My shortlist of boots at attention on parade This post is a bit anoraky. Well actually its a bit booty.. Perfect for people sat in their homes thinking “Hang on, I’m off to Siberia next week, what shall I wear?”. More specifically – for footwear. Here is the challenge – what do you take when you know you are going to spend a few weeks on warm Chinese trains with occasional forays into freezing Siberian snow, and then a couple of weeks playing in the jungles and beaches of South East Asia? The answer is of course to pack several […]

Rations for Leg One – Amsterdam – Moscow I’m not convinced that I have enough food. My first journey is from Amsterdam to Moscow, two nights and one day. The train booking for the EN447 (D25/402) says that the attendant will sell “snacks” on board, but I have no idea what that means..or if there will be a samovar to provide boiling water (I’m not sure if you can eat a Pot Noodle without water?) Good coffee is a high priority for me, so I’m carrying a cheap plastic filter cone, unbleached papers and tinned ground coffee beans. You can […]

My small collection of Trans-Siberian adaptors and cables I have spent quite a bit of time trying to find out what sort of power there will be on the train. It would seem that some of the more modern carriages are equipped with a socket in every compartment, whereas others have just one shared socket in the corridor for the purposes of hoovering, plus maybe one in the Provnitsa’s private quarters..hopefully for use with a small payment. My thinking is firstly to have a back up source of charging my devices (see my post this month on the fantastic Power […]

My Powergorilla charged and ready to go! Its gadget time! Just a few posts and I’m keen to share gadget ideas. One of my early discoveries was that many of the trains running on the Trans-Siberian have very limited power onboard. Some trains apparently have sockets in each compartment, some just one for the whole carriage (it powers the hoover apparently) and maybe one spare in the Provodnitsa’s compartment (a sort of guard commander and cleaner in each carriage, usually female). My requirements are to keep an iPhone, and iPad and a digital camera charged at all times for up […]