The Trans Siberian Train Journey

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  Ulan Bator, Mongolia
Tuesday, September 25, 2007

5 days on a train! Everyone should do it!

Being on the trans-siberian is strangely similar to the time you spend at uni. You arrive all exited, a few butterflys in the stomach, and although your compartment (flat) mates aren't your cup of tea, there's some fellow maniacs down the carriage (hall) and you head straight to the bar (student union). Despite being the only dispensor of alcohol for 6200km (or the easiest to stumble home from), the drinks are amazingly cheap and you calculate that with the wad of rubles (student loan) in your pocket its going to be a good few days (years). You make a load of interesting new friends and everyone exclaims stuff like "five days on a train (university) which f***ing idiot would do this", knowing full well that we are those 'idiots' and this is a thinly veiled compliment to our own adventurousness.

The next few days (years) consist of sleeping, drinking, chatting and generally doing nothing and its only when you get off the train (finish uni) you realise how easy you just had it. In the back of your mind is the thought that maybe you should doing something a bit more productive with your time but you concede that even if you could you probably couldn't be arsed. By the 4th day (year) your considering maybe i should of got out at Irkuts (only done 3 years); the rubles are running low (your 3rd overdraft has just been maxed), your craving a healthier diet and theres only so long you can go without having a proper wash. However your happy with your decision to stay because spending 5days on a train (however long at uni) is definately one of the most stress free things you could ever do and when you finally get off (graduate) you realise how quickly the time flew. The essential difference is people read a lot more while on the train.

It was amazing how everyone on the train for the long haul adopted the same routine. You would sleep until the conductor in your carriage decided it was time to get on the decks and blare out her peculiar choice in music over the tannoy; classic 80's pop remakes with Russian lyrics to get you going in the morning. Then you would open the blind to check out the days scenery. Day 1 was lush green pastures, day 2 vast baron brown fields, day 3 a forest of huge pine trees, day 4 rolling mountains, rivers, and grazing livestock, day 5 the vast mountain openess of Mongolia. Each day the scenary remained remarkedly the same, punctuated by the occasional delapidated tin roofed bungalow and every 4/5 hours a large, ugly, grey Russian industrial town built in classic functional communist style yet seriously neglected since the rise of democracy. After taking a few photos you set about trying to wash yourself in a toilet the size of a portaloo with a sink and no hot water. I opted for filling a water bottle with boiling and cold water and pouring it over my head but many went for stewing in their own sweat.

Every 4/5 hours the train made one of its daily stops and the fun really began. A hoard of traders, mostly old women, lie in wait eager to provide you with supplies for the journey; vodka, beer, bread, freshly cooked potatos and chicken, dry fish (kerry managed to buy a raw one full of blood), noodles. It was disturbing to think that for these women their only income came from this 20minutes flurry of activity each day. After feasting on some random goodies it became time for a much deserved mid afternoon nap. Being on a train for 5 days is your only chance since uni to live like a lion and sleep for about 18hours a day so noones going to turn it down. Another cup of tea, a quick read, and your ready to return to the bar which sells alcohol at half the price of the cheapest place in Moscow; 1pound a beer, 1.20 a quadruple of vodka. Strangely you can only buy vodka in these 100ml measures or buy the half litre!

A couple of people bring their lonely planet guide to the trans-siberian for people to browse and its about as practical as any other lonely planet book. It gives you detailed information on every run down city you pass yet nothing about what its like on the train, what you might need, what facilities there are on board. Its like all those overhyped Premiership footballers that look good from a distance but lack any end product and demand an overinflated price for little substance, e.g Scott Parker, Craig Bellamy, Lucas Neill (in fact the whole West Ham team.) After checking the guidebook noone was any the wiser of where the hell we were along the route, the LP is in English and all the signs are in Cyrillic, so we get the beers in and sit around for about 5 hours like your in your local pub. You head back for a late night meal of noodles before nodding off, another day down.

Thats what the foreigners do anyway. To us its a big adventure, to the locals its the only available method of transport between point a and b. They look in bewilderment whenever someone gets their camera out. Imagine a bunch of foreigners on the Megabus to London eagaly snapping away at Spaghetti junction and the M25. Our first room mates were 2 Russian women, suprisingly friendly, who recalled all the English they could from their schooldays. Unfortunately they lefy after 24hours and we were joined by the quintisential Russian couple; in 3 days neither could muster a smile. What is it about Russia? Everyone looks like a Londoner does on the underground but for 24hours a day; glum, expressionless and irritated by the thought of having a conversation. Thats being kind, it would be a lot harsher if Kerry was writing this and not me.

There were a fair few characters on board, including a Swedish ex World rally car driver turned alcoholic, but i won't bore you with the details except for one - a Ukrainian called Vladimir, or Gurbanov as he liked to be called. This guy could seriously drink and had the bright red nose that accompanies all those that have devoted their lives to liquor. He was straight on the vodka and seemed to revel in trying to out drink everyone else, regularly invited people back to his cabin and cracking open another bottle from his stash. We started taking the piss out of him after finding him asleep in the restaurent cart blind drunk with his face in a bowl of borcht (beetroot stew with meat). Big mistake! Gurbanov spend the next 2 days trying to drink us into an alcoholically induced coma, the border guards saving our bacon by ordering everyone back to their cabins before anyone needed medical treatment. He even dropped his pants to the border guards, thinking it was a big wind up in his drunken stupor. What a legend! I hope we meet him again on our travels! 

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