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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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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Distance this leg: 1094km. Cumulative distance: 1495 km. Weather: 2 degrees C, foggy. Having left Amsterdam on time last night, I woke at about 8.00am today after a very poor night’s sleep on the EN447. Just as well, as the guard explained we were running about 40 minutes early. The timetable changes today, so this was the last ever train to sit in Berlin for an hour – in future it will go for another loop around suburban Germany. The train is a good one – spotlessly clean with all the key mod cons. My compartment is treated as first […]
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Downtown Pyongyang. Source: TripAdvisor I had a bit of a quiet day on the work front yesterday, so some time to get myself into blogging traveller mode. I’m really quite new to blogging, and like not just the way I can diarise and share my journeys, but also interact with others who have similar interests. I have found inspiration for this trip in a few great places. Of course, as always, Mark at Seat Sixty-One. He has given me the confidence to plan the parts of the route I did not know much about – especially the crossing from China into […]
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The title of this blog post refers to the fact that the first “cunning plan” (a plan so cunning that you could brush your teeth with it) was my trip from Edinburgh to Shanghai last December. So I now have “another cunning plan” – from Newcastle to Singapore. Sorry I haven’t posted much over the last month. I did consider it, but my only real news has been the steady arrival of tickets, visas and equipment here at HQ. I have also not been very well, so working hard to get fit for the adventure ahead. A few people have […]
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“The Hunt for Red October” (1990), Paramount Pictures If you followed my journey to Shanghai last year then you may remember the semi military command structure of my Trans-Mongolian train. As a recap, there are a pair of Chinese guards in each carriage and they report to a “Sergeant Major” who in turn works for the top man – who I imagine is the “Commander” of the train. I’m sure he has a better official title than this, but hopefully you get my drift. Its all in the flaps! The C in C (left) and RSM (centre).. On my first morning, […]
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Denholm Elliot blends in with the locals! Indiana Jones (1981) I’m not sure if Peter Gabriel would approve of the title of this post, but there is a valid reason for it. More on potential border crossing problems in a moment.. My travel team have been busy. E-mail is a great thing when it comes to making these sort of long distance arrangements, and I don’t think it would have been possible for me to arrange this trip, say 15 years ago, without an army of travel agents and a lot of fax paper. Possibly even a telex machine! Emily […]
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