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Don't do it mate ...
... Siberia ain't that badTo understand what life is like on the Trans-Siberian express it is first necessary to understand what the train is like. I'll first describe a second ("kupe") class carriage on train number 10, Moscow to Irkutsk. The carriage is divided into about seven compartments, each about 5.5 feet wide by 7 feet deep. The main space is taken up by four bunk beds, which double as seats during the day, and can be stowed against the carriage walls. Between the beds is a space of about 1.5 feet, and at the opposite end to the door is a small table about 1.5 feet square. A useful tip is that the lower bunks are a couple of inches larger in both dimensions than the upper bunks, so if you are a larger person go for the bottom if you can. Those who are a little timid when sleeping at altitude should know that a restraining brace is available for the upper bunks if needed.
Storage space is quite ample, except that much of it is taken up with woollen blankets. There is space under the lower beds and in the area above the corridor, accessible from the top bunks. Each bed
Leaving Moscow station
bound 5000+km to Irkutsk has an individual light. We had some nice dried flowers on our table.
Outside the corridor is about 1.5 feet wide, running the length of the carriage. There are small toilets at either end consisting of a simple sit-down loo that empties onto the track and a small wash-basin. On most trains these are the only places where one can ablute. However on the magnificent no 10 there is a shower (in our carriage in fact) which can be used for 120 roubles per hour (2.40gbp). At one end there are a couple of rooms for the attendants to do whatever they need to do - our Embassy friends travelling in first class immediately gave their attendant some cheap bubbly and so subsequently had access to her fridge (and possibly more) for the duration of the trip.
The most important item in the carriage is the samovar, which magically provides a constant stream of nearly boiling water (a little hotter than McDonalds coffee). This provides sustenance and hangover cures in the form of endless cups of tea, coffee and pots of noodles - my what taste sensations they can provide with powdered chemicals these days. A complex mechanical
Rapscallion
Listvyanka Market circuit diagram for the samovar is pinned on the adjacent wall to help deal with the unimaginable horror that would ensue following a samovar failure.
Windows are dirty and cannot be opened. This is partly so the train operators can inflict suffering in the form of intense heat and stale air, and also because the glass apparently falls out if you try to open them. This may be Russian urban myth to counter the fact that trains these days are overrun by well-prepared Brits carrying a British Gas key. As far as we could tell all the locks on the train, from windows to doors to the attendants chastity belts are all the same - a kind of triangular male protrusion that is the same size and shape as that used by British Gas for whatever it is they do these days. Such a key became essential when Sam and Paddy visited our cabin late one night after the Restaurant car had closed, for more beer, vodka and photo-ops, and then found they couldn't get back to their own carriage on account of locked Restaurant car doors.
An alternative to opening the windows is to bring along an
Train no 6
On the way to the Russian/Mongolian border from Ulan Ude extendible mop to perform cleaning operations from the platform. This was the approach the British Embassy staff took, and they gained several beers for professionally cleaning. I had to look up on google what a Head of Registry in a British Embassy actually does, and as far as I can tell cleaning windows seems to be an appropriate responsibility.
You can walk the length of the train through a windy set of doors between carriages, good for smoking, blowing away the cobwebs and core stability and balance excercises (physio joke). You will encounter first class, with a similar layout but only two (lower) bunks in the compartments, and perhaps a CCTVcamera for security. This is where you will find the embassy staff. You will encounter third class, which has some configuration of nine bunks to a room. Here you will encounter most of the Russians plus a few backpackers, desparately trying to learn and understand Russian on the fly. Those on our train loved the experience and recommended third class to everybody. Strangely third class also had a scrolling digital (red dot) display with the time and temperature displayed, just so you can't forget exactly how stupid you were
to board a train travelling for 78 hours and 5000km through Siberia. We've the same displays in peoples windows in some of the poorer looking dwellings along the way - maybe the shopping channel has reached Russia.
And finally, almost as important as the samovar, is the Restaurant car. Jokes of the "See you there at eight for cocktails" variety will abound on the first few days. The Restaurant car is perhaps the only place in your first few days in Siberia where you will experience any sense of space. Sure enough, as advertised, the menu is limited but adequate for the first night (actually the second as the train departed at 11.23pm), by the second night most things have run out, and by the third night you are limited entirely to the same instant noodles you diligently bought for yourself before embarking. The restaurant car may also be a source of entertainment - witness the young Russian laddie who was still hitting the vodka at breakfast on the first morning, whose "fight and flight" mechanism appeared a little overdeveloped when approached by the trains two (on-duty) police. He spent the rest of the day sitting handcuffed in their
cabin, two doors from ours, as they endlessly interrogated him about how his hangover was doing now, filling in reams of paperwork, and buying child-sized stuff bunny rabbits to keep him company until he could be handed over that evening.
At the back of the train you will find a very dirty window where you can look out wistfully at the disappearing civilisation behind you. I never made it to the front (kept getting stuck in the Restaurant car).
What about the passengers. On train number 10, and I guess most faster Moscow to Irtkutsk trains, there were a lot of Western Europeans. In this shoulder season most were on some form of shorter holiday, 2 - 3 weeks, and had booked through a travel agent in their country e.g. Russia Experience. We saved ourselves significant amounts of money by booking through Russian travel agents, but we had to invest a lot of time (the 80/20 rule applies here - we spent most time looking for a good place in Moscow and in the end stayed at the first place we found) and we probably didn't see quite as much in Irkutsk/Listvyanka. Other passengers were mainly Russian. Our
first twenty four hours, to the city of Perm, just west of the Urals, was shared with a solitary Russian. He entered our carriage and sat on the bottom bunk in an almost Buddhist pose of concetration and rest. This wordless state continued for at least an hour, when he went to bed. He arose at midday the next day and started reading a book on philosophy in Russian (the "Philosophy" bit was in English). This alternated with more sleep and trips to the platform at stops, where he stood staring, talking to no-one. At Perm he left us as he arrived. Our sole conversation in this time had been when he first arrived - "Vodka?", "Niet". Following his departure we enjoyed the compartment to ourselves, which was really quite comfortable considering.
We were a little surprised at the absence of longer-term backpackers (the only other two we were aware of were in third class so we didn't meet them until by chance in Irkutsk). Maybe in the summer season there are more. It is quite heartening that so many people are choosing to spend three weeks crossing the Asian continent on a train for their summer holidays. Our
Shopping ...
... during a 22 minute stop. Swiss friends (see below) that had stopped regularly between Moscow and Irkutsk, and hence been forced to take more local trains, had not come across another Westerner in the whole time.
What about the food. The restaurant car has a selection of noodles, crips, chocolates, water, alcoholic drinks of all kinds, all at reasonable prices. You may want to bring a few of your own just in case. At the station stops, the longest of which was 25 minutes, you may well be able to buy a variety of things from traders e.g. water, beer, boiled eggs, odd Russian pastries, ciggys, noodles, but the amount and quality of what is on offer varies. It is probably best to have enough to get by, and then supplement this as availability allows. The stations also allow chance to stretch legs, cool down a bit and realise how depressing Russia really is.
And the scenery ? Well I can't help but say it was a little disappointing. There were very few occasions where there were no signs of man's activity - I guess because the maintenance of the Railway itself requires this. There were very few areas of wild open steppe
that we could see. Mostly it was trees, most of which were the rather pretty silver birch kind. As it was Spring much of the land was covered in water from melted snow, so there were some delightful reflections to be seen in what I presume turn into summer meadows in a month or so. Second most common in view was some kind of industry, coal mines, silos and smokestacks to make Fred Dibnah proud (or was that Tallin) and finally houses - before the Urals a lot of shabby stone and brick, and after the Urals more shabby wooden and twee. To be fair we travelled through the most picturesque sections (the Urals and the approach to Irkutsk) at night, and we are expecting the next section, from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude and into Mongolia, to be much more interesting.
On the whole the experience was quite pleasurable. Lie-ins were of course the order of the day, borrowing from Dunbar's observation that time passes more slowly when you are bored, and as he wants to live as long as possible he had better spend a lot of time lying down doing nothing. On our first day we relished
the fact we weren't tramping miles and miles along city streets, on the second day we had gotten into the swing of chilling, but by the third day my legs and buttocks had started to cramp up, through inactivity I hasten to say, so sitting and lying became unfeasible and I had to stand up for much of the day. The regular clocking up of time zones also aided the lie-in. The train stays on Moscow time, whilst Irkutsk is 5 hours ahead (8 hours ahead of GMT), so the civilized waking time of 10.00am quickly became 12.00pm, then 1.00pm and finally 2.00pm local time. On the final night we tried to switch to train-time, to fool our bodies into thinking we would get off the train at 9.30am and not 4.30am, but the move backfired - neither of us slept on the last night and we wandered into Irkutsk tired and with atrophied muscles from the days of inactivity.
Irkutsk manages to be both bustling and sleepy, elegant and dishevelled. It is quite a large city but the centre, boarded by the river, takes about half an hour to cross by foot. Legions of cars race around the
Sunset
From the grotty back of the train city streets as they might do in Moscow or St Petersburgh, but on this May holiday the young are lazing around the city parks, beers in hand, or congregating in romantic trysts along the predestrianised river banks. Elegant modern architecture is intermingled with traditional Siberian wooden houses, an enchanting design whose appeal is added to by the enhanced state of dilapedation, with whole houses sometimes leaning at alarming angles. When we arrived in Irkutsk I thought "oh dear" but the place grew on me despite the lack of attractions, and I was a little sad ot leave.
The same could be said of Listvyanka, a small fishing/tourist village on Lake Baikal, about 70km from Irkutsk. It is far from the prettiest of places and there are not a lot of obvious attractions, although I suspect the more adventurous and imaginative would find plenty to occupy them. Had we more time I would have gladly lazed in the morning sunshine, equipped with wooly hats and duvet jacket, on the veranda of our brick built homestay. This was the only brick building on our street, set back in a forested valley 600m up from the lake ( If anyone is heading
Kim at Omsk station
It's fascinating this, isn't it! that way we can highly recommend this place - it is about 50m uphill from the art museum, on the left - the number 69 should be easy to remember but there are no B&B signs. The owner doesn't speak English but is very good at miming).
We had left Irkutsk that morning by local bus, having booked a ticket the day before through the expedient of Kim writing what we need in Russian and handed it to the clerk. On the bus we met a Swiss couple, Brigitte and Nico, an we swapped stories. They had some good ones - having taken mainly local trains from Moscow they had not spoken to Westerners for several weeks. They made us extremely envious with their tale of an adventurous trip to the North end of Lake Baikal on the BAM railway. They had gone "on-spec" but came across an elderly gentleman who was trying to open the area up for tourism. After realising they were made of sterner stuff than a simple trip to the local hot springs, he sent them on a trip to some other hot springs, 50km on the other side of the frozen lake. They skiied
across in a long day, stayed overnight with a fisherman and then took two days skiing back, camping on the ice in the middle of the lake (remembering this is the start of May). When we met them they were stiff and in recovery, whereas we were stiff from inactivity. We spent an enjoyable day with them, wandering through the forests and village by the frozen lake.
Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake on the planet (at least as far as can be measured I guess) and the largest body of freshwater in the world, accounting for 20% of the world's total. For much of the year it is frozen, and provides a convenient roadway for the locals. Apparently every spring a number of cars go through the ice (around fifty was the figure mentioned) as the fishermen push their luck with nature. They know how to get out of a sinking car and so normally survive, but not always.
Whilst the North end of the lake was several metres thick with ice, the Southern end was melting an no longer strong enough to walk on. However it was still too thick for most fishing boats, so
the only vessels crossing the lake were the local hovercraft and the local ferry, which ploughed across the mouth of the ice-free river from Irkutsk. Our first sight of the vast expanse of frozen water was quite breathtaking, the first time I have ever seen such a sight. In some ways the emptiness was reminiscent of the vast salt-pans of Namibia. On the far shore the snow-capped peaks of some respectably high mountains could be seen.
Fishing doubles with tourism in Listvyanka. Trans-siberian travellers mingle with weekending locals from Irkutsk. The area is vastly underexploited given its potential, but they have managed to install a chairlift and build a half-decent piste. The daily market is small but quite fascinating. Smoked Baikal fish is the order of the day, and the smoke wafts over the local craft sellers, as they idly hawk their wares. I was really quite taken by some of the carved stone, rich in multicoloured mineral veins - goblet sets, wild animals (often African!?!), deities and even the occasional phallus; Siberia is a wealth of mineral resource and this shows in the variety and quality of what is on offer. My favourite's were the white polar bears,
I dunno, should we arrest him?
He says he has diplomatic immunity. speckled with grey slate - a rock I have never seen before, unless it was on show in the coffee rooms of the Geology Department on Downing street. Sadly both the weight and the price were on the high side for my taste.
We spent a late night with Paddy and Sam, Nico and Briggite, in two small portacabin style local bars by the market and next morning waited in the sunshine for a lift back to Irkutsk, watching the weekenders prowling the stalls. After a pleasant drive in a minivan back to the city (200 roubles down from 600 - the real price is 120 but we were the only two in the van and he took us to our door) I spent an hour and a half tackling Russian bureaucracy in Alfa Bank. I was told time and time again I had to go to Moscow to close the account, but I persisted and eventually the solution became clear to them - after two months inactivity they would stop charging me and another period the account would close automaticallly. This was another example of the inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes - something rather too
common in Russia. Both the phonebank operator and the clerk in the bank spoke excellent English, and both were trying to be helpful. I had explained my position and hence what I needed and why I needed it, but only after a lot of repeating myself did the penny drop with them, at which point everything was simplicity itself.
That evening we met Paddy and Sam again for a cheap meal and a gentle stroll through the crowded parks across the river to an island with open air discos and beertents, to watch the holidaying Russians strut their stuff to a selection of Western tunes.
Train No 6, direct from Moscow to Ulaan Baatar, was an altogether different affair to the rather exlusive Train No 10. No 6 is th engine behind the Mongolian trade route with Russia, and was full of Mongolian enterpeneurs and their wares. Our cabin contained two Mongolian women as well as a mountain of shoes, jeans, dental needles and toilet seats. Over the course of the morning we asserted ourselves and found space for our kit, and also realised they were squatters. In fact mopst rooms booked by the horde of westerners rejoining
The art museum, Irkutsk
The alarming tilt of the lamps is not due to the wide-angle lens - it really was like that. in Irkutsk contained squatters, even those in first class. Most were duly throw out and had to return to their own apartments, which then led to the restaurant car and the corridors filling up with their wares. The strangest object I saw in transit was a mannequin torso, lying on the bed in someones room. The mongols were also putting their standard issue keys to great use, opening windows and locking toilets after use (or unlocking them when you were using them).
The scenery between Irkutsk and Ulaan UIde was a definite improvement, as we skirted the southern shores of the frozen Lake Baikal. The low sun bouced off the smooth white ice-sheet so that looking out of that side of the train was like staring into searchlights. On the other side we passed through rolling, forested hills with snow-caps in the distance. After Ulan Ude, where the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostock branches with the Trans-Mongolian, the scenery became much drier, browner and more barren, almost what I had expected of Siberia.
As we approached the Russian-Mongolian border the train errupted into activity as the Mongolians moved both boxes and people around. Exiting Russia seemed to pass relatively quietly
Pleasant church, Irkutsk
I particularly liked it because it had three bits. for the Westerners, perhaps as there were four embassy passports on board. Some of the Mongolians faired worse however, having their entire cabins ripped to pieces. There was a four hour delay on the Russian side in which the trains toilets couldn't be used, but thankfully for much of it we could stand on the platform, sipping beer and chewing the cud, occasionally venturing into the worst toilets in the world for necessary relief. There was then a slow hour of chugging before reaching the Mongolian border, where the process was repeated, albeit with less severe and more friendly looking autocrats. One set of our squatter's dental needles was discovered which led to much wailing, begging and bargaining - where the other hundred boxes had disappeared to I've no idea. It took about an hour and a half to get through the Mongolian border, after which more intensive activity erupted as boxes and people were rearranged again. This lasted for about two hours until at about 2.00am a different squatter appeared in our apartment and got an earful from yours truly. One day we'll get a train that arrives at lunchtime so we can have a lie-in.
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anonymous
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WOW, sounds like your having fun, love the picture of the frozen lake. Still sorting through my own pictures, taking a long time. Have fun Matthew - Matthew Schurch