, as they were there to guide us into and out of the parking lot. For the next 50 kilometres, we also noted that there were no speed traps; thanks again, Mr. Mayor, for your kind-heartedness.
Days are short in Russia, and it got dark early, not to mention that the weather changed for the worse later on in the day. With 300 kilometres to go, it snowed again, and this time, we had to go over some mountainous roads. The roads got very slippery, and we could see many local cars and trucks lying in the ditches by the side of the road. This is one time we are glad that the E-Class Mercedes-Benz comes with ESP as a standard feature. I drove the last two hundred kilometers, and believe me, you need to be fully alert at all times when driving in snow. Even though there is a traction control system, the tail will wag if you accelerate too hard, and you have to be careful not to go into turns too fast for fear of under steering off the road. In many places, the ditches are deep, and once you slip off, you will never make it back onto the road unaided, even if you suffer no damage. Finally, we arrived at Perm at around 5.00 pm, but it was already dark by then.
The last part of the journey through the mountains was quite scary, and we were very concerned that some of our friends would not make it. We had a few ugly moments, including one when a truck we were trying to overtake suddenly veered out, cutting us off without warning, possibly due to the poor visibility and the mountain of spray that the truck itself was creating in its wake, and a few times when the tail slid out in the slippery, powdery snow. Fortunately, all sixty vehicles, including the service and crew vehicles made it safely. We were also worried that we would have to use the tyre chains; not that the chains were no good, but it would have been a really messy job trying to put chains onto wheels that are caked in mud and dirty ice, notwithstanding the fact that the temperature out there is in the negative zone.
The warmth of the hotel was something I think all of us appreciated that night. Using the shower, I have since learned that ‘C’ means ‘Hot’ in Russian, and a sign that looks like a stylized ‘L’ means cold. One of our friends told us the funny story of how he turned on what he thought was the hot water (obviously he turned on the one other than the one marked with the ‘C’), and waited, and waited, and waited.
