If you are a Pink Floyd fan, I’m very sorry but I might have brought you to this blog on rather false pretences. I was trying to explain to a friend this week what I find so appealing about Trans-Siberian travel. It’s not an easy question to answer – the extreme climate, the questionable catering, the lack of sleep, the lack of sanitation, the sense of isolation and the challenge communicating with nearly everyone. But these are not insurmountable problems and I actually long to be back there. It gives me a rather special feeling, one which I can only […]
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I consulted the world weather map in my Daily Telegraph over some tea and toast this morning at expedition HQ. I can see that the forecast temperature in Moscow tonight will be -2C. Freezing already and it is only mid October. This is a sure sign that winter is now approaching and it is also a reminder that I must press on with the final stages of my preparation – equipment, visas and tickets. (As far as I’m concerned the colder Moscow is in the winter the better. In the past I have experienced the city in the -20’s and […]
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I have been busy doing some planning for the Trans-Manchurian part of my next adventure. It’s an excuse to not be writing my book. In fact almost everything is an excuse not to be writing my book at the moment! If you have read about my past journeys you will know about the issue of what constitutes the right time on board the train. I have been thinking about this quite a lot lately – both from a philosophical and a practical point of view, as I have also been writing an article on the history of “train time”. Today […]
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I have been doing quite a bit of reading this week about my planned journey from Beijing via Golmud up to Lhasa. I’m really trying to get my head around the enormity of what has been built and there is a serious danger that I might accidentally slip into trainspotter speak. Not only the highest railway in the world, but the highest tunnel, the longest mountain tunnel and specially built on supports in the permafrost (with passive heat exchangers, what ever they might be). There are 675 bridges and the trains have an enriched oxygen atmosphere onboard. You can read […]
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I have been busy planning a few small adventures on the route of my forthcoming journey across the world. Even though my trip will technically finish in Hong Kong, I will be exploring parts of Asia by rail afterwards. One trip that is now firmly in my diary is a visit to “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. You probably know all about this, but just in case you don’t, this is the bridge at the location in Thailand where the Burma “death railway” crosses the Mae Klong river, made infamous by the David Lean’s epic 1957 film. In passing, […]
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I am very much looking forward to taking one of the least known Trans-Siberian routes on my next adventure. It’s called the Trans-Manchurian, and the main train on this line is a Russian one, known as the “Vostok”, which translates simply as “East”. It is also known by it’s number – “20” going east, and “19” travelling west. Surely the “Vostok” must be one of the most evocative train names out there? “Vostok” image courtesy of Local Life In my experience nearly all Western travellers opt to travel on the Trans-Mongolian route, especially if it is their first Siberian adventure […]
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Since returning from my journey to Japan earlier in the year I have been trying to decide upon my next adventure. To help me with planning I have a large National Geographic map on the wall in expedition HQ – the 1959 version – “Asia and adjacent areas”. This keeps me on my toes, as so much of the world looks quite different today! Thanks to the huge amount of information online I have been able to save a lot of time this year and compress my planning cycle, so here I am in April for and for the first […]
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I’m writing some of this blog on the train today, so it’s a crash course in remembering how to use my mobile blogging apps that have been idle since I returned from Singapore in January. I have learned from past trips it’s quite good to run a full test of equipment before setting out; that way there is some “tinker time” whilst you have access to things at home. So today I’m testing things whilst I’m on the train to Cambridge to visit the Scott Polar Research Institute. In passing, I was half expecting to bump into Michael Portillo on […]
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“Black Rain” – Ridley Scott, Paramount Pictures (1989) I’m almost there with the planning phase of the trip now. Time to get prepared for some travel! I got my iPad out this week and loaded it up with films, and also selected the music for my iPhone (all the good stuff – a hand crafted selection of Pink Floyd, Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac). I have a 128GB iPad, so I can carry about 40 films with me, which I think is pretty impressive (until they make an even bigger one). I try to find connections to places I am […]
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Shinkansen line up of 7 different trains on JR East alone! Source: Wikipedia I have been working this week on planning my rail journey through Japan. The Japanese do train travel so well that its actually a bit daunting looking at the number of trains and the route map. First I should apologise for the blog title, as unless you were a 10 CC fan in the 1970’s, you might think I was going to tell you about being involved in a street riot. In fact it was just a slightly tenuous link to the most famous of Japanese trains, […]
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