Its a perfect day on the Trans-Mong 004. Listening to my Pink Floyd back catalogue (turned up slightly too loud) in my compartment whilst I update the blog. We are about 30 minutes behind schedule – I don’t know why. We left Irkutsk on time at about 04.30 (local) and have been weaving around vast frozen lakes most of the morning. By chance I was just walking back from my ablutions at about 09.30 (local) and I nearly dropped my toilet roll when I looked out the window to see Lake Baikal – absolutely massive, stunning, like a sea, and […]
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An afternoon stop in Ilanskaya for coal. My train timetable says we are 4379 km from Moscow, so if I have covered 1502 km getting to Moscow then that’s 5881 km total so far – that is further than I had guessed. As you can see its dry and sunny now, not sure how cold, maybe around -10 degrees C. Lots of platform food action here – beer, weird dried fish and chilled dumplings – we must be getting more Eastern if the food is anything to go by. The mode of transport for these mobile “shops” is by sledge […]
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Morning! Sunrise in Siberia. I have made the switch from Moscow time to Beijing time. Its a 4 hour difference and an ongoing issue for the Trans-Sib adventurer. The train schedule is in Moscow time and does not change until the Mongolian border. However the daylight, and vitally the restaurant carriage, operate in a local time. There is no perfect answer but I have made a full jump to Beijing time leaving one watch on Moscow time just so I can read the timetable properly. The reason for doing this is that I slept through much of Mongolia last trip, and […]
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Greetings from a white and wintery Omsk! Another crew in and more coal on board to see us through to this evening’s stop at Novosibirsk. It is still snowing, so it can’t be as cold as I thought it was. We are getting huge accumulations of ice under the train that needs clearing each time we stop – otherwise things like the drains, the water tanks and the brakes freeze up. The solution is to whack the bogies hard with a big metal rod and then pour boiling water on the drain pipe.. If you saw my post from the […]
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Morning! It looks like we are running half an hour late – we have just pulled into Ishim at 08.28 Moscow time for a quick pit stop – 12 minutes here according to the schedule, so I’m not getting off. The brakes on our carriage seem to be playing up – when the driver slows the train our carriage tries to do a full emergency stop. I’m guessing we have iced up underneath, so hoping they can fix it later this morning, as its bad enough to throw you out of bed.. It’s getting colder outside now (and more bearable […]
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I left Moscow at 21.35 last night on train 004, the Chinese run Trans-Mongolian that goes once a week to Beijing. Setting off was slightly like a trip to “Hogwarts”, as we helped guide a few others to the mystical, and slightly hidden, platform 3 3/4. Carriage 9 (my home for the week) is in fact full of fellow Western tourists. I had a pretty rough night, the problem being that the Chinese guards are obviously undergoing jungle training, and have set the temperature in the carriage to well over 30 degrees. In a desperate attempt to seek cool air […]
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Bunker 42 was one of the main underground bases in Moscow during the Cold War – a place for 2500 important people to live for a month whilst the gamma radiation subsided. It is a special place for many reasons. The Soviets test fired atomic weapons to find out the correct depth needed for full protection – so it is 65 meters down (18 floors) – and can survive a 15 kiloton explosion less than a kilometer away. So quite well protected then. First of all you have to find it! It is quite well hidden in a suburban street […]
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Cumulative distance covered so far – 2997 km, Weather -9 degrees C, light snow showers. I’m back in the USSR! Its not very cold here for this time of year and this is a problem – there is black ice everywhere – getting off the train with luggage proved pretty tricky.. I almost decided to leave my boots at home in an effort to save space in my bag, but they really are essential here – not just cold protection from the snow but ankle protection from any unlucky falls. A couple of days here on a specially devised (by […]
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I’m still not really sure what’s technically happening at each stage as we make this crossing. First the train stops at Terespol where they unhook the carriages, come on to check your papers and search the underneath of the train. Then the carriages get shunted very slowly about a mile over a big old bridge where you can see soldiers hiding in the darkness on each side. It then stops again and the Belarus customs and security get on and deal with the paperwork, including taking your passport away. Then a final trundle into the station at Brest without passport […]
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I’m on the D10 “Polonez” en route to Moscow via Belarus. It’s my first time on this train, and a decision that I think pays off. More of this later. This morning I stocked up on cheese and wine (there is no restaurant carriage on this route as far as I am aware) and got my luggage down onto the platform without too much drama. Almost a drama though, in that the lift was broken, so I had to use the escalator, something that a health & safety person in the UK would be appalled at. One wrong move and […]
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