The Heat Was Truly Frightening

The Banya — an Experience of Russian Waterboarding

My immediate thought was that the sound, clearly involving naked flesh being beaten, had something to do with pain and eroticism.

Photo by Norbert Buduczki on Unsplash

Dirty from long hours in the saddle riding through Kyrgyzstan, we badly needed to wash.

The only option was to visit the local banya…

A large rectangular concrete building, Soviet Chic in style, squatted alongside the road with BANYA in Cyrillic letters across the front.

We crossed the street to investigate.

Inside the entrance was a large, empty, undecorated space covered with brown ceramic tiles; set into one wall was a small metal grill; behind the grill, a woman.

We mimed taking a shower and tried, “Douche?”

“Nyet — banya -” the unsmiling woman snapped, pointing to a card with a printed tariff of fees. Evidently, for $2 each we could enter and do whatever one did in there.

In an adjoining bare room, a few young women lolled about on wooden benches and Gareth wondered aloud whether the banya doubled as the local brothel.

Clutching our towels and soap, we opened a door feeling very much like the new members of the golf club who didn’t know the rules.

It was so hot I felt as if I were breathing hot water and wondered if I might drown.

We gingerly entered a humid and airless room, about three metres by ten, floored with the same brown tiles as the entrance. The only furniture, a row of rather battered lockers and some wooden benches upon which reclined two naked men.

The first was small and almost hairless — bald head, bald torso, almost bald pubes; the other, almost by deliberate contrast, was large and hairy.

He reclined on one of the benches lengthwise, like a male nude posing for a portrait, chest like a gorilla’s, hirsute face, dangly bits … well, dangling.

We stripped off, somewhat self-consciously, and entered room №3. It was so hot I felt as if I were breathing hot water and wondered if I might drown. Another naked man stood before a concrete block, about navel height, soaping himself.

The floor was mostly smooth terracotta tiles but filled in with cement where these had broken and come away. In the centre of the room was a drain hole partially plugged with gunk and hair, smelling like your drains do when they’ve been blocked for so long that your wife threatens to leave unless you call the plumber.

The naked man was using a black plastic bucket to slosh water over his head and body from taps attached to the concrete block.

It was a strangely erotic experience.

I looked around through the steam and saw a number of these buckets lying about so, following his example, I took one, set it down on another concrete block and felt each pipe to find the hot one; I filled my bucket and, hoping it wouldn’t kill me, quickly poured the contents over my head as I had seen the hirsute man do.

It was so hot it took my breath away.

Breathing in the liquid air like a fish drowning, I soaped myself all over. Then I filled the bucket again with hot water and sluiced myself again… and again… and again.

It was a strangely erotic experience.

Knowing that if you’re Swedish or Russian or from northern climes, you’re supposed to leap into an ice-covered stream after being in a banya, I then filled my bucket from the cold tap and, taking a deep breath, poured it over my head.

Whooo! Is this rebirth?

I filled the bucket with hot water again and dumped it over my head.

Whooooo!

Then cold.

Whooooooo!

I could get to like this! My skin was beginning to pucker.

I glanced over at my hairy friend and he was scrubbing away at his skin with what looked like a strap full of nails. (Well, plastic nails.) Lying about the floor I saw several of these things but realising they were probably clogged with the exfoliated skin of previous masochists, so I decided I’d give that a miss.

The heat hit me in the face like a bully.

At about that time I heard an ominous Fap! Fap! Fap! Fap! coming from another room.

My immediate thought was that the sound, clearly involving naked flesh being beaten, had something to do with pain and eroticism. I looked about the steamy room and saw yet another door set into the wall. Glancing about to make sure that no one was watching, I tip-toed across.

The Flap! Flap! Flap! was clearly coming from behind that very door.

Tentatively, I opened it a crack and peeped in.

The heat hit me in the face like a bully.

I reeled back, gasping.

But I had caught a glimpse of a narrow cell of a room, about three metres by five, a naked man sitting on the top rung of five wooden tiers, alternately beating his back and his chest with a bunch of leafy twigs.

I shut the door quickly.

Whether it was the heat or the naked man, I’m not sure — probably both. But if I was to experience the full joy of this banya, I knew I had to enter the Fourth Level, face it like a man. While I stood outside the door trying to pluck up courage, the flagellating man exited, leaving me alone.

Next to the door, I noticed some bunches of what looked like leafy oak twigs tied together with string. I picked one up, telling myself to man up… I can do this. I breathed deeply, screwed my courage to the sticking point, opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind me.

It felt like there was something alive hiding in the dark beneath me.

The heat inside that dark, concrete cell was truly frightening. Determined to experience it fully, I made my way up the slippery wooden bleachers and sat down at the top. My head was close to the ceiling and I gasped, afraid that I might pass out. Claustrophobic bare concrete seemed to press in upon me, compounding the effect of the damp heat that threatened to drown me, stifle me, overwhelm my senses.

I was being waterboarded without the use of a towel over my face.

But what was perhaps even more frightening (considering the exposed electric wires we had seen on the streets and in buildings throughout the ‘Stans just waiting to kill anyone who ventured too close) was the loud buzzing sound coming from directly beneath the wet, wooden bleachers, emanating from some massive, primitive source of electricity being used to heat this awful place, so powerful that one would imagine the lights of Kyrgyzstan dimming and flickering when it was fired up.

It felt like there was something alive hiding in the dark beneath me.

And to think that everything was wet: my body, the floor, the wood, condensation dripping from the walls and ceiling and right there, in the room, underneath where I was sitting, was enough electricity to electrocute the entire world buzzing loudly to itself, waiting…

Frightened I might die in there, I gave myself some tentative blows across the back and chest with my vihta and then wimped out, making my way carefully down the wet, slippery bleachers and then out into Room 3 (which felt positively cool by contrast.)

Gritting my teeth, I filled a bucket with cold water and quickly poured it over my head.

Whooooo!

I poured a few more buckets (this was becoming addictive) then pressed the buzzer to be released. Gareth and I dressed and emerged like troglodytes into the sunshine, our flesh clean and tingling.

The moment we entered the outside foyer, an alcohol-smelling, toothless woman latched onto us and dragged us off to a “cafe” situated just behind the banya.

She led us through a door into a back yard filled with junk, piles of cardboard, broken children’s toys, a dead car on concrete blocks and other waste. At a table, a woman was stuffing sheep’s intestines with meat to make sausages; in a basin next to her, a sheep’s stomach stank.

We thanked her politely but decided we would not patronise her establishment for our meal that night.

Excerpt taken from “The Wakhan Corridor — A Motorcycle Journey into Central Asia”.

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Lawrence Bransby is the author of 20 published books: Novels, Teenage Novels and Adventure Motorcycle Travelogues.