Trans Mongolian Part 1. China the slow way.....
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2008
1
5
29
Trip End
Apr 01, 2009
Omsk,
Siberia,
Russian Federation
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Our bad luck continues in Moscow.....
In the hours before the train departed we just needed to find a supermarket to buy the supplies we'd need for the journey. Not such a challenge you'd think, this is a huge city and the locals must buy their stuff somewhere?
So we got to the station, left our bags in the left luggage and set off up the (pretty major) road from the station. We walked for 20 minutes and passed nothing but hot-dog stands and banks. Seriously, if you want a hot-dog or to change money, go to Moscow.
Then we found it 'Cash-and-Carry' in big neon lights
Waiting at the (right!) station
! If this place were in England it'd be shut down for false advertising. It was a bookshop, a very small bookshop. I guess technically you pay in cash and then carry your book out, but seriously.....
So we turned around, we walked back on ourselves. I've abridged this section for reasons of monotony, but we looked for a good 2 hours before stumbling upon a cavernous underground shop selling......crockery!
This was ok, we needed mugs and cutlery and loo-roll so we snapped these up. After some confusion where they tried to make me pay 6 pounds for 2 AA batteries we left and decided we were not going to find Sainsbury's or Tesco's and settled for a little shop that consisted of several counters. Behind each counter was a lady, and behind each lady were all the things that were going to see us through the next 6 days - we just didn't know how to ask for them!
But the international language of pointing saw us through, we bought crisps, coffee, instant noodles, cakes, croissants.....we'd done it!
We're going to NEKNH!
We turned left out of the pointy-market to go up to an internet cafe we'd found earlier in the day.
And there is was. Not Sainsbury's or Tesco's, but a HUGE underground russian supermarket.
Gutted, we went in and added Vodka, water and fruit to our stash.
And then it was time to get the train.
The departure hall is more like that of an airport, except you don't check-in. You just sit around and watch the big screen and wait for your train to be assigned a platform. We sat there, surrounded by Chinese and Russians with an average of perhaps 6 bags each that stacked higher than themselves. We wondered which of these would be our cabin-mates, and how on earth would we fit all that stuff in and still leave space to move!?!
40 minutes before departure time we set off to platform 4 to find carriage 6. Happily carriage 6 was just 4 from the back, we handed our tickets to the conductor and he ushered us passed the 3 people trying to board with a dog
The Start!
!Oh well, we thought, if there's 3 of them they probably won't be in our cabin. Not sure 6 days in a small room with a dog would be that enjoyable.
As it turned out no-one joined us in our cabin before we departed. It was late so we lay down to sleep, expecting to be joined at one of the over-night stations. The train rocked us to sleep.
We had been lucky, not only had we not been joined in the night so had a cabin to ourselves, but we had been thrown together not with over-baggaged natives, but an entire carriage of people of almost exactly the same age, who all spoke English (we hadn't really spoken to anyone in English since leaving Warsaw!)
The carriage we were in was a bit like a meeting of the United Nations, there were representatives from Australia, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Belgium and Romania and of course ourselves. The first day was spent meeting, chatting and learning, then forgetting, then finally remembering a dozen or so new names and faces, our companions for the next 5 days.
It would be fair to say that you don't take the travel by train for the cordon-bleu cuisine. Your options are as follows:
-Whatever you bought with you, that cannot be refrigerated i.e no meat, cheese, milk or the like.
Stopped
-The Restaurant car, which is provided by whichever country you are travelling through. Russia is known for many things, it's cuisine is not one of them, chicken kiev excepted. There was no chicken kiev on the menu.-The hawkers at the station. This is a bit of a lottery, some stations great-meatballs and potato, fresh(ish) bread and cheap beer. Other stations just smoked fish, nothing but smoked fish!!!
With this knowlege we, as previously mentioned, stocked up in Moscow. There is a 24hr supply of boiling water on-board so pot-noodles (or at least their russian equivalent) make a great option!
On the afternoon of day two we excitedly took our 'pot noodles' to to the samovar, as the hot water boiler is known. We slowly peeled back the lid to find not noodles, as expected, but two packets-one plastic and one foil. Ok, we thought, we must've bought soup instead.
Not so. Packet A contained not flavouring, but meat in gravy, the kind of thing you feed to a cat. Oh well, it can't taste as bad as the restaurant car looks we thought, so into the pot it went.
Packet B contained what can only be described as dust. Mix it with water and it'll disolve into the soup. For the second time, not so. We filled the water mid way and the dust instantly solidified, this wasn't soup, it was mashed potato!
When the pot mash had reached the desired consistancy we retired to our cabin to devour our delicacy. It was fine, the meat was...interesting, but the potato was nice and actually we were happy to know we weren't limited to 6 days of noodles.
The scenery throughout this section of Russia isn't particularly exceptional, but the first full day flew by through a variety of chess and cards and the boys saw out the night playing poker for the high stakes of 10 roubles (less than 20p). Having taken an early lead I returned to bed empty handed....
