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Published: June 25th 2011
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Having arrived in Beijing, we have now completed the Trans-Mongolian railway journey. Officially from Moscow to Beijing (or vice versa), we also did two additional train legs by starting off in St. Petersburg and also by visiting Tomsk, which was a 79km detour off the mainline.
Including the days that we spent in St. Petersburg at the beginning, we took a total of 34 days to complete the whole trip. We travelled 8,015km on eight different trains and spent eight nights sleeping whilst on the move. Along the way we visited ten different towns and cities, saw an amazing range of landscapes and met loads of interesting people.
Hopefully everything that we have written to date is a detailed and interesting account of the places that we visited and the people that we met long the way - but what about the journey as a whole? The highs, the lows, the trains and any nuggets of advice for any person wishing to follow in our footsteps?
The highs were plentiful: the Hermitage and Peterhof in St Petersburg; the classical sights of the Kremlin and St Basils Cathedral in Moscow; the general feel of the city just wondering
around Moscow; the singing monks of Suzdal; the gorgeous Lake Baikal; our Golden Gobi tour in Mongolia and the fellow travellers that we shared our journey with.
Allowing for the cold in St. Petersburg and having to visit the dentist in UB, the lows were largely confined to the culinary world. The overall quality of food in Russia still managed to disappoint despite us knowing before we set off that it was not going to be great. Aside from that, the architecture of Russia and Mongolia felt tired and run down after years of neglect - with the result being that, away from the headline acts, the sights were not so aesthetically pleasing.
The trains themselves were better than expected and got better as we headed east, with the exception of the Red Arrow which was probably our best train. We always found the trains nice and tidy, had fresh bed linen each time we boarded and had a plentiful supply of hot water for our noodles. In terms of the toilets, the downside had to be that they flushed straight onto the tracks. This meant that you could not use the toilets whilst the train was stopped
at stations and also that sometimes you somehow managed to get splash back off the tracks - hopefully from your flush and not from the person one carriage further along.
The quality of travel between the different classes was also not as significant as you might expect. The beds were as comfortable between second and third class, the main difference between the two being that in second class you had the benefit of having a door that you could close - which was nice on the longer journeys.
The smoothness of travel noticeably increased when we entered into China. Somebody on board told us that this was because that in China the end of each individual length of track has a rounded end, instead of square ends. This meant there was less of the
:"clickity-clack clickity-clack" as you travelled along and also that we had the best night's sleep on the UB to Beijing train.
Another thing that is worth saying is the strange feeling of disorientation that you get along the journey. Overall we found travelling around very easy (both on and off the trains), but because we were steadily heading east and crossing time zones
every 12-18 hours it meant that you still got jet-lag, albeit in slow motion.
The confusion of it all was confounded by the fact that all train times (and the times of stops detailed on posters in the carriages) are all stated in Moscow time. In Siberia you are seven hours ahead of Moscow, so when you board the train in Irkutsk at a stated time of 14:15 you get on and have your dinner. Then when it gets to 17:00 you are thinking about bed. Admittedly it is not rocket science, but it takes a bit of getting your head around - especially when you don't know what time zone you are in.
In terms of stopping off points along the journey, we would probably say we that we stopped off in too many places. It was nice to stop off in different places and see more of what you could coin
"Real Russia", however it was tiring doing so many stops when you are hopping on and off trains every day or two.
Some of the places that we got off also didn't necessarily deserve a stop. Tomsk for instance is described by the Lonely
Planet as
"the most likeable city in Siberia". It was this description that persuaded us to make the stopover, but it is a relative statement and without having been to Siberia before it is difficult to fully interpret the meaning. What it missed was that it is the most likeable city in Siberia,
"but still isn't all that good" or
"which isn't saying much". That said, other people we saw loved it - so it really is each to their own.
Also down to personal preference is the direction of travel, i.e. whether you do the whole journey west to east as we did, or from Beijing back to Europe. In this regard there are probably two worthy points of note.
Firstly, most Russian cities have their own cathedrals and kremlins. Heading west to east you have already seen the best examples of these in St. Petersburg and Moscow and therefore the rest don't seem quite so impressive, like looking at the painted ceiling of a local church days after having visiting the Cistine Chapel. This is a shame as, with hindsight and after reviewing photos that we did take, some of the smaller churches were still splendid
in their own ways.
The second point is that the west to east route is more popular and hence you meet more people travelling in the same direction. It really was great having the chance to arrange meeting up with people at different places en route up, not to mention the repeated chance encounters with other random travellers such as our trio of Germans. It really did add to the overall experience and the effect of it is only amplified by the fact that there are only two trains from UB to Beijing each week. This creates a bottleneck and means that everybody is concentrated onto these two trains. As a great example of this, 90% of the people in our carriage on our final leg to Beijing were fellow travellers.
Rating the entire Trans-Mongolian, we would say that it was a great experience and a fantastic way to get to Asia. There is so much to see along the way that will have created lasting memories. So many things that you will not see anywhere else, and a number of things that will sadly not likely be the same in the future after development and mainstream tourism take over.
Are we likely to ever make the journey again? Probably not - it's a journey you do once and the savour the memory. However, if you're interested in following in our footsteps we would offer these words of wisdom:
1 - consider carefully where you stop off in-between the main attractions. You don't have to stop off everywhere, but it is worth breaking up the trip a little a long the way;
2 - if you like a good pillow (or even two), then bring along your own travel pillow. Pillows are provided on all the trains, but they are a bit on the skinny side;
3 - if you're going for the self-catering option on the train then really have a think before hand of things other than noodles that you can eat. The best supermarkets in Russia are in Nizhny (Rich's opinion), but there's plenty of choice of noodles and smash based meals everywhere. If you can, try and be innovative; and finally
4 - a bottle of Tabasco gets you all the way through the journey, but a jar of Nutella only lasts as far as Mongolia.
The sights and sound,
smells and tastes of Beijing and China beckon now. All of that, and more, to come later on...
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