All trains lead to Beijing
Given that Asia is pretty big, the only good way to cross it is in an airplane. In a brilliant stroke, we opted to take trains instead. Slower. Cheaper. Less hygenic. Full of smiling Russians. Itty bitty living space. 9+ days. What's not to love?
The railway saga started out on a late June evening from Moscow aboard an overnight sleeper train to St. Petersburg. The car was clean, and simply and neatly styled in a curious palette of lime green. Doors, carpeting, curtains, provodnitsa (train attendant), and bed sheets all matched to a tee. Our four berth "Kupe" 2nd-class compartment was stocked surprisingly well. We each received a kit containing toothbrush and toothpaste, eyemask, floss, facial wipes, and a set of utensils. There also were 4 pewter mugs and glasses for the samovar (hot water dispenser), four bottles of water, and a boxed meal of reasonable recognition for each of us. Meals would come twice a day free of charge (well, not exactly free...), and a comfortable and convenient, if overpriced restaurant car lay two carriages away. The 4 beds hung from the wall on either side of the tiny room with a small table between them against the window. In theory the top bunks are better for sleeping because the bottom ones are used as benches once any of the four occupants wakes up. In reality, none of the bunks are good for sleeping because a) they are marginally less comfortable than an old pullout sofa mattress, plus b) constant noises from bunkmates talking (or sleep-talking, as it were), moving, and eating, and c) perpetual stopping, starting, jerking, bumping, and clanging of the train all conspire against your good night's rest.
The bathrooms were surprisingly modern, with a standard western toilet, mirror, and wash basin, not unlike any normal aircraft lavatory. One key difference, though, was the lack of any sort of real internal plumbing. Used water from the wash basin drained directly down beneath the railcar on to the tracks, and -you guessed it- so does the toilet. In fact, when you step on the foot pedal to "flush", a small trap door opens and you may witness your waste's evacuation down a small chute, through the end of which green grass and shrubbery can be seen whizzing by. As a sensible consequence of this crude system, the bathroom is closed and locked by the provodnitsa starting about 10 minutes before any station stop until about 10 minutes after. This is all fine and good except when stopping at border crossings, which can mean the bathroom is inaccessible for over 6 hours.
The days passed rather slowly and tended to blend together, especially on our train from Yekaterinberg to Irkutsk. The scenery consists mostly of large grassy fields and rolling grassy hills, with intermittent groves of white birch trees and small shanty shack villages. Siberia is a surprisingly pretty place (although in winter it surely becomes the wasteland I imagined), but after a while it became difficult to remain interested looking out the windows for any length of time. Of course the omnipresent coat of filth and grime that covered all of the windows made it even less appealing, and added lovely brown stained artifacts to many of our train pictures in our photo album. Most of the time was endured by:
- sleeping
- playing sudoku
- reading from the Trans-Siberian Handbook that my Dad carried
- talking to other English-speaking members of the carriage
- trying to learn a few more new Russian or Mongolian words
- playing "War", "Spades", or "American" (a card game we learned from two friendly Norwegians)
- simply staring blankly into space or out the window
The train would stop somewhere every hour or three and we would get a chance to stetch our legs by getting off the train and exploring the station platform area. Usually a few vendors would be hawking their goods (i.e. ramen, ice cream, dried fish, stuffed animals, champagne flutes, you name it...), but there wouldn't be that much else to do except fret about the poor quality of the station bathrooms or the possibility of missing the train's departure. Twice along the route we had more lengthy stops, in Yekaterinberg and Irkutsk/Lake Baikal, but those are to be discussed in another blog entry.
The scenery did have some interesting spells, such as around the southern edge of beautiful Lake Baikal, and the first morning after entering the steppes of Mongolia. BUT the most "exciting" way to break up the monotony was to enjoy an afternoon/evening/dead of night border crossing ordeal going between Russia and Mongolia. We reached the border Russian town about 5:30 pm. and waited while:
- Russian authorities detached the Russian restaurant car.
- Immigration officials collected passports.
- Border patrol searched every compartment for stowaways.
- Customs officials came around to collect customs forms.
- Immigration officials returned passports.
- Various other hemming and hawing took place.
We were allowed to get off the car at certain points to use the incredible "bathroom" in the station, but mostly we just sat in the car. Occaisionally it rained. At one point we got a good picture of a rainbow above the immigration building at the Russian border post, as if in celebration of our departure from the Motherland. Finally around 9:00 pm we passed through an electrified fence (!) marking the border with Mongolia. We then proceeded to repeat steps #1-6 on the Mongolian side. When all was said and done it was 11:30 pm. The onboard bathroom was locked the whole time too, as discussed above. We didn't really get going again until after midnight, and man we were exhausted.
Days later on the Chinese side of the border, we spent several hours in a rail warehouse while the Russian carriages were individually lifted up on jacks and the Russian bogies (wheels) were swapped out for the more svelte Chinese ones. This is because the Soviet railroad tracks in Russia and Mongolia are a wider gauge than everywhere else in the world. Though long and mostly boring, the few minutes or the process while we were being lifted up were pretty sweet. I even took a video of one of the wheels being changed. (Click here for the video.) Sorry the video is sideways, so you'll have to turn your head! :(
After later changing trains in the remarkably non-descript concrete wasteland industrial town of Jining, we awoke to find ourselves gliding along through a beautiful misty mountain landscape on the outskirts of Beijing.
Stay tuned, more to come from Beijing soon!
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