Joseph Kessel - Les cavaliers
"... because one consumed there mainly tea, black or green, these inns bore the name of tchaïkhanas (...) It is there that had the travellers gathered (...) But which man in his good direction wanted, for if little, to give up a spectacle as that which gave the arrival of the trucks, the unloading of the passengers, the reunion of the friends which travelled in direction reverses (...) And which delighted the attentive ears by a concert astonishing and inexhaustible by accounts and news? In truth, it is a gift of the fate, a festival which this stage, and it was necessary to be quite insane to lose one moment of it."