In 1989 “Around the World in 80 Days” was a major success for the BBC and a new turn for Michael Palin’s slightly flagging career. This show was at least partly to blame for creating my latent desire to attempt off beat journeys, something that I had little time for until a couple of years ago. After all, not many people would be able to get away with telling the boss, their clients, and significant others that they were off for a journey where phone coverage was scare and without a return date! Today I’m lucky enough to have the time and nothing to get in the way of such adventure. So when my friends jibe me with the Palin or Alan Whicker tag, I always secretly smile, as to me it is high praise indeed.

Looking at Michael Palin’s route, I think perhaps Phileas Fogg would have been much better to head across Russia, rather than heading as far south as Bombay and Singapore before arriving in Japan. I plan to get to Tokyo overland in just 21 days. Incidentally, whilst researching for this post, I learned that the series was originally planned for Alan Whicker, who declined to take part. Fourth choice was Palin – I thought he was perfect. After all, I certainly could not have imagined Alan Whicker kipping on the deck of a dhow or swabbing the decks of a container ferry.

From a planning perspective, one of Michael Palin’s biggest problems was the scheduling of shipping, and I can relate to this, even on my much simpler journey. His problems were in Dubai and Singapore. Mine are perhaps less insurmountable and are in Vladivostok and Donghae.

The only ship that sails to Japan from Russia is called the “Eastern Dream”. It is scheduled to sail once a week from Vladivostok, heading south to Donghae in South Korea, then crossing over to Sakaiminato in Japan. It is supposed to sail each Wednesday, arriving in Japan on Friday. However, whenever my man in Moscow speaks to his contact in the port (a 10 hour time difference from GMT) the ship seems to have different and unpublished plans. Sometimes just sailing to Donghae, and other times stoping an extra day.. oh, and also leaving a day early. I hope other travellers are in the loop on this, as if you just believed what it says on their website you would possibly be stranded in Vladivostok for the winter.

I’m told that I have now been ticketed on the ship, (in third class!) so I’m hoping my information must be right. That means arriving in Vladivostok on a Monday, and having just a day until the weekly sailing. If this is all sounding too easy, the Rossiya train (002) only works Eastbound on “odd” calendar days of the week..

Part ferry part ice breaker in winter?

The “Eastern Dream” looks relatively modern and was built in Japan in the 1990’s. It is run by a Korean company called DBS. I’m hoping she is up to the task, as I can see that it has to endure a pretty tough environment in the winter. I have seen photographs of small icebergs in the port and three feet of snow on the deck. I’m also mindful that it has to sail around North Korea and there are frequent military interventions around the contested territorial waters. Needless to say I will carefully practice the abandon ship procedures, but in honesty I don’t think you would live for more than a minute or two in the Sea of Japan unless you had access to a really good lifeboat. These are probably reserved for first class passengers.

Bring snow shoes!

Both of the above photos are from a blog I found in Korean that sadly I cannot translate. You can see the pictures here though. Other traveller’s blogs are often such great preparation for a journey.

In other ship news I have once again booked a cabin on the MV “King Seaways” from Newcastle to Imjuden (Amsterdam). This is a good ferry – the trick is that its sister ship isn’t quite as nice, so again it needs booking on the right day of the week – especially if you want to benefit from the private Commodore Class area that keeps you separate from the rabble of students on a rather big booze cruise.

Everything else is coming together, and I just need to organise my Japanese adventures now. I’m still waiting for D Bahn to publish the winter rail timetable that starts on 13 December, so there could be some changes to my plan getting to Warsaw. My visas are now in the system (thanks once again to Real Russia) and I now have a pile of gear sat here in HQ ready to pack – I’m aiming to carry a bit less this year, but will still need both winter and summer gear as the temperature will range from -40c to +30c over the course of the trip.

I think thats all for now, other than to say, if you read this blog and are enjoying it, do please share it with others you know who might also find it of interest. More to follow next week I hope. I am trying to get into more of a pre-departure blog routine.

Apologies for not posting recently. I have been swithering a lot about my next trip, and today I have made the final decision. I need to update the “departure board” to read “Tokyo via Vladivostok”!

If you have not read my recent blog posts, this winter I had hoped to travel through Central Asia, taking advantage of the route out of Russia and through Kasakhstan. I encountered several problems planning and researching this journey. Firstly that travel to the other Stans was looking like hard work by train – not impossible, but for example, there is just a single weekly train connecting Tashkent and Almaty, and limited certainty of getting a ticket on it.

Secondly that the security situation on parts of this trip looks like they are getting worse rather than better – significant terrorism in Xinjiang, moderate levels of corruption in some of the Stans, and now even unrest at my planned objective, Hong Kong. Thirdly, I discovered the train to Almaty isn’t as good as Seat 61 suggests, nor is the train to Astana.. (no first class) – it wasn’t a deal breaker, but adding these points together it feels like hard work. Sometimes you just have to follow your gut feel, and this now feels like a trip for another time. My “Man Who Would be King” plans are therefore on hold, for the time being anyway.

So that takes me to “Plan B” – across Siberia (once again), and onward to Vladivostok, then by ferry to South Korea and Japan, finishing up in Tokyo. With my train anorak hat on, it is the longest scheduled train service in the world – taking nearly seven days from Moscow to Vladivostok. I understand that sometimes there are two carriages on this train that actually go on southward to Pyongyang, but even if I fancied this run, it is currently barred to non North Koreans (you have to enter North Korea via China). For my trip I plan to use the “Rossiya” train, which is supposed to be a good one. In Russian trains, the lower train numbers are the better quality “fermeny” services – this train is numbered “002” (“001” runs West bound on the same route). It will be strange travelling for a week without having to deal with customs, borders and visas.. or change wheels!

I had been working on this plan for several days, and just when everything looked like it was “on”, my agent in Moscow was informed that the ship that sails to Japan once a week from Vladivostok would in fact not be doing so on my requested dates. It is also about to change its schedule that means an earlier weekly departure (Tuesday) and stopping off in Korea. Just as well we checked! I think this has now been overcome, and I’m waiting for confirmation that since last week it has not decided to re-route again. The ferry is Korean, and looks quite bizarre (hopefully in a fun sort of way). As for my stay in South Korea, I have a cunning plan that should be quite interesting too if everything works out.

The only other train problem I can foresee is the imminent closure of some of the Euro Nightline services – this might mean the loss of the brilliant EN447 “Jan Kiepura” service that travels every night from Amsterdam to Warsaw. If this is the case I have a contingency of getting a day train down to Cologne and then getting a night train from there to Warsaw.

To be honest I’m relieved to have made the decision on the trip – for the last few weeks its been frustrating not being sure what to do, and now I have made the decision, I can just get focussed on pulling the plan together. To quote Lao Tzu “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step” How true.

I will keep you posted as I go into full steam ahead trip preparation. Or is that full diesel-electric trip preparation?

I had a bit of a quiet day on the work front yesterday, so some time to get myself into blogging traveller mode. I’m really quite new to blogging, and like not just the way I can diarise and share my journeys, but also interact with others who have similar interests.

I have found inspiration for this trip in a few great places. Of course, as always, Mark at Seat Sixty-One. He has given me the confidence to plan the parts of the route I did not know much about – especially the crossing from China into Vietnam and from Cambodia into Thailand. But then I started to take on board the richness of other people’s blogs and their own unique experiences of long distance overland travel. I have started to keep a link to some of these (below right) – all are people who have travelled on parts of my journey (and elsewhere) and provide real insight into the places, the people, and of course the trains.

The one I was fascinated to read yesterday was by Helmut in Austria – The Forbidden Railway. His site has a variety of journeys which could be a shopping list of the most amazing routes you could ever imagine. The one that got me going though was his trip from the Trans-Sib down into North Korea. I had not realised it was possible, but after some reading and investigation – it is, and I wonder if a version of this could be my next trip. (Note – there is more than one route, but the main Beijing – Pyongyang service seems to be the most “approved” and therefore, straightforward. Seat Sixty-One will give you the lowdown on the practicalities).

I had an email last week from Ian at Tropical Expat – his blog is full of Asian trips with loads of detail and ideas. Hopefully we will meet to compare notes (and for a curry) in Penang in January. I’m looking forward to that, as he is living the dream of life in the East, having sold his home in London.

The Rakyat Express. Source: Keretapi.com

Back at Toad’s Travel HQ this week, I tried to book the Malaysian part of my journey on the KTMB website – amazingly the prospect of an e-ticket – the only one on the whole journey. After a promising start registering, it would not let me have a ticket for my travel dates – at first I thought it was a compatibility glitch with my Mac, but I now think it was because they had not released dates in line with their ticketing from 60 days prior to travel date. Anyway, the positive conclusion to this was that I used a company called International Rail (in London) who seem to know their onions and had a local agent who could get the tickets as soon as they became available. I suspect that some readers will raise their eyebrows and mumble about using agents and paying their commissions. My view is I am very happy to pay for a service, and the service here was great – a £10 booking fee (for tickets costing less than £100), and I had the e-ticket in just a couple of days. I also didn’t have to worry about long distance credit card security, something that does concern me. So using the intel on Seat Sixty-One I have bought a ticket in air conditioned first class (Premier) on the Rakyat Express – a 14 hour journey from Butterworth to Singapore. My seat is 4A – a single row, I think in the middle of the carriage. It is this sort of booking precision – with things like seats – that makes all the difference to me. Real Russia were the same – they managed to get me the exact seats I requested on the Amsterdam-Warsaw-Moscow-Beijing trains (where I could spot the better carriages on VagonWeb). I’m going to have a bit of deja-vu on the Trans-Sib as I am actually in the very same compartment in the same carriage as my last trip. Just as well I didn’t trash it last time!

I decided not to chance it with any last minute Cambodian bus bookings, so a lovely lady called “Vi” at my hotel in Saigon has arranged them for me. I’m going with Mekong Express who seem to get the best write ups – (there is another operator that looks good – Giant Ibis – but they don’t seem to operate the whole route I need). The only problem I had was that the security certificates on the Mekong Express website don’t allow me to book online – hence needing the help of a good hotel concierge.

In other news, it’s official. I am now fully packed. I have not done the 300 meters “lift and carry” test yet though – I suspect I have about 35kg of stuff across two bags (both on wheels). I have now ruled out the possibility of a smaller case. My problem is that the temperature difference from cold to hot is going to be about 65 degrees – from the -30 C’s in Siberia to the +30 C’s south of HCMC. That means ushanka, boots, down jacket and lots of gloves and scarves are needed, but as well as diving gear, and tropical lightweights.. and I need somewhere to put them.

How much luggage is too much!?

I haven’t been in the best of health for the last few weeks, and without boring you with my medical problems, its made me think very hard about how to be prepared to be on a train in the middle of nowhere without the possibility of seeing a doctor for hours (or days). So my medical kit has had to expand from a pouch into a chest that is stored in my suitcase. There are some practical considerations here.

Firstly is the availability of what you might need in other countries. Sometimes a drug that is available over the counter in one country is not to be found in another – or only be available from a hospital. So beyond the basic first aid kit I will be taking a 45 day supply of some medicines. I’m not going to list them here, but its a big pile of stuff, but at least it will get smaller as I take them..

Secondly is the legality of bringing these medicines into some countries. If you don’t know, you might be surprised to find that some UK pharmacy products are banned substances in certain countries. All I have read suggests (generally) that if you have been prescribed the medication, and have a copy of the prescription (or a Doctor’s letter), then you will be fine. So I have got prescriptions for everything (to be ultra safe, even some things that I could buy over the counter) and added to my supplies the following –

– copies of all prescriptions
– British Airways travel clinic passport (looks very official, but just notes on various jabs)
– a schedule of prescribed medications, produced by me, but looking very official
– a detailed travel itinerary (evidence of the need for a 45 day quantity)
– a wikipedia type page for medical conditions (this would ideally be translated)

I understand that the quantity of medicine can also be an issue, as some people sell their prescribed medications on the black market. I feel the above documents provide a complete medical justification, should I get questioned by Customs. Fingers crossed that my papers will be in order.

I had a look at the weather for the route yesterday. Things are not looking as chilly as the same time last year, but I suspect the temperatures will plummet over the next couple of weeks..

I think that is all for now. Thanks for visiting and I hope this was of interest.