Yekaterinburg

I am led to believe that Yekaterinburg is one of the great railway stations of Siberia. I’m winding my watch on an hour a day after two hours forward yesterday, so 15.00 Moscow time, and it’s dark.. I’m at 18.00 local, which means I can now visit the restaurant carriage (aka “Robin’s Nest”) for a cold Zhiguli beer. They are playing some mildly irritatingly middle of the road rock music. We have stopped only three times today, just once in daylight. Most of the stops are for 22 minutes, I assume that this is to facilitate a locomotive change, to […]

Balezino

It would have been pretty hard not to have woken up at Balezino this morning. 05.27 Moscow time, still dark outside and the first chance of the day to smash the accumulated ice off the underside of the train. In case you are not familiar with this, in Siberia at every stop every carriage has to be whacked repeatedly with a huge metal bar. There are some manly men resident in the train who do things like this, but it seems anyone with a big object is welcome to join in. I tried to stay in bed, but the combination […]

Unknown Pleasures

My first post from onboard train number 2 – The Rossiya. I just really wanted to share a few thoughts on my new home. My experience of Trans-Sib travel up until now has all been aboard the Chinese train 004. Full of character, but pretty clapped out and with an aroma and atmosphere all of its own. So here I am today on a Russian Trans-Sib train for the first time. It’s quite different! First in case you are reading this to plan for a trip, let me mention a couple of train things. Generally the lower the number of […]

Moonraker

After my first good night of rest on a train for this trip I arrived into Moscow at lunchtime today. Much to my disappointment it’s still quite warm here – just below freezing, but no snow lying in the city. It’s due to freeze good and proper on Friday, but it is just damp with a wintery wind today. I met up with Alexey (my resident interpretor, guide and fixer in Moscow) in the afternoon and we did some cosmonaut stuff. He reminds me that a couple of years ago we went out to a nearby airforce base in December […]

Ulan Ude

Its a perfect day on the Trans-Mong 004. Listening to my Pink Floyd back catalogue (turned up slightly too loud) in my compartment whilst I update the blog. We are about 30 minutes behind schedule – I don’t know why. We left Irkutsk on time at about 04.30 (local) and have been weaving around vast frozen lakes most of the morning. By chance I was just walking back from my ablutions at about 09.30 (local) and I nearly dropped my toilet roll when I looked out the window to see Lake Baikal – absolutely massive, stunning, like a sea, and […]

Ilanskaya

An afternoon stop in Ilanskaya for coal. My train timetable says we are 4379 km from Moscow, so if I have covered 1502 km getting to Moscow then that’s 5881 km total so far – that is further than I had guessed. As you can see its dry and sunny now, not sure how cold, maybe around -10 degrees C. Lots of platform food action here – beer, weird dried fish and chilled dumplings – we must be getting more Eastern if the food is anything to go by. The mode of transport for these mobile “shops” is by sledge […]

Krasnoyarsk

Morning! Sunrise in Siberia. I have made the switch from Moscow time to Beijing time. Its a 4 hour difference and an ongoing issue for the Trans-Sib adventurer. The train schedule is in Moscow time and does not change until the Mongolian border. However the daylight, and vitally the restaurant carriage, operate in a local time. There is no perfect answer but I have made a full jump to Beijing time leaving one watch on Moscow time just so I can read the timetable properly. The reason for doing this is that I slept through much of Mongolia last trip, and […]

Omsk

Greetings from a white and wintery Omsk! Another crew in and more coal on board to see us through to this evening’s stop at Novosibirsk. It is still snowing, so it can’t be as cold as I thought it was. We are getting huge accumulations of ice under the train that needs clearing each time we stop – otherwise things like the drains, the water tanks and the brakes freeze up. The solution is to whack the bogies hard with a big metal rod and then pour boiling water on the drain pipe.. If you saw my post from the […]

Ishim

Morning! It looks like we are running half an hour late – we have just pulled into Ishim at 08.28 Moscow time for a quick pit stop – 12 minutes here according to the schedule, so I’m not getting off. The brakes on our carriage seem to be playing up – when the driver slows the train our carriage tries to do a full emergency stop. I’m guessing we have iced up underneath, so hoping they can fix it later this morning, as its bad enough to throw you out of bed.. It’s getting colder outside now (and more bearable […]

Kirov

I left Moscow at 21.35 last night on train 004, the Chinese run Trans-Mongolian that goes once a week to Beijing. Setting off was slightly like a trip to “Hogwarts”, as we helped guide a few others to the mystical, and slightly hidden, platform 3 3/4. Carriage 9 (my home for the week) is in fact full of fellow Western tourists. I had a pretty rough night, the problem being that the Chinese guards are obviously undergoing jungle training, and have set the temperature in the carriage to well over 30 degrees. In a desperate attempt to seek cool air […]