Sowerby braves Russia without car insurance

The last piece of graffiti we spotted approaching the Ukrainian border proclaimed, "James Brown is free." It was scrawled across the front of a dilapidated sun-bleached cottage. A few hundred yards down the pot-holed road, a heavy blonde lady in a bulky uniform welcomed us to her country. Her icy blue eyes stared right through me.

"SUPER!" she exclaimed, breaking into a smile as she checked out the paint job on our displaced GMC Sierra pickup. Ten minutes later, navigator Beverly Barrett and I were cleared into the country and on our way to the currency-exchange building. No one had looked in the back of our truck.

I passed the lady behind the currency counter three American $100 bills. The custodian of rubles straightened out her short red crushed-velvet dress and handed the bills back, shouting something to us in Russian.

"It's too much money," whispered an Italian businessman waiting in line behind us.

"But we'll be here for a couple of weeks," I told him. "We're driving to Moscow with a donation of 4,000 children's books we picked up in London."

"Your truck will probably be stolen, vandalized for sure." It was a warning we had heard before.

After changing $200 for 17,000 rubles, a 3-inch-tall stack of crisp new bills, we felt like a couple of mafia dons walking out to the truck, which now lacked one basic Western motoring accessory -- insurance -- that we would try to buy in Uzhgorod, a few miles down the road.

We slid into a dingy monochromatic world. Color simply disappeared as we passed row upon row of identical high-rise apartment blocks that, from a distance, looked like giant doll houses rotting in a neglected yard. Limp, faded laundry hung from the balconies hopelessly waiting for the sun to cut through the thick blanket of haze that dulled the landscape.

For a minute, I felt like turning around, giving the wad of funny money back to the flashy ruble lady and heading to the French Riviera. A thousand eyes pinned themselves on us while we cruised the broken streets of Uzhgorod looking for a hotel. I was imagining what an animal in a zoo felt like when Beverly noticed an Intourist hotel sign with an arrow pointing to a 12-story monolith. A few bruised Ladas were parked haphazardly out front.

We maneuvered the truck into the guarded parking area behind Hotel Zakarpatie and ventured inside. A half-dozen attempts to communicate got us room keys. It came with an official visitor pass that was diligently scrutinized by a uniformed elevator guard.

"Let's freshen up and get something to eat," I suggested to Beverly, who was checking out her cavernous bathroom.

The water from the tap had an unusual green tint so we brushed our teeth with a bit of the gin I had stowed away in my suitcase. We took the elevator to the Hungarian Hall on the top floor where, apparently, we could dine to the music of a live band.

The Hall turned out to be the most brightly illuminated room I have ever been in. Music from a four-piece ensemble overpowered the roar of 300 diners as we were led to our table and fed a greasy chicken concoction washed down with lukewarm beer that tasted like ammonia.

In the morning, the hotel's Intourist agent presented our options. The city of Lvov was 150 miles on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains, but it did not have a hotel with guarded parking. This wasn't too appealing, especially since the only available insurance for the truck would cover damages we might inflict on Russian property and nothing else.

If we were broadsided, the truck was stolen, vandalized or whatever, it would be our tough luck. Insurance was not something Soviet drivers knew anything about. Vehicle damage was just a fact of life.

With this in mind, the most logical option was to drive past Lvov to Rovno where the Intourist hotel had a lock-up. Since driving at night was frowned upon by local authorities and Rovno was a 10-hour drive, we hit the road without delay.

Beverly soon learned to decipher the Cyrillic road signs with the help of a chart she found in a guidebook, and we located the road to Lvov. Lingering banks of dense gray fog clung to the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains as we maneuvered along the winding, rutted road.

Traffic was light, but the mud thick, and it took six hours to drive to Lvov. Since there were no direction signs once we got there, we followed the streets with the most oil stains through the city of 750,000 then continued east on a concrete road.

It was evening when we arrived in Rovno. Beverly did a fantastic job homing in on Hotel Mir, another cement Intourist hulk. The city had a weird feel about it, people hustling around in the darkness. There were no lit signs, no streetlights.

A few pale traffic signals flashed feebly while cars and trucks with blatting exhaust moved around in the dark like crickets prowling on a moonless night. I kept our park lights on and drew a host of flamboyant gestures from faceless silhouettes who probably considered us extravagant fools.

In my imagination, I could hear air raid sirens wailing.

Garry Sowerby, author of "Sowerby's Road: Adventures of a Driven Mind," is a four-time Guinness World Record holder for long-distance driving. His exploits, good, bad and just plain harrowing, are the subject of World Odyssey, produced in conjunction with Wheelbase Communications. Wheelbase is a worldwide provider of automotive news and features stories.