The Reality of the Koryaks

lrimoto The Eternal Cycle 2. The Reality of the Koryaks 2.1 Meeting the Koryaks On the fburth moming after we anived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii, we were still at the airport lobby.I remembered how Mikhail had told us the day before that today would be a long day.It would be interesting to see how we were going to continue our trip northward in a situation where we couldn't get air tickets.At the airport, Mikhail went to the othce to negotiate as usual.Sergei andI waited with our luggage in front of,a temporary box-shaped ticket booth made of wooden boards, set inside the waiting room.There were a lot ofpeople waiting to go to smaller villages further northward from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii. They had also gathered in front of the ticket booth to get their air tickets.A little Russian girl stood with a dog tucked up to her chest.There was another girl who seemed to be a Chukchee or a Koryak with black hair and black eyebrows and looked like a Japanese.She was probably about l5 years old and was wearing bright red lipstick and black eye shadow around her eyes.She also made strong impression on me due to the fact that her hair was tied up high with a red ribbon.There was also another Russian girl with blond hair, who was wearing a gold jacket and black tights that clung to her legs.The earrings and the bracelets she wore shone brightly.She would not have stood out if she was walking in a big city, but here at the waiting room in the airport it seemed quite odd.A lady who seemed to be her mother let her lean her head on her shoulder.Sergei left me with the luggage and went to see Mikhail and Vasha negotiating at the offlce.He came back shaking his head as if to tell me things weren't going well.Then he went off again.Mikhail came back to where I was waiting looking gloomy too.I waited, thinking it wasn't going to work, but soon became tired of standing there and squatted, and finally I took a seat that someone happened to leave.People suddenly rushed to the ticket booth when an attendant appeared, and waved their domestic visas over the heads ofpeople standing in front of them and handed out bills and started to get their tickets.Among the luggage piled up inside the waiting room there was a small cardboard box with many small holes poked in it."wnat could it be inside?""Was it a kitten or some other young animal...?" While I was thinking about it distractedly, Mikhail and Vasha came rushing back and told us to collect our luggage and we all went with our bags to the check-in room that led to the boarding gate.Apparently, Mikhail had managed to get the tickets directly at the oMce.The aircraft was a small-sizedjet plane for 28 people.The rear part ofthe body under the empennage opened vertically, which turned into a staircase for boarding as it unfolded to the ground.Mikhail was helping to load not only our luggage, but the bags of other passengers too -he might have been doing it in return for our