Kalmyk Tulip Festival

On Saturday Ted and I had the great fortune to visit the annual Kalmyk Tulip Festival!

The Russian word for tulip is тюльпан [tyul-pawn]. 

The tulips grow wild out on the steppe, and the festival is timed with the blooming, so it's a little hard to predict exactly when the festival will occur each year - similar to the cherry blossom festival in Washington, D.C. We were lucky to get some fair weather and to see the tulips in bloom. 

Look closely, and you will see the small red and yellow tulips all over the grass.

The festival takes place near the western edge of the Republic of Kalmykia, about two hours by car. And 30-40 kilometers of that drive is on a rutted dirt road.

We saw the marshrutkas lined up in the City Center in the morning, ready to carry passengers to the steppe, however we were lucky enough to get a ride from Valeriy. Thank goodness, because I can't imagine an hour on that bumpy dirt road in the back of a crowded marshrutka!

Just getting to the festival was interesting for us. Though the car ride was long, there was a lot to see along the way. 

We passed a several groves of trees that were loaded with birds nest. I've never seen so many nests in one tree!

We came upon a herd of cows in the road as we approached the festival.

Even just looking at the beautiful sky was enough for me.

We stopped alongside the dirt road at a Soviet-era sign welcoming us to a state-owned farm (sovkhoz) and took some photos. At this one they bred cattle - a plemsovkhoz. It was also for youth, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (VLKSM). 

When we finally reached the festival grounds, they looked very much like an American festival out on the plains - lots of cars, buses, and even campers parked at the perimeter, a line of port-a-potties and a hand-washing station, and tents set up for food, advertising, and educational purposes. There was an area with some small rides and a blow-up slide for kids and an area where you could ride a camel or a horse for a photo op.

You can't help but start taking photos as soon as you step out of the car.

The flag of Kalmykia is on the left, the flag of Russia is on the right, and if you couldn't tell by the flags,
the wind was blowing fiercely! The sign says: Shashlik, 350 rubles.

Our first stop was the field of tulips near the parking area. There were lots of families and individuals spread out amongst the tulips, posing for photos. We joined right in!

It was a great experience just to sit in the grass and smell the sagey scent of the steppe, with the wind blowing in our hair (really just my hair)!

The tulips themselves are smaller than tulips we see planted in gardens back in the U.S. They are shorter, too. I think it must be due to the limited rainfall and the strong winds that seem to blow constantly here.

The colors we saw were mostly red and yellow, with an occasional purple or white tulip. A few of them looked like a hybrid tulip + iris! It was very difficult to photograph them up close because the wind was whipping them around so much that most photos came out blurry. I managed to get a few decent shots, though (you'll see my hand trying to hold the tulip steady in some of them!):

After our photo session in the tulips, we stopped to eat some shashlik (pork kabobs) at one of the many vendors. It looked like a bunch of families just brought their backyard grilling equipment and a load of bottled beverages to sell. There were probably 20 different vendors to choose from, so we ended up going with the first one we encountered, and it was absolutely delicious - tender and flavorful!

The men are wearing traditional Kalmyk hats.
The kabobs are called shashlik, and the meat is delicious.

Shashlik is marinated, grilled meat served with thinly sliced onions and usually a kind of sweet/savory sauce. The wind was blowing so hard that we had to hold the plastic plate with one hand and eat with other. Our pile of napkins blew away more than once...

Kalmyk chai (tea)

Once our bellies were full, we wandered around, running into people we knew (well, mostly people Valeriy knew) and viewing the music, dancing, and wrestling exhibitions. The head of Kalmykia was there and gave a short speech, and there were many people dressed in traditional garments, demonstrating traditional Kalmyk crafts and lifestyle.

(In the video you get a sense of the incessant wind!)

The camel puppet is connected to the dombra player's hand with string,
so it "dances" as he plays. 

Due to the strong winds, the weather went from sunny to cloudy to sunny to cloudy very quickly, and we could see rain in the distance. Right around the time my phone/camera battery died, we were hit with a sudden drenching downpour! Of course, we were as far from our car as we could possibly be within the festival grounds. 

Everyone immediately dropped whatever they were doing and started running toward the parking lot. Many took shelter inside one of the tents or yurts, or under tarps set up by the shashlik sellers. We didn't even bother running because we were soaked almost instantly, so we just had a nice long walk in the drenching rain, and it was actually really refreshing! 

One of the last camel rides before the rain completely soaked all the animals - and us!

The rain stopped just as we reached the parking lot, and we debated going back to the festival, but we were pretty cold and wet by that point, so we left. I hope we can get out to the steppe one more time before we leave Kalmykia - it was my favorite part of this trip so far!

Communication and Miscommunications

It has been pointed out to me that we are slacking on the blogging... I know, I know. It's just that we have settled into a routine here, so there is less that really stands out to blog about! Plus, I've been updating Facebook and Instagram pretty frequently with photos of our daily excursions, so that kinda takes the wind out of my blogging sails.

For those of you who are not followers on my social media accounts (I tend to keep those reserved for close friends and family - sorry!), I will try to post more of the day-to-day happenings here on the blog.

A little Italian-American food for my birthday

We have made a few new friends in the past couple weeks - graduate students from Kalmyk State and elsewhere ("Hi, friends!") - which has really helped to lift my mood because THEY SPEAK ENGLISH! I admit, I was feeling pretty homesick last week. I miss the ability to go out on my own and easily communicate with people, and I have had a couple situations here where people were trying to communicate with me and I just. don't. understand.

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Once was on the marshrutka, on my way to meet Ted at the university. It was getting pretty crowded, and the woman next to me was trying to tell/ask me something, and I didn't know if she wanted me to give up my seat, or get off the marshrutka, or if she was just asking which stop was mine...??? There were "walking fingers" gestures and everything, but I have no idea what she was saying. When I did try to get up and maneuver myself out of the way to offer my seat at a busy stop, the door operator was pushing me back into the van, thinking I was trying to get out before my stop. To be fair, she was trying to help me find my correct stop, but it was kind of a gong show, if you know what I mean, and I just felt so helpless.

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Another time was here in our own apartment. We have discovered that people don't knock here. Like, at all. Ever. Not anywhere. Students walk into Valeriy's office while he is having meetings. Patients walk into doctor's offices while they are seeing other patients. No joke. When we were at the dermatologist's office getting our medical check-up, Ted literally had to block the door while I disrobed to be sure that no one walked in on my half-naked body! And, at home, people have walked into our apartment several times when we forgot to lock it from the inside: the house-mother, the security guard, and this week, the water delivery guy.

Ted was at the university giving a lecture and I was in the apartment watching Netflix. Luckily I was dressed, because all of a sudden I hear our front door swing open and someone announce themselves as they came in. By the time I got out of the bedroom and around the corner, the water delivery guy was in our kitchen, unscrewing the lids of our water jugs! I was confused. Had Ted ordered more water without telling me? We hadn't yet finished all of our previously delivered water, so why would he? Maybe he ran into the guy on the way out and told him to just go ahead and fill our jugs as long as he was here?

Ted was lecturing, so I couldn't reach him via text or phone call. All I could say to the delivery guy was "Nyet, nyet." ("No, no.") I couldn't explain that we hadn't ordered water. I couldn't ask him if my husband had spoken to him. I couldn't tell him to leave. And my feeble "nyets" were not deterring him. He was adamant about filling our water jugs, and he was clearly in a hurry. He hastily poured water into our three empty jugs (the 4th was still full) and then was looking around for more jugs to fill. I thought he was looking for our usual 4th jug, which was already full, so I brought him our "bathroom water" jug that I usually fill with boiled/filtered water for teeth-brushing and mouth-rinsing. He filled that one up and then was showing me 8 fingers as he spoke in Russian.

I thought he wanted payment, so I took him to our entryway bench where we keep our rubles change and started collecting 80 rubles. He indicated NO, I had not understood, and he again showed me 8 fingers while saying something in Russian. I got out my phone translation app that you can speak into (Google Translate is the BOMB) and told my phone in English "I don't understand." It was translated to Russian, which I played for him (which, I'm sure he didn't need to hear because DUH! It was obvious that I didn't understand). Then I held the phone in front of his face so he could speak Russian to it. He said his sentence, and the phone translated it to something like "water still remained." In my confusion and state of anxiety over this whole interaction, I could not for the life of me figure out what he was trying to tell me.

By this point he was frustrated - I was holding him up from his other deliveries - so he dashed away and quickly inspected our kitchen, porch, and bathroom. Not finding whatever he was looking for, he grabbed his water delivery jugs, took 45 rubles from our pile on the bench, and hurried out the door.

Later, as I was telling Ted about this interaction, we decided that he had probably come to the wrong apartment. He was probably supposed to deliver water to someone else who had 8 jugs, so he had been looking for the other 4 jugs, which we don't have. I hope in the end that he found the person who actually had ordered the water, because I hate to think of them without their drinking water.

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Despite what it sounds like, I have picked up a little Russian - the words and phrases I hear frequently. It's usually when there's no context and no cognates that I can't figure out what's going on. I've learned how to say the basics - hello, goodbye, please, and thank-you. I've learned the words for the foods we most commonly eat - milk, bread, potatoes, chicken... Ted taught me how to order things at the magazin (like a mini convenience store) because everything is behind the counter, so you have to ask for it. 

Panorama of the magazin - yep, that's the whole store!

I can ask people, "How are you?" and I can understand their answer - good, so-so, okay. I can listen for my stop on the marshrutka, and I can say, "Excuse me," when I'm trying to hand the door operator my fare. And I know a few random words here and there that help me understand conversations - archives, graduate student, children, she, house, I will, I have...

Even as I slowly pick up oral Russian, though, reading the Cyrillic text is a whole other story! For example, the word for "cherry" sounds like /veeshnya/. If I were to approximate the spelling in the English alphabet, I would spell it: Vishnia.

But no. Here's the word on a juice box:

Вншня (cherry) sounds like: veeshnya
Яблоко (apple) sounds like: yablukuh

I'll write more on this later in the context of shopping. I am slowly figuring out the sounds that each letter makes, as I learn more Russian vocabulary and compare it to written text, but it's slow going, especially since many of the letters look similar to English letters but make completely different sounds. Like W for the /sh/ sound and H for the /n/ sound.

So that's all for today! I keep bugging Ted to write a post about his research and work here, so if you're friends with him on social media, get on his case about that! ;)

The Golden Abode

We're a bit overdue for a blog post, but I wanted to make sure we got all the photos we wanted for this post before writing. Though photos inside the temple are not allowed, we've walked around and photographed the outside multiple times, and we're hoping to negotiate an indoor photo session before the end of our trip. Ted plans to write a book about his research here, and it sure would be nice to have photos of the amazing interior of this building, including the giant gold Buddha statue. 

Elista is built in a sloping valley, so from most places in the city you can either see the temple on the horizon or nestled into the heart of the city from afar. It was constructed in 2005 as part of the post-Soviet Buddhist revival here in Kalmykia.

The Dalai Lama blessed the construction site in 2004 and gave the temple its official name - The Golden Abode. The Kalmyk word for temple is khurul [hoo-rool], which is the name this temple goes by around town. There is a smaller, earlier temple built on the outskirts of the city, which we will blog about at a later time, but this larger temple is much more accessible as we can get here on foot or by marshrutka.

"Site blessed by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama"

The temple grounds are pretty bare right now, as Spring has yet to bring the rose bushes and tulip bulbs out of dormancy. However, there are plenty of colorful prayer flags strung up to give a pop of color, in addition to the bright red prayer wheels and colorfully painted pagodas. 

As you approach the temple, you will see a wrought-iron fence built around the perimeter, topped with 108 miniature stupas [STOO-pa], containers for holy relics. 108 is a significant number in the Buddhist faith, and we have been told several stories about locals and their relatives who had some good fortune after visiting the temple 108 times, or praying 108 times, etc. 

The decorated stupas have relics inside of them.
The undecorated stupas are empty, and I assume they will be filled as more holy relics appear.

It's difficult to see, but there is a little Buddha statue inside the cavity framed in red. 

On each side of the perimeter fence there is a large, ornate gate, though only the front and back gates are kept open. As you can see in the photos, the fence and gates are always heavily strung with prayer flags flapping in the seemingly constant wind here. 

ceiling of gated entrance

The grounds of the khurul are meant to resemble a mandala, and the common practice is to walk clockwise around the perimeter, paying respects to the 17 Pandit statues (teachers of Buddhism) and turning the prayer wheels.

One of the seventeen Pandits

Looking out toward the city with the temple at my back

Every time we visit the temple, we see people bowing to the Pandits and spinning the prayer wheels. The temple is not just for show; it gets a lot of use and is treated as an everyday part of life by many. There is a little bell attached to the larger prayer wheels, which you can hear in the videos if you turn your volume up. 

Prayer wheel detail

The temple sits atop a 7 meter artificial hill. On the tier level with the temple, there are smaller prayer wheels. The temple sides face the four cardinal directions, with the main entrance facing the south. 

West-facing temple face with prayer wheels

Also on the temple grounds, and included in the Kalmyk version of Buddhism, is the White Elder statue. The White Elder is the traditional protector of the steppe and the Kalmyk people, from the time they were nomads. He is usually depicted with a steppe animal by his side - here it is the saiga, or steppe antelope, which looks like a very strange cross between an antelope and an elephant.

People leave offerings of bortsigi
(Kalmyk fried bread), fruit, and candy.

I am looking forward to spring/summer when the fountains are all flowing and the flowers have all bloomed. All of the photos for this post were taken on a few sunny days, but there have been plenty of cold, misty, windy visits to the temple as well as we travel to the temple about twice a week.

Until next time! Do svidanya!