Sayan Ring Festival- Саянское Кольцо (My adventure of finding a place to rest my head.)

My accommodation for the night

For eight years now the Krasnoyarsk Krai government have been running an "International Ethnic Music Festival." The festival is free to attend, which is quite special. An event of this type in Australia would undoubtedly cost around $100 for a festival pass for three days (or possibly more). The festival is held outside a town called Shushenskoye, about 500km south of Krasnoyarsk city. (Which in reality takes about 7 hours by car to get to.)

I first became aware of the festival last year, when a Khakas friend told us about it. He couldn't go last year (he had just started his IKEA delivery business), but thought he might go this year. We ended up watching it on tv last year. (Sadly it was not on tv this year.)
Recently I had asked Vasily if he was planning to go to the festival. He wasn't sure. (Not at all strange, people here always do things at the last minute.) I was hoping to go, but did not want to go alone. As a family we were not sure how safe the festival would be (from drunken people), and decided we would not all go this year. I had almost given up hope of going.
Then last Monday, Melody and I went to the ticket office to make enquiries about traveling to Evenkiya this Summer. We rang Alona while at the ticket office to find out when a good time to travel would be. In typical Evenki fashion she told us that they were just arriving in Krasnoyarsk as we spoke! So we ended up meeting them in the city. What was supposed to be a 30 minute wait ended up being a 2 hour wait. We are completely aware in our heads that this is cultural. In fact when they said 30 minutes, they were really saying "we want to see you, and please wait." I knew this in my head, but my cultural emotions and a few phone calls later, were making me think it wasn't going to happen. But they turned up, sure enough.
Yura and Alona and some other Evenki from Baikit were to present at the festival as a music group. Once again, I really wanted to get to the festival. But it was complicated. I didn't have anywhere to stay. Their group already had a private house organised in the town of Shushenskoye. I wasn't keen about the idea of traveling down there alone (Yura and Alona and their daughter Katya were going straight there on Monday), and then staying in a tent alone. (I knew that the tent city would be full of drunk people all hours of the night.)
I was caught in a place of deliberation all week. I really wanted to go, but I felt unsafe. I prayed that if I was meant to go that somebody else would go down with me. In the end my Khakas acquaintance offered to take me down, his friend was driving. What I didn't know was that Vasily was not actually going to the festival, but was visiting his parents in Khakassia (close by). So I did go down with him, staying the first night at his parents in law. The next morning I took a taxi to the festival (about 55 kms).

When I arrived at the festival I knew I had to find Yura and Alona and the Evenki chum (pronounced choom). I thought it would be in the tent city, and I thought that other Evenki would be sleeping there too. I passed the tent city, there was no chum there. I passed the crowds of people and the arts and trinkets stalls and the food stands. I could see the large stage, and I could see two chums near the stage. But I thought that others would not be sleeping in a chum by the stage. So I did not approach those two chums in the distance. I rang Yura on the phone and told him where I was. (In the age before mobiles, I guess I would have just approached the chums by the stage.)

When we got to the chum I discovered that I was the only one staying in the chum that night. I would be sleeping in a chum, surrounded by hundreds of party goers. Although alcohol was banned at the site of the festival (and even policed at the entrances) people were still bound to drink in town and come back drunk. I was a little apprehensive about how that night would go. This did affect my level of enjoyment throughout the day.

The night did turn out to be an adventure. At around 11, I was on my own. I sat outside the chum and watched the big stage. By this point the Siberian performers had finished. A woman from New York was performing, who was frankly awful. Just cos she could string some chords together, and prance some self indulgent lyrics, gave her no right to perform at an ethnic music festival in my opinion. Some people came and asked me questions about why I was sitting by the chum. I felt uncomfortable. I even told some people to clear off at one point. They didn't leave straight away. I sat there and prayed, then they left.

I retired to the chum 15 minutes later, I wasn't enjoying the pretentious New Yorker anyway. I proceeded to settle for the night, although I made no attempt to sleep. At midnight the disco started and there was loud thumping music until 3am. I read "Pagan Christianity" by Frank Viola on my ipod. At around 3 am after the disco finished some unexpected visitors turned up in the chum. They were most unwelcome. They were drunk. Thankfully they were not violent men, but annoying women who wanted to take photos. They left once I obliged to take a photo with them.

I decided to minimise the risks and not expose myself for a second night. So unfortunately I did not stay for the whole three days of the festival. I left at 3pm the next day so as to not miss the evening train back to Krasnoyarsk.