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Solovyeva’s husband Timo- fei prefers to describe the drift of Russians to Goa as a movement of “up-lifters” rather then “down-shifters”, the term used in the West. The Solovyevas’ two chil- dren were born in Goa. Their son’s name is Om and their daughter’s name is Uma after the Hindu god Shiva’s wife. There are already two Umas in the growing Rus- sian community and more could be on the way: the community has celebrated a baby boom in the last few years. Like many other Russians, the couple set up their own business in Goa. “Our yoga resort was the fi rst business on this street fi ve years ago, and now we have dozens of businesses along this shore,” says Timofei during a tour of his neighbourhood in Aram- bol in northern Goa. Flyers in Russian are pinned to palm trees advertising yoga, massage, traditional Indian music and dance classes for visitors. Ilya Demenkov, 27, grew tired of his work as a compu- ter programmer at a Moscow IT company. He fl ew to Goa last year to realise his dream of opening a kitesurfing school. “I came here to begin my own business and fi nd a girlfriend,” he says. Alla Duhl, a St Petersburg painter, found that she could live on just over £300 a month in Goa, including rent for a studio and a room in a house with a tropical gar- den. “Maybe a British lady would fi nd this environment lacking comfort, but we are used to crowded buses and dirty streets,” she says, “so Goa feels like home to us.” Duhl, who paints portraits

of local people on pieces of antique dark wood, says she planned to exhibit and sell her art pieces this summer, during one of her short visits to Russia. But the infl ux has also raised some concerns in India. Last year, 80,000 Russians flew into Goa, and, according to

Alla is from St Peters- burg and paints por- traits of local people. She found she could live on just over £300 a month, including rent for a studio and a room in a house with a tropical garden

Ilya grew tired of his work as a computer programmer and flew out to set up a kite- surfing school

the Indian embassy in Mos- cow, 1,400 did not return home before their visas ex- pired.

“Some tourists decide to stay and live in India perma- nently,” says the embassy’s secretary. “Some, we hear, even burn their Russian passports to break off all the connections with home.” However, as of February this year visa rules have been tightened for Russians and Western Europeans visiting India. After certain individ- uals linked to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai used tourist visas to spend ex- tended periods in the coun- try, now they are only issued for a month at a time. Even though the rules have been

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www.russiansabroad.com/cuisine/ Russian recipes www.navhindtimes.in/ The Navhind Times, Goa daily www.visitrussia.org.uk/ Russian National Tourist Office www.cultinfo.ru/vologdachudo Vologda regional treasures

Going for Goa: in search of an Indian paradise

FOOD

Why living off the land can be a bit of an acquired taste

Maxim

Syrnikov

SPECIAL TO RN

PERSONAL ARCHIVES

Perfect peace: Yulia and Timofei Solovyev, with their two children Uma and Om, have swapped the Moscow rush hour for Indian sun- shine on a beach in Arambol, Goa

changed for everybody, the Russians still feel singled out.

The president of the Bharati- ya Janata Party in Goa, Laxmikant Parsenkar, said that Russians should “have fun, spend money and go back” rather than start busi- nesses. Indeed, the highly popular city of Morjim seeks a ban on Russian businesses

after a taxi driver was killed in a scuffle with a Russian citizen. On their return to the cold of Russia, some fans of India try to preserve their state of shanti. Increasingly, Russian cities have yoga clubs, and practice of the physical and mental discipline has taken off after being barely visible just a few years ago. A new

chain of Indian stores, The Way to Yourself, offers every- thing from Indian tea to lit- tle tin kettles – good for washing nasal energy chan- nels or watering fl owers. Recently, fans of India gath- ered at Gazgolder, a hip Mos- cow night club, for a “Goa Memories” party. Clubbers in Ali Baba baggy pants and Shiva shirts, sun glasses and

flip flops, with third eyes painted on their foreheads, danced to tam-tam music under a big video screen fea- turing Goan scenes: Indian women in bright saris on motor bikes, enormous palm trees, and golden sunshine. Meanwhile, outside, the traf- fic was at a standstill on gridlocked Moscow roads after the latest snowfall.

Travel Ferapontovo combines elements of spirituality and ancient history

Medieval treasure in the Russian north

Tucked away in the Vologda Region is one of Russia’s most revered cultural and spiritual treasures – the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in Ferapontovo, which dates back to the 14th century and is home to some glorious frescoes.

WILLIAM C BRUMFIELD

SPECIAL TO RUSSIA NOW

Although Ferapontovo is not far from the river route be- tween Moscow and St Peters- burg, its monastery is not in- cluded in the cruise sched- ules. Perhaps that is just as well, for the small monastery could easily be overwhelmed by large groups. Yet the signif- icance of its sublime frescoes is open to all who would ap- preciate these works of art. The monastery was estab- lished in 1398 on the shores of the Lake Borodava. Its founder, Ferapont (1337- 1426), was a monk of noble birth from Moscow’s Si- monov Monastery. He was canonized in the 16th centu- ry, and the northern monas- tery that he founded came to be known as Ferapontov, al-

though it retained its original dedication to the Nativity of the Virgin.

The entrance to the monas- tery is through a picturesque gate that supports two small churches dedicated to the Epiphany and St Ferapont (1649). The centre of the mon- astery is the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin, rebuilt in brick in 1490. The upper walls and cupola of the Na- tivity Cathedral were sub- stantially modifi ed, starting in the 16th century with work continuing through the 18th century.

The main entrance to the ca- thedral is fl anked by frescoes devoted to the Nativity of the Virgin. They serve as an introduction to the work of one of medieval Russia’s greatest artists, Dionisy, who painted the interior of the Nativity Cathedral in 1502 with the assistance of his two sons. The fact that such a renowned artist, accus- tomed to commissions for frescoes and icons from the court of Grand Prince Ivan III, should engage in work far to the north is further ev- idence of the close relations

n 1615, Dutch envoy Anthonis Goeteeris, on finding himself in Moscow, wrote: “The Russians have a very strange cuisine.” Although Russian food is generally thought to be monotonous, it is actually rich in original recipes. The fi rst surviving reference to Russian cui- sine was made by the 10th- century Arab historian, as- tronomer and geographer Ibn Rustah. According to Rustah, the eastern Slavs lived entirely on mare’s milk. Even today, I still read, in a glossy magazine, outlandish claims about the Russian soup okrosh- ka, that it is made from a mixture of beer and vodka, and that Russian borscht is served rotten. The cuisine of any nation is defi ned by the countryside. Russia may be enormous, but its soil is not rich, and the harsh climate means that for most of the year it cannot be cultivated. But Russia’s plentiful forests, deciduous and the conifer- ous taiga, were always able to provide enough fuel for the national form of heat- ing – the Russian stove. The stove has an extremely low coefficient of efficiency – no more than 30pc – and the interior of the stove is big enough to allow a grown person to climb inside (and have a wash, a rural tradi- tion). To get the internal temperature high enough to bake bread requires at least 10 logs – ie, a small tree. But once the oven has heated up, several dishes can be cooked slowly at the same time, and enough bread and pies baked to feed a large family. Histori- cally, Russian cooking was not done on an open fire: rather, its dishes were “stewed” in the oven for several hours without any fat or oil being added. The most famous and pop- ular Russian soup is un- doubtedly shchi, the cab- bage soup, a dish foreigners find hard to understand. Rome’s ambassador to Mos- cow in the 17th century wrote: “If they want to hold a sumptuous feast, they make a soup out of food and a few cabbage leaves. If this dish turns out to be not to their taste, they pour a lot of sour milk into it.” There are actually many variations of shchi, and our national love of soup means that there are many recipes for them: a 19th-century cookery book offers 115, including soups made from bread and wine, cherries and buckwheat. Fermented cabbage, full of

I

ULRICH KERTH_ STOCK FOOD/FOTOBANK

vitamins and easy to store, was the main Russian vege- table in winter and spring. Onions and garlic have al- ways been a staple, but green salad never fl ourished. Salting vegetables and mush- rooms using natural sour milk fermentation, also known as souring, is a major part of Russian cuisine. A pickle made from salted cu- cumbers and cabbage was once central to our national cooking. Apart from shchi, these pickled foods are used to make dishes such as soly- anka, rassolnik and kalya. At one time ducks and geese were salted in large quanti- ties, and also fi sh: the Domo- stroy, a 16th-century literary treasure-trove of household advice, mentions more than 10 ways of salting fi sh. And, of course, there is the famous Russian black caviar. Fish is used to bake special pies which are known only in Russia – kulebyaka, rybnik and rasstegay. We have a say- ing: “You can make a pie out

Russian cooking was not done on an open fire: its dishes were ‘stewed’ in the oven for several hours

Fermented cabbage, full of vitamins and easy to store, was the main vegetable in winter and spring

of anything.” There are open ones, nipped ones, vatrush- kas fi lled with cottage cheese, sweet ones, sour ones and salted ones. And no article on Russian food would be com- plete without a mention of the popular okroshka and botvinya, both cold soups based on bread kvass, a na- tional drink made from malt or flour. Again, okroshka is something you need to get used to, to have eaten it as a child, prepared using kvass made by your grandmother. As 19th-century French writ- er Théophile Gautier put it: “After several months in Rus- sia, in the end you get used to cucumbers, kvass and shchi, the national Russian cuisine, and you begin to like it.” Maxim Syrnikov is the au- thor of several books on Rus- sian cuisine.

Find the best Russian recipes at

rbth.ru

Ferapontovo monastery, southwest view

between these monasteries and Moscow. The frescoes, in praise of the Virgin Mary and Christ, are extraordinary in their warmth of colour and delica- cy of depiction. Due to the re- mote location and small size of Ferapontov Monastery, these frescoes did not under- go the repaintings typical of many medieval Russian churches and are, as a conse- quence, well preserved, de- spite modifications to the structure itself. On a bright day, the compact space of the

cathedral is suffused with vi- brant colour. The Ferapontov frescoes are now on the Unesco World Heritage list. In addition to the Nativity Cathedral, the main ensem- ble of the monastery includes the refectory Church of the Annunciation (1530-31) and the Church of St Martinian (1640), which features a tower roof. The ensemble is linked on the west by a raised gallery with a 17th-century belltower. One of the great charms of Ferapontov Monastery is its

natural setting, surrounded by lakes and forests that con- vey the haunting beauty of the Russian north. There is no clearer evidence that, despite their supposed asceticism, the pioneering monks who came to this region had a su- perb aesthetic sense.

Getting there

Ferapontovo is a little off the beaten path, and visitors will probably want to be based in Vologda, which is accessible by overnight train from ei- ther Moscow or St Peters-

burg. To reach Ferapontovo from Vologda, take an early bus heading to Lipin Bor, Petrozavodsk or Vytegra and get off at the Ferapontovo turnoff. The bus ride takes around two-and-a-half hours and costs around 120 roubles (£2.70). The monas- tery is a two-kilometre walk from the village. You can also take a taxi from Volodga to Ferapontovo. A taxi for the trip and around two hours waiting time will cost between 2,000 and 3,000 roubles (£45-68).

The Russian Easter table features several dairy dishes

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