We were awakened for touchdown at Dehli Airport, five hours after take-off, where we were taken by bus to the Transit Lounge where we were checked in by crack Indian troops. This is a lie, or rather a statement of the opposite. The scruffy Indian soldiers looked like the typical inoffensive sad sacks and these looked like the Dad’s Army division.
We got a free coffee and had a look in the expensive Duty-Free Shops before passing through Security to reboard the plane. Very shortly we were ensconced in another in-flight meal which we did full justice to, although those around us floundered and were not so keen of the fare.
A bit more slumbering and we landed at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. Originally built as a military airbase, Sheremetyevo was converted into a civilian airport in 1959 and was now a full-scale modern International Airport, but it was ghostlike.
The plane taxied across the snow-covered runway in the pre-dawn gloom and we entered the dimly lit airport. Text-book Russians in furry hats, heavy furry coats and knee-length leather boots frostily watched the new arrivals.
We were scrutinised at Immigration and instructed to wait at Gate 13. We sat here in the eerie gloom as a few Russians walked about, their clicking footfalls echoing in the cavernous glass and steel interior. Quite a few of the other transit passengers wandered about, content in the knowledge that they knew better than the airport officials.
Eventually, they admitted defeat and came back to the fold waiting at Gate 13. We moved on downstairs and our passports were exchanged for C.C.C.P. (CCCP is the abbreviation for the full name of the Soviet Union in Russian Cyrillic script (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) the name for the Soviet Union before 1991.) Red Cards. I became number 00269.
A bus took us to the Sheremetyevo Hotel where we took the lift to the 8th floor. Mysteriously most of the buttons for the other floors were blanked off. We settled in room 823 and soon found the breakfast canteen hall. We shared a table with a Northern Norwegian and his daughter, chatting about his homeland and the possibility of us visiting USSR again and taking in his hometown of Hammerfest on a future motorbike tour.
He explained that the world’s northernmost city, Hammerfest, is found in stark, barren, Arctic landscapes. Yet it is a real city with all the city trimmings. The world’s northernmost city enjoys a fabulous situation on a curved bay, surrounded by stark, barren Arctic moorland, mountains and waterways.
The old boy polished off a miniature of vodka as we attacked the leftover bread and cheese from the other tables. We were disgusted again to see how much was left over. We returned to our room after buying wine, chocolate and postcards in the hotel Duty-Free shop.
I setup my Walkman using the mains lead and we wrote up our logs before succumbing to an exhausted sleep. At 14:00 hrs. the alarm intruded into my dreams and we joined the crowd in the lobby for a complementary sight-seeing tour of Moscow.
As usual we had to wait due to the stupidity of others. They had failed to fill in a simple form correctly and were blaming their incompetence on Russian bureaucracy. One oaf was removed from the tour as he had made such a pig’s ear of the form.
Asked if we had any questions before we got on the coach one couple asked why the Soviet Union thought that it was right to suppress religion in the USSR. They were crossed off the list for the tour and instructed to return to their room!
We climbed aboard the Intourist Coach and rolled along under a leaden sky towards central Moscow. Intourist (Russian: Интурист, contraction of иностранный турист, "foreign tourist") is a Russian tour operator, headquartered in Moscow. It was founded on April 12, 1929 and served as the primary travel agency for foreign tourists in the Soviet Union.
We travelled along a good dual carriageway (driving on the right-hand side of the road) passed a forest of electrical pylons and many industrial buildings and crossed a frozen river (presumably the Moskva River) where a few people were skating.
The number of pedestrians increased, every man jack in a furry hat and a robust double-breasted overcoat. Every now and again we passed a vivid red propaganda display with symbolic workers and Communist heroes.
Nearer the centre there were more state shopping centres, several with queues outside, but the majority chock-a-block full of fur-hatted customers inside. We picked up a glamourous Intourist guide in a blond fur hat and her monotonous drone reminded me to give guided tours a wide berth in future.
We saw the beautiful St Basil’s Cathedral of the Intercession, which legend has it, resulted in the designer being blinded by the Tsar to prevent them from reproducing it elsewhere. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
We paused in Red Square to attempt photography through the grubby coach windows as we were not allowed to get off of the bus. Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. It separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and now the official residence of the president of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. Red Square is often considered to be the central square of Moscow since the city's major streets, which connect to Russia's major highways, originate in the square.
We then drove across the Moskva River to get a clearer view of the Kremlin. The Moscow Kremlin , or simply the Kremlin, is a fortified complex in the centre of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River to the south, Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square to the east, and the Alexander Garden to the west.
It is the best known of the kremlins (Russian citadels), and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. In addition, within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace that was formerly the Tsar's Moscow residence. The complex now serves as the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation and as a museum with 2,746,405 visitors in 2017.
The name "Kremlin" means "fortress inside a city", and is often also used metonymically to refer to the government of the Russian Federation in a similar sense to how "White House" refers to the Executive Office of the President of the United States. It previously referred to the government of the Soviet Union (1922–1991) and its highest members (such as general secretaries, premiers, presidents, ministers, and commissars). The term "Kremlinology" refers to the study of Soviet and Russian politics.
We did a couple of circuits, taking in the Bolshoi Theatre, home of the Ballet, before returning to the hotel. The city had the look of a Western city of old with squat, low level architecture. Unfamiliar Russian Cyrillic writing made for alien signage to us.
We passed the English Club, which was the largest gentleman's gathering in Moscow and was known for its card games, sumptuous dinners and political discussions. The motto of the club was «Concordia et laetitia» - “harmony and fun”.
We passed National Museums and Libraries, several large hotels and Chekhov’s old house (‘The colour of the house is liberal, i.e. red', playwright Anton Chekhov wrote of his house on the Garden Ring, where he lived from 1886 to 1890. The red house now contains the Chekhov House-Museum, with bedrooms, drawing room and study all intact).
Our photographic success was minimal, quick snaps in poor light through the dirty windows of a fast-moving coach. It was getting dark and snow was threatening when we returned to our room to attack a bottle of wine and listen to some music cassettes.
We dozed off until 20:00 hrs. when we went down for dinner. I was now suffering from acute diarrhoea and my stomach was gurgling so I didn’t eat much. The starter was a beetroot and cream concoction which we failed to make much of an inroad into due to it’s dubious taste.
Second came a bowl of olives and a couple of clammy smoked fish slices. The final course consisted of a chicken leg and a mound of plain boiled rice. I returned to our room while George scavenged the leftovers on surrounding tables.
We demolished the remaining bottle of wine and laughed at some of the visa qualifications of African countries listed in the Lonely Planet “Africa on a Shoestring” guidebook. It was good to be able to spend the night in a comfortable bed.
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