Train Travel

Back on the train from Irkutsk to Ulaan Baator, Mongolia. If Irkutsk is a frontier town, the scenery to the border with Mongolia and through Mongolia is definitely wild west ranch country. It's like passing through 1890s western USA, just with less buffalo to shoot. I see lots of grassy plains, rocky deserts, herds of wild horses, cows and sheep.

Loading up at Irkutsk, I find I am sharing a 4 bunk cabin with one other person, a man around my age who speaks no English. Next to us is an incredibly drunk young Mongolian guy, who is bouncing off the walls he is so drunk. The train attendant is not amused with his disruptive behavior, so she locks him in his cabin for the night.

I also meet Alexei from Mondolva (a former Russian territory near Romania). He speaks some English, so we spent a few hours talking.

On our way to the border crossing at Naushki, Russia, my cabin mate and the drunk Mongolian from the night before enter the cabin and shut and lock the door. From under their shirts, they pull out 3 half-liter cans of beer, and offer one to me. Apparently they have locked the door because they are afraid of getting caught by the train attendant, who already has a dim view of the Mongolian fellow. I pop open the top of the beer.

Through a little English that the Mongolian speaks and the little Russian I know, plus a lot of hand signals and drawing of pictures, I find out the following information about the two. The Mongolian is called Soonay (not sure on the spelling) and is studying in Irkutsk. He is studying to be a police officer. The Russian (who I am sharing the cabin with) is called Alex. He operates a gold digging machine in Mongolia, and is from a town in South-west Russia.

We arrive at Naushki, where we have to wait for the train to arrive from Mongolia, which will hook up our car and take us to Ulaan Baator. We are allowed off the train in this small town. Cows roam the streets. There isn't much to do, so Russian Alex and Soonay grab more beers. As we are sitting in the sun, drinking and waiting, Alex pulls up his pant leg to reveal a wicked scar on his knee. "Chechnya," he explains, and mimes that he also got shot in the shoulder. He was in the hospital for 13 weeks before he was discharged, and that's when he went to school and learnt geography and became a gold digging machine operator.

Russia is such a big country, it's easy to forget as you pass through it that things are pretty unstable down in the Balkans. Just before I arrived in Russia, there was a large battle fought in one of the Balkan states.

We wait in the sun, and drink a few more rounds. Finally the train arrives, and we get back on and clear Russian customs. I am unsure how to fill out the form, especially the "Printed Materials or Other Purveyors of Information." I have a few books, does this count? I decide to put no. It's also weird having to put down how much money you have. It feels a little like you are just telling them how much the bribe should be.

We then move 21 km south, entering Mongolia and arriving at Sukhbaator, where we clear Mongolian customs. After another hour, we finally start moving, 8 hours after arriving at the border, and we've managed to move 21 kms. It's late, I'm tired and I know we arrive in Ulaan Baator at 6 am. I'm ready for bed. Just then, Alex and Soonay enter the cabin and pull three cups and a 2 L bottle of beer from under their shirts. It's going to be a long night...

It's good to be off the train. Irkutsk, Russia has a feeling of a wild west town. Siberia has often seen itself as Russia's answer to the USA's wild west. Siberia is the wild east of Russia. There are lots of little wooden cabins lining big streets. I kept expecting Black Bart to step out and challenge me to a shoot out.

I only had a day here, which I spent wandering around. The weather was beautiful for Siberia for this time of year. The sun was shining and the temperature was around 11 degree Celsius.

I'd love to spend more time here. Irkutsk is a great gateway to the Lake Baikal region. Lake Baikal holds one fifth of all the fresh water in the world, more than Canada / USA's great lakes combined. Lake Baikal is small, only a 100 miles or so across, but is very deep, up to 2 kilometers in some points. Lake Baikal was formed as two continental plates have pulled apart slowly. Eventually, these plates will pull completely apart and separate Asia by a newly formed ocean. Does this mean that if I had waited a couple million of years, I could have done 3 continents on this trip?

Next up, heading South towards Mongolia. Senor Lenin, which way is that?

"Aficionados of going nonstop from Moscow ... compare it to being on a sea voyage or having a beach holiday indoors. It's a chance to catch up on sleep and reading, perhaps sharpen your card playing skills with fellow passengers, while the landscape unreels in cinematic slow motion outside."

So says my guidebook about the trans-Siberian journey. And I wasn't doing all seven days non-stop. I was only doing 4 days before getting a break in Irkutsk. And it is something like a cruise, assuming a cruise includes being in a cabin with three people you don't know, and not having a shower or hot water to bathe with, and not having a pool to lounge by. It's a pretty low budget cruise.

It does have it's benefits, though. While not all you can eat, food is incredibly cheap. Firstly, because I was doing nothing, I was eating little - just a couple small meals a day. And most of those I bought from vendors along the way on the platforms. Usually a couple of dollars and I would have a small meal of meat baked in pastry and a bottle of water, coke or beer. Of course, given that I can't speak any Russian, it was always a bit of a mystery what was inside the pastry until I bit into it. Sometimes meat and onion, sometimes cheese, sometimes hotdogs. But it was never an unpleasant surprise.

My cabin was quite small, and had four bunks in it. For the first day, all four bunks were full. I was joined by a sullen, 20 something who spoke to no-one and a couple of older ladies who chattered to each other for a bit. The strange thing was, though, that they all went to sleep around 6 in the evening. So I went to explore.

There was no one else on the train that I could find that spoke any English, so no lively conversations to be had. There were a couple of army-recruits playing cards and drinking a few cabins down from mine, and I thought briefly of joining them, but then decided playing cards with drunken soldiers (who probably have weapons) my not be a winning proposition for me (even if I end up winning at cards).

There was a nice dining car attached directly to our car. It was quite fancy, but kept incredibly dark. I only ate there once, but it was an excellent meal and only 12 dollars for a chicken with potatoes and beer. But really, I was never that hungry again, and the platform purchased pastries were much cheaper.

Sometime in the middle of the night, my fellow cabin mates the sullen 20-something and one of the ladies left, leaving the four person cabin just to myself and the other woman. This is a situation that would persist until late on the 4th day, when we had another man join us and were 3 in the cabin again for a short while, until the woman left. The man joined us at Krasnoyarsk, getting on the train with nothing but a brief case and a cell phone, which we was chattering into. After finishing his call, be threw his briefcase in storage area, took off his pants and collared shirt, and spend the night reading a Tom Clancy-like Russian thriller in his shorts and underwear. Very casually, life on this train.

I did a lot of reading and staring out of the window. The scenery was nice, but repetitive at times. to start, leaving Moscow and climbing into the Urals, there was birch and pine forests punctuated with drab industrial towns. As we climbed into the Urals (which are really just big hills at the point where the trans-Siberian crosses them), we had more forest, less drab industry and more snow. On the third day we descended from the Urals and crossed into Asia and Serbia proper. Strangely, the snow disappeared, replaced by lots of sun. The landscape alternated between fields, agriculture, birch and pine forests and boggy swamps.

There was little to see at nights looking out, except a blackness. If you looked up, however, there was a wide array of stars on display. I was a bit shocked to look out one of the north-facing windows and see the big dipper framed perfectly. I had expected, like Africa or South America, that I wouldn't see the same stars as at home. Of course, logically thinking about it, we both see the same Northern hemisphere stars. But I must admit that I feel if I am this far from home, everything should be different.

A couple times I got really antsy and thought I couldn't take much more on the train. At one point (around hour 52 of straight train travel), I wrote in my journal, "I am feeling restless and overheated. I need a good jump in a cool pool. I am sick of reading and staring out the window. This all feels so disconnected."

The 4th (and final day) aboard the train I was pretty antsy as well, but luckily had getting off the train (at least for 9 hours) to look forward to in Irkutsk, and thus it muted my jumpiness a little bit. But I was running out of things to do, finally spending time translating things from our alphabet into the Cyrillic the Russians use.

Finally, some 90 hours later, we passed Zima, the last major stop before Irkutsk and my day off the train. And now the longest part of my journey is over, and the stranger parts begin. A day wandering around a Siberian town, the sights of Lake Baikal, the Gobi desert and the Great Wall ahead of me.

The 4 day cruise is over...

I board my train from Brussels North station to Moscow, and appear to be the only one that boards the train. I learn later that I am not alone, there are at least 3 other people on the train with me: a Russian man travelling alone who doesn't speak English and spends his time reading along in his cabin and a British father and son named Bill and Mark.

Bill and Mark, the two English speakers on my 3 other person train

I am assigned a cabin that has three bunks in it, but because our train car has a total of 4 guests in it and probably around 15 cabins, I get the place to myself.

My cabin in sitting configuration

My cabin in sleeping configuration. If there were more people in my cabin, there would have been two beds above my head.

There are two attendants on the train, neither of which speaks very good English. I never got their names, but I took to calling the larger one Ollie and the smaller one Stan. Another fine mess they got me into! Because I boarded the train in Brussels, I spent the first two hours speaking to Stan in French, even though he didn't understand that either. Finally I gave up and started speaking in English. At least I understood that.

Ollie

Stan

Around 8 o'clock at night, after we has passed into Germany, Bill and Mark (the brits) asked me if I wanted to join them for dinner. So we were off to find the dinner car. Stan stopped us before leaving, and asked (so we figured) where we were going. "Dinner, restaurant," we replied.

"Nyet, nyet. No restaurant." Dejected, we sulked back to our rooms. Later, I asked Ollie about restaurant, and he pointed to the front of the train. I walked the length of the train, but didn't come across a restaurant or snack bar at all. I asked the attendant in the first car, and he said that it would be attached after Dusseldorf, which we wouldn't reach until early in the morning. I had 5 butter cookies for dinner, and went to bed.

We passed Frankfurt at 4 am (I know because we passed Germany and Polish customs there), and the next morning I woke in Warsaw expecting a hardy breakfast. Bill came by with a long face, "no dinner car until after Brest," he reported. That would mean no food until 6 in the evening! I debated about getting some hot water and cooking up some noodles, but decided on a breakfast of 3 butter cookies and a 1.5 L bottle of water instead.

At noon on Sunday we arrived at Terespol, Poland, and cleared Belrusian and Russian customs. Originally I was given a form in Cyrillic, of which I figured out the first two questions were "entry, exit or transit?" and "name?" Beyond that, though, I was at a loss. I stared at the form for 15 minutes until Ollie came running breathlessly into my cabin. "Anglisk," he said, and handed me the form in English. Disaster (and possibly jail) adverted!

We pass Brest, where the wheels were changed, and then a new set of cars were hooked on to us. All throughout the voyage new cars were being hooked on and off. Forget Rasputin as Russia's greatest love machine. In fact, with all the coupling and decoupling wagon 137 on the Brussels-Moscow route was doing, it is Russia's greatest love machine.

After pulling out from Brest, Bill, Mark and I set out down the train and found our meal car. I had a hearty meal of salad (with fresh veggies!) and steak, and two ice cold Russian beers to wash it down.

At 9:30pm, we come to Minsk, the last stop that I will be awake for before the morning. Rochelle Rochelle's erotic journey may have ended in Minsk, but mine is just starting. I went to sleep full, knowing that when I next awoke - RUSSIA!

Rochelle Rochelle's erotic journey ended here in Minsk. My journey is just getting started, though it is less erotic.