Trains

So we’ve arrived in Moscow after a mammoth 83 hour train journey from Irkutsk. It took us through Siberia and over the Europe-Asia continental divide. There is an obelisk next to the track marking the divide which we couldn’t see because it was 3am!

Crossing the continental divide in the dark:

What the obelisk would have looked like during the day… in winter (taken from our guide book!)

During the journey totalling over 5000km, each of the (~1 metre diameter) wheels of the train rotated about 1.5 million times, that’s a lot of revolutions!

This has been our longest individual train journey ever (our Canada trip was split into two train journeys taking two days each). It’s been pretty much as fun as living, eating and sleeping in a small room for 4 days can be (without a games console). Having said that, Laura’s been putting a in lot of hours driving trains in Zelda on the DS during the trip – it turns out that not only does the microphone not respond very well to you actually blowing into it (as required by the game) but it also often mistakes the general noise of the train for being blown into which has made some parts of the game near impossible (but has only made Laura more determined, if a little light headed)! Apart from that we’ve been reading and watching the scenery go past. The views from the train haven’t been as spectacular as those in Canada but have certainly been worth taking the trip for.

In the countryside it’s mainly flat or rolling hills with forests and lots of cute wooden houses with brightly painted shutters, impressive vegetable patches, and sometimes enormous satellite dishes on the side. We’ve been stopping in towns of varying sizes along the way where people try to sell you junk food or fish (I’m really not sure what we’re meant to do with a fish on the train but someone must think it’s a good idea because sometimes they’re the ONLY thing available from the platforms).

The guide book told us to expect people selling cooked russian food like potato bread on the platforms at every stop but we’ve only seen that once so it’s a good job we didn’t rely on it. The restaurant car exists and has an extensive menu featuring many dishes from all around the world which they hand to you when you sit down. The waiter then leaves you for a few minutes to choose what you want to eat before telling you that it isn’t available and that you might prefer one of the three things which are available instead. We went through this ritual twice!

The Restaurant car

Getting between the carriages was a little crazy!

All the trains have a constant supply of boiling water provided by some seriously old school technology (coal fired samovars) which we’ve been using to heat up different types of pot noodle from each country we’ve been in. The results of our extensive testing are that Mongolian and Russian ones taste pretty much exactly like chicken and mushroom pot noodles (whichever of the many available brands or flavours you eventually decide to try) whereas the Chinese ones are all really spicy (whichever brand or flavour you go for). We’ve also been making oatmeal for breakfast and drinking a lot of tea (without milk).

A coal fired samovar

Noodle-tactic!

Outside our cabin

The Russian towns and cities we’ve been through along the way have been interesting. They all seem to have a lot of derelict old buildings and bits of machinery that look like they haven’t been used for decades just dotted around amongst the functional buildings. I guess they’re throwbacks from the communist era. Another one is that there only seem to be about 6 types of operational trains in Russia, one for each decade as the government would pick one and order loads of them every now and again.

We’ve experienced 1st, 2nd and 3rd class train travel so far on this trip. First and second were both great – though we did cheat in second class and buy tickets for all four of the bunks in our cabin – that’s still cheaper than first class and pretty much the same as you’re not sharing. Though you do get people trying to bribe their way past the train guard and into your cabin a lot when you have spare bunks (regardless of whether you’ve paid for them or not). Especially just after the passport checks at the borders!

Third class in China was quite an experience and we enjoyed it a lot though it would have been a lot harder without the guide explaining what’s going on for us! Also, as the carriages are just split into compartments rather than cabins they have an enforced lights out at 10pm. I tried reading past this time using a small torch and was told off by the carriage guard! Talking also isn’t allowed. This would be ok if you were then left in peace to sleep, except the guard then walks down the carriage every twenty minutes making noise and shining their torch in everybody’s faces to make sure they’re not breaking the rules…so if you are woken up easily like me then you just end up lying awake for hours unable to do anything for fear of being told off by the guard who’s shining a torch in your face, or will be soon!

One of the train based highlights was ‘changing the bogeys’ at the China-Mongolia border where they split the train up and lift each carriage off it’s runners and then switch them for ones with differently spaced wheels before reassembling the train (confusingly, in a different order!)

For some reason all the trains in Russia work on Moscow time so even though our train departed at the respectable 6.10pm from Irkutsk it actually departed at the not so respectable 11.10pm.

We arrived into Moscow at the equally bad 4.40am and as it’s Moscow there was no time zone change to save us. So right now we’re sitting in the train station waiting room waiting for something to open or for it to get light so we can walk to our hotel and drop our bags off.