Leaving at last, to visit one of the world's most endangered languages

Tim and I have been planning a trip to visit a Chulym village for a little while now. The last time Tim went there was over a year ago.

The Chulym are one of Siberia's smallest people groups. Their language is also extremely endangered. I have had the chance to interact with a few endangered languages to date, The Chulym language is certainly the most endangered I have come into contact with. Before getting into the fine details, I'll get back to the story.

Tim and I had been planing a trip. Our connection to this village was made difficult by the fact that the phone lines there are very bad. Secondly, there is no mobile phone connection there. This made it close to impossible for Tim to connect on the phone with our contact Aleksandr. Eventually, Andrei made contact through a better home phone and was able to arrange a time to go to the Chulym village.

Our trip got delayed a couple of times. Aleksandr wanted us to come up when their yearly cultural festival was on. It was delayed once because of bad weather. It was nearly delayed a second time because of a funeral, and then at the last minute it was back on again. On Friday, I got a call at 10 am in the morning, "we're leaving in an hour." After a bunch of waiting, we didn't hit the road until 6pm!

My last couple road trips in Russia have literally been "fly by the seat of your pants." I have a theory (untested and un-named) as to why people drive so fast here. It's kind of crazy sitting in a car going at 140 km/h sometimes faster, on roads that have a speed limit of 70-90 km/h. For once I would like to take a road trip in a car at a more sane speed, instead of worrying about head on collisions every time an over taking (Canadian- passing) manoeuvre is carried out.

We had a three hour drive on paved roads before coming to a dirt road. The dirt road from the last town on paved road, to our destination (the village of Pasechnoe) was only 120 kilometres, but it took us two and a half hours. We arrived to our destination after midnight. This isn't particularly late in Russian culture, most people are still awake at midnight.