Crossing from Estonia into Russia

Almost missed my 23:59 bus to St. Petersburg as I was looking out for a Eurolines bus which I booked, which was no where to be seen. Instead, a dodgy looking old double deck bus came along and I literally had to run to catch the bus from leaving. As usual, it was a bus load of Russians with curious eyes on the one and only oriental, wondering if I had taken the wrong way.

At 3:15, the bus arrived at the Estonia border after an extremely bumpy ride; or was it the bus? A border guard came up to collect everybody's passports and left. It was a nervous wait especially since I knew neither Estonian or Russian, and probably no one knows the language that I speak too. 10 minutes later, the same guard came back and distributed the passports back to individuals and the bus drove on across the bridge separating the 2 countries, with a raging river below.

On the Russian side, everyone were asked to carry all their luggage, with the immigration forms filled up for the border checks. As expected, the woman behind the counter looked at me with suspicion, called out to her superior and they both started to talk in Russian for a good 10 minutes. The superior scrutinized every page of my passport to the degree that I was worried that it might fall apart anytime. I suspect they are wondering why would anyone have such thick passports? (I get this asked many times on my travels) After another minutes of scanning under the UV light, going through all the pages again and again, she finally put a stamp on my visa and handed back my passport.

It took a good hour before the entire bus got through the border, mainly waiting for me to get through to be exact. Has been a nervy experience, not helped by the fact of the language problem and not knowing exactly what they might decide to do. I guess this is the type of "unusual" encounters that attracts travellers to continue to come into this crazy country despite all the hassle and efforts to get here. Alas, all is well and we loaded back onto the bus at 04:30 and continued the journey to St Petersburg...amidst a worse road...