CONTINUED DESTINATION: RUSSIAN VISA

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The next day, while standing in line, Dima the police officer noticed a sign on the door that read “Be sure to have your paperwork already filled out.” We had no idea what paperwork was required, so Dima set off to hunt it down. Half an hour later, it was our turn in line and he had still not returned. We decided to give it a shot anyway, paperwork or not.

The woman at the desk looked at my passport. “You are here illegally,” she said. I pointed out that my invitation from the Russian Ministry of the Interior specifically listed Yakutsk on my itinerary and that my visa was unrestricted in terms of cities I can visit.

“If you want to travel,” she said, “you need a tourism visa. You have a business visa, and your employers have not given you permission to leave your place of employment.”

The only way to travel to any real extent in Russia is to have a business visa. Tourism visas are severely restricted both in terms of length of time and itinerary. Tourist companies arrange business visas for long-term travelers like myself. How exactly they do this and whether it is technically legal, I do not know, but suffice it to say I have no actual place of work that could possibly grant or deny “permission” to leave Irkutsk, the last city I visited.

“Well,” the woman continued, “since you’re already here, we’ll see what we can do. I have to call Moscow for advice. Come back in the evening.”

Outside the office, we met Dima. He had also been in a long line and at the end of it heard a similar story. “One good thing will come of this,” he said. “They will work out the system. They get so few foreigners they haven’t had to deal with this before.”

To pass time, we took an afternoon trip to the local Permafrost Institute—this is one of only two in the world. It’s hard to believe that the ground can possibly still be frozen during the oppressively-hot Yakutsk summer, but after climbing around the Institute’s underground laboratories, I believe it.

Finally, it was time to return to the registration office. I suggested to both Dimas that perhaps it would be best just not to bother. I would be illegally in Yakutsk only half a day. Moreover, I seriously doubted they were going to have good news for us—and I’ll admit, I was half afraid they’d arrest me when we arrived.

Dima, the police officer, agreed that I was unlikely to be discovered. “The police only check the documents of Chechens,” he said with some authority. “Still, they’re doing a lot of work for us. Out of politeness, we should go back.”

Out of politeness, we arrived again at the registration office at 5 p.m. The woman we were waiting for, however, did not show up until an hour later.

“Here’s what we need,” she said when she arrived. “First, your host will need to prepare a series of documents demonstrating that there is actually room for you in his apartment. Then you will need a full medical clean bill of health, including a chest x-ray to show that you don’t have tuberculosis...” The lady continued the list but suddenly stopped and said, “there’s really no chance of you doing it all before your three days are up.”

Dima, the police officer, thought it over. “How about we say, to hell with the registration. We won’t register.”

“That’s right,” the bureaucrat agreed. “To hell with the registration. Don’t register,” she repeated.

With that, we left. We still had plenty of work to do: getting special permission for me to visit Tiksi, the port at the end of the river I was traveling. But that’s another story.

Many foreigners have their trips ruined by the Russian bureaucracy because they can’t stand the insanity of it all. I personally had fun. The Dimas and I had hours of fantastic conversations while waiting in lines that we probably otherwise would never have had.

You see, the trick is to see the paperwork as part of the adventure. You go to a restaurant, a museum or a park and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. You walk into a bureaucrat’s office, and you can only guess what is waiting for you. You can’t say you’ve experienced Russia if you haven’t spent days in line for paperwork nobody wants or understands anyway. Now I can say that I have most definitely experienced Russia.

Joshua K. Hartshorne grew up in the peaceful American Midwest. Since graduating high school, he has not stayed in one place more than nine months. He writes regularly for travel and culture magazines and in his travel log, edwardtheplant.bloghorn.com.

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