Three days on the train. It turns out there was a shower in one of the cars — 50 rubles for 20 minutes, but by the time we found that out, we decided to wait until we got to the hotel in Krasnoyarsk… which it turns out won’t have hot water for another 5 days. So we didn’t take the hotel rooms and went instead to a sauna to get cleaned up. We visited the port where my grandmother spent a night, where she was forced out and had to take my father to the doctor to get a note saying he wasn’t contagious so she’d be allowed to continue her journey. The dock is still functioning, but the port building itself is now rented out for office space.
My grandmother and father took an icebreaker up the river Yenisei up to Pristan (dock) Strelka and then transfered to another icebreaker to go across the Angara. Unfortuntately for us, neither river has passenger boats anymore, so we had to take the roads, crossing three different rivers by ferry. Crossing the Yenisei first, we met some friendly Siberian locals who made some phone calls to get us directions to our destination. On another ferry, a local gave me an interview and also told us that there are now 5-story buildings in Rozdolinsk — quite a change from the small village my grandmother and father recall. Making a few stops for fuel and for filming, it took us nearly twelve hours to get to Motygino; not least in part due to the fact that the road the second half of the way was unpaved.
Surprisingly, even after midnight in this small town, there were still people out and about — mostly youth going to or from the local “discoteka.” Our hotel only has 8 rooms and a communal bathroom / shower. We’re close.