Trans-Siberian Excess

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Trip Start Mar 27, 2008 Previous
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  Moscow, Central Russia, Russian Federation
Sunday, June 15, 2008

More than 130 rivers flow into Lake Baikal but only one flows out, the Angara. This is the river that the train followed as we left Irkutsk and headed West towards Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg, and Gorky. Moscow is more than 5,500km, and four days and nights away on the train......
Provodnitsas look after the carriages. You will meet your provodnitsa before you board the train. She (and it's almost always a she) is the one that checks your ticket and passport before you can climb aboard. They are dressed in uniform, and on a long-haul train like this there are two per carriage, each working a 12 hour shift. When they finish a shift though, off comes the uniform and on comes civilian clothing. One of our provodnitsas looks as though she's just left a night club, whilst the other prowls the corridors in a leopard-skin print dressing gown. When the train stops, the provodnitsa from the next carriage is regularly seen down on the platform dressed in pyjamas, dressing gown, and curlers, having a fag. The most important thing to realise here is that the carriage you ride in, and the compartment you live in doesn't belong to the railway company at all - everything is the personal property of the provodnitsas, a fact you must never forget.
Living Accommodation on the train depends on how much money you're willing to pay. In 1st class there are two berths (bunk beds) to a compartment, in 2nd class (Kupeny) there are four. Luggage is stored under the bottom bunks, and above the door.

Trans Siberian Express at Krasnoyarsk

This is how the three of us traveled to Moscow, sharing a compartment - we were the only non-Russians on the train. The provodnitsa issues sheets, a pillow case and towel when you board. You will use this lot for the duration of your journey, whether it's 7 days from Moscow to Vladivostok or 7 hours from Moscow to St Petersburg.
3rd Class (Plaskarteny) is something else again. The carriages don't have compartments - they are open dormitories that sleep around 50 people per carriage. They look a little bit like something out of a refugee camp, with clothing strung up between bunks, babies crying and kids tearing up and down the aisle.
Life on the train quickly falls into a rhythm, mainly based around filling in the time (which is something you have plenty of). There are a couple of stops a day when you can get off and stretch your legs, but most of the time is spent reading, sleeping, or watching Russia slide past the window. The rest of the time is spent dragging out the simplest of tasks to fill in time: eg 1/2 hour to make a Pot Noodle (and another 1/2 hour to eat it), 1/2 hour for a cup of tea, 1/2 hour to clean your teeth, etc. This all takes place against a background of iffy Russian pop music, piped into your compartment courtesy of the provodnitsa.
One diversion is the constant stream of hawkers, who ride the train for a while and walk up and down the corridors peddling their wares. There are lots of things on offer, including books to read (in Russian naturally), fox furs, and the ubiquitous Russian hats.

Provodnitsa

No takers for anything in our compartment, but the little girl next door was kitted out with a hand-knitted yellow poncho and matching hat.
You can also entertain yourself by counting down the distance left to go to Moscow using the Kilometre marker posts at the side of the tracks, and there are also landmarks to look out for. There's the obelisk marking the Europe-Asia border for example (which we passed at 3 o'clock in the morning while we were asleep), or the "obelisk" marking the half-way point between Moscow and Beijing - this turned out to be nothing more than a big stick.
Time is another thing to get your head round on the train. Russia spans 11 time zones and the train crosses them at regular intervals. Traveling from East to West you have to put your watch back regularly, which means that there are no 24 hour days - they last either 25 or 26 hours depending on where you are. 
In San Francisco I bought a PDA to keep myself organised, and it displays the time in three different time zones. On the train I had them set to London time, Moscow time (all trains in Russia run to Moscow time, even if they are several time zones away. If they didn't the whole system would collapse), and local time. The last one is where it gets tricky as local cities aren't options to choose from on my PDA, plus Russia is on daylight saving time at the moment which shifts the time one zone East. This means that Irkutsk is on Tokyo time, Krasnoyarsk=Beijing, Novosibirsk=Bangkok, Omsk=Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Perm=Karachi, Pakistan.

Samovar - more than 80 different parts

When you get to Kirov you're on Dubai time, which at this time of the year is the same as Moscow. Confused? Believe me, it's worse when you're living it............
Locked toilets can be a source of angst (and worse if you're not careful). The provodnitsas lock the toilets about 1/2 hour before the train stops at a station. They stay locked for up to 1/2 hour after it sets off again, and also at other times, eg when the provodnitsas are changing shift. I can cope with this most of the time, just by reading the timetable and planning ahead, but you can't do this when you've just woken up......
On Thursday morning I woke up needing to pay a visit, but we were a couple of minutes after lock-down. 1/2 hour later the train stopped in the city of Novosibirsk and I made a dash for the toilets in the main station building, which turned out to be absolutely huge. I eventually found them and ran to the door - which of course was locked. Curses! Cue a mad dash back to the train (you really don't want to miss it and be left behind in the middle of Siberia), where I stood on the platform shuffling from foot to foot like a demented sumo wrestler.
Food is a major item on a journey like this, as buying, preparing and eating it is a welcome diversion from the journey itself. I bought some basic supplies in Irkutsk, including lots of noodle based meals (at the end of each carriage is a samovar, which delivers boiling water on tap), Chinese dried fruit, and a couple of packets of dried perch, which were delicious, but stank the compartment out.

Dining car, Trans Siberian Express

There's a dining car, and when the train stops you can also buy food from the babushkas who sell it on the platform. This can be a bit hit or miss though, as they sell different things at different stations (in Kirov there was no food whatsoever, only cuddly toys) and you have to buy stuff when you can get it. This can result in some pretty strange meals - one night I dined on monkey nuts, apricots, hard boiled eggs (still warm), gherkins, a sugar bun and a banana. Lovely.
The scenery is much of a muchness at first glance (forests and yet more forests, with a bit of steppe thrown in), but if you look closely there are a number of changes as you move West. The countryside becomes a little less wild as you leave Eastern Siberia, and you can also see the seasons change each day. In Mongolia a couple of weeks ago it was still early spring, with vivid green leaves on the trees, but going West it changed from Spring to Summer within 4 days - so I didn't lose a Summer in Chile after all.
Keeping clean can be a bit of a challenge on the train. There are no showers, and the taps in the toilets can only be turned on by pushing on a little lever underneath, and the sinks are tiny, making it practically impossible to wash your hair. The only hot water available is from the samovar, but you need to be careful - I was getting hot water one evening, when the train started to go round a bend and I lost my balance. I was stripped to the waist, and ended up staggering backwards into the provodnitsas' compartment, and practically sat on her lap. She wasn't happy.
When we finally arrived in Moscow, my number one priority was to have a shower. The place I was staying had a fantastic one, complete with built-in FM radio - over the years I may have had a better shower, but I honestly can't remember when................. 

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Our compartment, Trans Siberian Express	Buying provisions, Omsk	Trans Siberian Express at Novosibirsk	Moscow Subway
Kremlin and St Basil's from Moscow River bridge	The Kremlin from Moscow River bridge	Stop!!	View from my room, Moscow
St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow	Kremlin and Moscow River	Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow	Lenin Mausoleum, Red Square
Men behaving strangely, Moscow

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