Travelling the Trans-Siberian & Mongolian Railways

I have to admit that one major achievement was that on our first day aboard the “Baikal” Trans-Siberian train, we managed to locate the mythical shower room. With the help of our Russian neighbour who acted as translator and guide, the provodnitsa directed us to a room at the end of wagon 5 where we treated ourselves to two showers over the course of the three-day ride.

The first scenic highlight of our trip was our short stop in Siberia. For two nights, we stayed on the shore of Lake Baikal, which at 1600 meters/5277 feet is the deepest lake in the world. In early May, the lake was still completely frozen over and solid enough that we saw a few lone fisherman venture out on foot to fishing holes in the middle of the ice. If you miss out on the chance to try some of the local omul fish in Listvianka, you can pick some up on the train. At the first stop out of Irkutsk, I bought a smoked, salty omul from platform vendors and it’s a pretty great midnight snack.

I love sleeping on trains and trundling through the chilly, unchanging Siberian taiga wrapped up in a warm duvet has to be one of the coziest ways to travel. The ride on the Trans-Mongolian through the desert is far more dynamic than the Russian landscapes and once the train passes into China, the scenery transforms again into misty green forests where you get your first views of the Great Wall of China.

At the Mongolia-China border we went through the extraordinary experience of having the wheels changed out on our carriage due to the Chinese track gauge being of the standard narrower gauge. According to a few reports, passengers are required to disembark before this procedure but the opposite was true of our experience. Our carriage and all its passengers were lifted into the air as the bogies were exchanged beneath us. Quite a unique occurrence made all the more surreal at 12.30am in the morning.

A couple of lowlights included the distinctly unappetising Baikal dining car, and the rudimentary bunks from Irkutsk to Ulan Baatar. Both paled greatly in comparison to the luxurious and attractive sleeping and dining facilities on the last leg of the journey to Beijing.

Quick Tips:

Here’s a brief list of items I’m happy we had with us on the train: Flip flops, books, camera, bottled water, large carton of orange juice, toilet paper, hand wipes, beer bottle opener, biscuits, small alarm clock, fruit, yogurts, plastic spoons, snowboarding jacket (perfect for spring in Siberia), small bottle of soap, instant noodles.

One vital piece of information is that about half an hour before each border crossing, the provodnitsa locks the toilets and they remain locked for the duration of the border crossing so be sure to relieve yourself in good time!

We arranged all our visas before we left home: Russian, Mongolian (required for UK but not US citizens) and Chinese and we passed through each customs and immigration fairly easily. If you don’t have a firm destination address for the country you’re entering I would recommend writing down the address of a known hotel just to avoid any unwanted questioning.

My last tip would be to try and adjust your body clock as you go through the various time zones. We didn’t and consequently found it hard to catch up once we reached Irkutsk, where we found ourselves wanting to sleep until 2pm in the afternoon.

Best Way To Get Around:

Train? Sarcasm aside, you should be aware that unlike trains in some parts of the world, the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian trains are for the most part, extremely punctual. If you need to stretch your legs, you may want to do so at one of the 15-20 minute stops. Ask your provodnitsa how long the train will be stopping for if you’re not sure and if you stick close to your carriage, she will hopefully be as diligent as ours was and yell at you (in a nice way) when the train is about to leave.

When moving around the train, take care when moving from car to car. There are a series of doors between the wagons and the train movement makes this area unstable to say the least. It’s also, unfortunately, where the majority of people do their smoking.

If you are making stops like we did in Irkutsk and Ulan Baatar, I’d recommend arranging a pick-up from the station with your hostel or hotel. Train stations are chaotic and intimidating places at the best of times and it saved us a lot of time and hassle having someone meet us and take us directly to our destination.

Departs Moscow Yaroslavsky Station at 11.29pm from 5 Komsomolskaya Ploshchad.

We arrived at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky Station in good time for our 11.29pm departure. Missing the train when traveling on the Trans-Siberian didn’t seem like a wise move so we tended to show up 1-2 hours before the departure times just to make sure that we were in the right place and knew exactly which platform our train would be departing from. Even at the late hour Yaroslavsky Station was especially busy so it took us a while to find a seat in the vast waiting room. We then searched for an ATM so we could withdraw enough cash to last us for three days although when we found out that most of our meals would be included it negated that concern.

About 45 minutes or so before the departure, we carried our backpacks down to the platform and were soon allowed to board the train. We found our wagon fairly easily and the provodnitsa showed us to our compartment. Each wagon is assigned its own provodnitsa. Ours was a short, firm but friendly lady, bundled up in a blue overcoat. She worked shifts (though we rarely saw her “night” counterpart) and was responsible for sweeping and hoovering the carriage corridor and each compartment at least twice a day. She would also lock our compartment from the outside when we wanted to visit the dining car.

The room was small and cosy with single bunk beds on either side separated by a flip-up table. With only the two of us, there was plenty of space to store our luggage as well as wall hooks for hanging coats and towels. Both beds lifted up to reveal storage space underneath the entire length of the bed and above the sliding door, there was a television screen with space around it for more bags. The TV monitor hooked up to a DVD player and the provodnitsa had a collection of DVDs, which she showed us in case we wanted to watch a film. She asked us on numerous occasions and seemed amused that we were able to keep ourselves occupied the whole time without watching a single film during the entire trip.

Before we discovered the joys of the shower room, we took an improvised wash in the bathroom, which consisted of a metal toilet and small sink. As one might imagine, it isn’t the prettiest room on the train but it’s bearable and regularly cleaned and you become quite adept at stabilising yourself as the train jerks abruptly from side to side. In the first class wagon, they provided us with a small travel kit that consisted of toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, wet wipes and a shoehorn. There was also a timetable left on the table, which detailed the time of every single stop between Moscow and Irkutsk and for how long the train would stop at those stations (continued in Part II).

(continued from Part I) Our beds consisted of two cushy bunks, with large puffy pillows, a substantial duvet and an additional blanket. There was no danger of getting cold as the heating was kept at a comfortable temperature. It was, however, a sharp contrast to the outside temperature, which was so cold that it often sent us running back to the train for warmth at the infrequent 15-20 minute platform stops.

The cabins were decorated with four metallic landscape pictures (the locations of which I couldn’t quite discern) and three large mirrors. The curtains were a strange blue and yellow shiny silky material with colours matching the bedcovers and the narrow blue and gold rug that ran down the middle of the room. There were also thick pull-down blinds on each window, which eliminated the light altogether if needed. Piped music played on speakers as we had boarded the train but thankfully there is a volume button within the compartment, which allows you to turn it off.

At the end of each carriage is the infamous samovar dispensing a never-ending flow of hot water. On the first morning, my husband came back with two fresh cups of tea with milk in glass cups, which we would wash ourselves and re-use over the next three days. All in all, it’s somewhat of a luxurious camping experience.

I saved the best for last: the story of how we found the shower. In the room next to us was a young guy traveling from Moscow to Perm. He spoke excellent English and we were extremely fortunate in that we were able to spend our first day on the train in his company. My husband told him about the legendary on-board shower that we had read about in our guidebooks. Our new friend promptly asked the provodnitsa, who confirmed that there was a shower in wagon five. We in turn asked the provodnitsa in wagon five and lo and behold, she unlocked the door to a shower room. Granted, the shower was more of a dribble but there was enough water for me to have a hair wash the following day. So if you happen to travel on the Baikal, take a look in wagon five, or employ the services of a willing Russian speaker to find out where the elusive shower is.

The Trans-Mongolian journey from Irkutsk to Ulan Baatar was a very different experience from our first train. The accommodations were far more basic and the carriage interior was a stark clinical white with no noticeable efforts of decoration. The cabin configuration was the same but this time the beds were hard and unmade. We had clean white sheets, and a slightly tattered, bristly red blanket for warmth. They did provide a towel although the bathroom amenities were also very basic and there was no paper or soap in the toilets and most definitely no shower room.

We had to ask for utensils such as mugs for tea and a spoon for eating the delicious yogurts we discovered in Russia. The provodnitsas were more elusive and seemed less predisposed to providing helpful information such as the length of station stops. There was no train schedule available so stopping times at platforms were guesswork on our part. These very minor inconveniences and discomfort added to the greater sense of adventure we felt on this leg of the trip, especially when we reached the Mongolian border, which had the appearance of a wild west outpost.

The first class carriage from Ulan Baatar to Beijing, however, couldn’t have been more different again. The cabin and the corridors were clad in laminated wood, giving the carriages a warm, orange glow. In the room, two bunk beds were situated one above the other on one side of the cabin, leaving the other side free for a small single seat where you could sit and watch the Gobi Desert roll by. Unfortunately the windows were covered in dust inside and outside by the pervasive desert sand although some of the taller people made an attempt at cleaning them at various stops so we could get better views. The upper bunk bed could be pushed up against the wall, allowing the lower bunk to become a long seat during the day. The bunks seemed wider than the others on our trip and were soft and cushy and there were plenty of blankets and sheets on hand.

There was a private bathroom with a sink and a shower for every two cabins. The bathroom had two doors so you would have to lock your neighbour’s door when you wanted to use the shower, which was essentially an extension hose from the sink unit but worked quite well. There was also a shallow closet for hanging coats and within which we found a large flask for storing hot water from the samovar making it more convenient for us to refill our white teacups as when we wanted. And just when we didn’t think the service could get any better, we were served a complimentary boxed lunch to our cabin at noon. In these conditions, we could have gladly stretched out the journey time from Ulan Baatar to Beijing train for a day or two more if conditions had allowed.

The change in food as you travel west to east on the Trans-Siberian and Mongolian trains is noticeable. The further east you go, the better the food becomes. I have to admit that apart from borscht I’ve yet to experience a really good Russian meal. I know that plane and train food has a worldwide reputation for being bad, but on a couple of nights, the chef (if there was one) gave a whole new meaning to bad train food.

The restaurant car attendant served us quietly, dressed in a short crimson skirt and a crimson pin-stripe waistcoat over a transparent black lace blouse. In contrast to the provodnitsas’ button up coats, she seemed to be the train’s ambassador for racy uniforms.

Our meals on the Trans-Siberian were included in the price of our ticket, but for some strange reason we had little choice over what food we were served. Our first lunch started off with a fairly promising serving of fried fish and fried potatoes followed by tea, coffee and biscuits. It wasn’t bad as far as train food goes and had some hints of flavour. At dinner things took a dive as we were presented with a solitary chicken leg and some dry rice. The next day a pattern emerged as lunch was a fairly flavourful beef stroganoff but dinner was a completely rancid lukewarm frankfurter sausage with the same rice as the day before. The one after-dinner highlight was a plate of juicy orange segments. Fruit seemed to be a rarity on the trains in Russia so we were happy that we’d thought to bring some orange juice with us. And given the lack of seasoning we were also relieved that we’d decided to indulge and bring along some chocolate biscuits and creamy yogurts.

On our final day on the Trans-Siberian, they decided to pull out all the stops and we were served a vast lunch of a hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise, roast chicken with mashed potatoes, a yogurt and a swiss-roll snack by the name of “Torpedo”!

In addition to the dining car, a sweet young girl had the thankless task of pushing a food cart up and down the train a few times a day selling beer and snacks so when we fancied a drink later in the evenings we’d often buy a beer or two from her when she was on her rounds.

Describing the Mongolian dining car will be a short exercise as for most of the journey through Mongolia, there wasn’t one. From Irkutsk to Ulan-Baatar we relied mostly on supplies bought in Irkutsk. We stocked up on bottled water, orange juice, biscuits, beer, yogurts and also a few “instant” meal pots that only required the addition of hot water. We bought some instant noodles but a couple pots turned out to be instant mash potato, which was a little strange but not totally unappetizing.

Four painfully slow hours after leaving Irkutsk the train reached Lake Baikal at midnight. At this station, vendors patrolled the platform with buckets of smoked Omul fish. I’d been foolish enough not to buy any in Listvianka so you can imagine my joy when I was presented with this final chance to try some before the train turned south towards Mongolia. For a few rubles, I purchased one Omul fish without even leaving the train. I took it back to our cabin and made short work of it. Its taste was reminiscent of mackerel and all the better as it was enjoyed with a crisp Russian beer.

Once the train reached the Russian-Mongolian border we hunted around for a shop in which to spend our remaining rubles and resorted to buying more biscuits and other unhealthy snacks to see us through to Ulan Baatar.

A Mongolian dining car was eventually attached for the stretch from Ulan-Baatar to the Chinese border. It was incredibly ornate with carved wooden partitions and red and gold seats. Sadly we didn’t have a chance to dine there as the over-efficient service on Train 024 included a boxed lunch at noon, which was delivered directly to our room. The meal included an improvised club sandwich constructed out of 3-4 slices of white bread with layers of tomato, cucumber, salami and lashings of mayonnaise. In addition there was an assortment of pickled carrots, cabbage and red pepper as well as two blocks of rice, seaweed sushi and a piece of breaded fish in a gravy sauce that tasted like kidney! It was definitely a curious collection of bites but it held me over until we reached the border.

The next morning and we were in China and the exquisite Mongolian dining car had been left behind and replaced with the Chinese car. What the carriage lacked in beauty however, it made up for in cuisine. We ordered two plates of sweet and sour pork with rice and two cups of tea. It was the first truly tasty meal we had received on any train and was a sign of things to come in China. The sauce was less sweet and the batter less stodgy than the western equivalent but this was a good thing. The bill for the two of us came to reasonable $8 and once our dishes were cleared away we were invited to vacate our seats, as this was one dining car doing swift business and they needed our table.

Svezhy Veter Travel Agency
426000 Izhevsk Karla Marxa 228a, Russia
Tel: 7.341.245.0037

sv@sv-agency.udm.ru
www.sv-agency.udm.ru

There are various ways to book tickets for the Trans-Siberian train. We had read stories about people who just turn up and buy once they’re in the country as this is one way to obtain tickets at the cheapest price. On the flipside, by doing this you risk not being able to find tickets for your preferred departure date.

We were taking some fairly expensive camera equipment with us and thought that traveling in a first class compartment would be a safer way to go. We also needed to be in Japan within about a month of leaving Moscow so we decided that buying our tickets in advance would probably be the most sensible thing to do.

We found the Svezhy Veter Travel Agency through online and guidebook research and they looked like an established company. The final price, which was close to $1,000 per person for the entire trip, was a little higher than we would have liked, but when you consider all that this included it wasn’t too terrible. In addition to the actual train travel all the way from Moscow to Beijing and organizing our two stops along the way, the price included the six nights accommodation on board the trains as well as two meals a day for the three days we were on board the Baikal train from Moscow to Irkutsk. The final ticket price is dependent on how many stops you make (it’s cheaper if you don’t make any at all) and also on the level of accommodation you choose.

There are other companies that arrange package tours for the train journey. One company, called "Vodka Train" caters to the 18-34 year old age group. We met four people traveling on this tour and whilst they traveled on their own on the train, assigned guides met them at each stop. They had to share a four-person compartment but were fortunate in that their group size was small and they all seemed to get along so well.

There was a mixture of other ages and nationalities on the trains, some like us who had arranged their tickets and accommodation independently, and others who were traveling in small groups and had tour guides meeting them at each stop.

Our first point of contact with Svezhy Veter Travel Agency was to email them with the dates we hoped to travel on. We wanted to leave Moscow around April 29th and make stops in Irkutsk and Ulan Baatar so they advised us on taking the following schedule and calculated our ticket price from this:

29th APRIL - Train 002 "Rossiya" leaving Moscow at 21:22 and arriving in Irkutsk on 3rd May at 02:33 Moscow time (All the trains in Russia run on Moscow time, irrespective of where you are!) OR Train 010 "Baikal" leaving Moscow at 23:29 and arriving in Irkutsk on 3rd May at 04:30 (which was 9.30am local time).

5th MAY - Train 364 leaving Irkutsk at 15:10 (local time) and arriving in Ulan Baatar at 06:20 two days later.

11th MAY - Train 024 leaving Ulan Baatar at 08:05 (local time) and arriving in Beijing at 3.30pm the following day.

Once we confirmed the trains and dates with them, we pre-paid for the tickets by credit card. It was somewhat disconcerting having to pay the full amount up front to a company half way around the world but I guess we can vouch for their honesty now!

Our schedule funnily enough followed exactly that of the Vodka Train group. If you have more time, I would definitely recommend spending more time in Mongolia than we did. There isn’t much more to do in Listvianka than we covered in our two days although if you go during the summertime, there are greater opportunities for hiking and camping at other parts of Lake Baikal which could extend your stop there out to a week or more.

Tickets for the Trans-Siberian are only issued 40-45 days prior to the travel dates. Given our travel plans, we arranged with the Svezhy Veter Travel Agency to pick up our onward tickets at each stop. We were sent email instructions with details of where we should go in Moscow and Irkutsk to pick up our tickets and who we should ask for. It all felt akin to a reality TV treasure hunt but when we arrived at the various offices, our tickets were waiting for us. The only time we experienced any problems was with the tickets from Irkutsk to Ulan Baatar. There is no first class section on this train so in order to have the compartment to ourselves, we paid for all four berths but had mistakenly only received two tickets. It was resolved eventually but involved a long and painful drive across Irkutsk where the rush hour traffic is unbelievably bad! Fortunately in Ulan Baatar we had the option of having the tickets delivered to our youth hostel, which we gratefully accepted.

Overall, purchasing and obtaining the tickets through Svezhy Veter was easier than it would have been trying to negotiate with our limited Russian language at the Moscow train station. Admittedly it costs more, but we were able to lock in all our departure dates without having to worry about whether we would be get a bunk or not. Trains across Siberia and Mongolia are not a daily occurrence so booking ahead, especially if you want to make stops in more remote towns in Siberia and Mongolia is probably a good idea.

If you do book through Svezhy Veter (or any agency for that matter) I’d strongly recommend asking them exactly what your ticket includes. We met a friendly, English-speaking Russian on the Baikal train who examined our tickets and after checking with the provodnitsa, informed us that we were entitled to two complimentary meals a day in the dining car. Svezhy Veter had made no mention of this to us, which seemed like a major omission of information. Even though their booking service is efficient I got the sense that their system is so standardized that beyond giving us the ticket pick-up details, they neglect to provide any additional information to their customers. It seems like it would be a courteous and helpful gesture if they provided their customers with a leaflet or email with Trans-Siberian advice and tips such as the one we received from the HOFA homestay organization in St. Petersburg.

When we decided to book tickets for the Trans-Siberian I really had no idea of what life would be like on the trains. The first train from Moscow would take three days to reach Irkutsk and I wondered if there would be enough to divert us.

We boarded the train in Moscow close to midnight so our first few hours were spent sleeping. On our first day, we became friends with our neighbour Sam who was traveling to Perm for the upcoming 1st May holiday celebrations. He spoke excellent English and introduced us to the elderly gentleman sharing his compartment who was returning from Moldova where his daughter lived. He lamented the desperate state of life in Moldova and also Georgia where he said unemployment was high and job opportunities scarce. He told us how he drove trains on the Trans-Siberian route during World War Two and was now able to travel by train and in first class at no cost.

By 7.30pm the train had reached Perm and we said farewell to Sam, sad that he wasn’t traveling to Siberia. Besides being an excellent translator, we learnt a lot about Russia from him and his roommate and they had kept us entertained that day with their stories and wonderful senses of humour.

While the second and third days were quieter for us, we managed to fill the time with reading, journal updates, eating, drinking tea and jumping out at various station stops to snap photos and get a breath of icy cold air. It was good to step outside although we always stayed close to our carriage, even at the longer stops. At every stop you hear the melodic clinking of metal against metal as station workers tap critical connections up and down the train to ensure that nothing has come loose since the last station.

We tried to follow significant landmarks indicated at certain kilometer markers in our guidebook but sadly it seemed that we passed the majority of them, including the Europe-Asia Border Obelisk at kilometer 1777, in the dead of the night. I began to wonder if doing the journey in reverse and starting in Beijing would have allowed us to see more of the major sights during the day.

We relied on two books for our journey: Bryn Thomas’ “Trans-Siberian Handbook” and the Lonely Planet’s “Trans-Siberian Railway”. I would have to say that Thomas’ book was the more detailed and accurate of the two but it was also the most recently published. In addition to reading up on the scheduled stops for the day, we also brought along some fiction. “War and Peace” is apparently a popular Trans-Siberian literary companion but we opted for two more manageable but equally fitting novels: “The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom” by Slavomir Rawicz and “Peking to Paris: Prince Borghese’s Journey across two Continents in 1907” by Luigi Barzini. Both are fascinating reads. The first is about a prisoner of war who made the impossible journey on foot from Siberia through Mongolia, China and Tibet to India. The second records a race that follows almost the same route as the present day Trans-Mongolian and Siberian railways but one in which the competitors traveled all the way from Peking, through Mongolia and Siberia to Paris completely by car. Incredibly, Prince Borghese and his three-man team completed the race in the space of two months.

Looking out of the window of our peaceful first class train cabin, it was hard to comprehend how anyone could survive being out in the Siberian wilderness for very long. Even now, towns and homes are few and far between and the environment looked bleak. On the morning of our second day, we began to see patches of snow, which grew in size the closer we got to Irkutsk. We also couldn’t help but notice that the landscape remained fairly unchanged for a long time. It wasn’t until the final day that the lines of birch trees stuck in the hard mud gave way to a flatter, greener and snowier terrain. There was also one very depressing and unnatural feature, which I doubt would have been apparent in Rawicz and Barzini’s time. From Moscow to Irkutsk, there was a constant stream of litter dumped out by the tracks, which seemed to reinforce what I’ve read about Russia’s appalling environmental record. I have to say that if one thing destroyed my idea of the Trans-Siberian being a romantic epic journey, the discarded plastic bags and other rubbish was it.

Another aspect of traveling along this route which surprised me was the lack of station vendors. So many accounts tell of persistent sellers offering cheap souvenirs, coveted handicrafts or local delicacies. I don’t know if it was just because they didn’t hang around our carriage (as obviously the train is quite long) but we saw very few hawkers. The only place where they seemed to be in abundance was at Lake Baikal where I bought the Omul, otherwise they were very restrained. This fact seemed particularly unusual at the Russian-Mongolian border where we were stuck for hours in the middle of the day. There were a couple of people displaying their wares on a bench but the main station shop was closed for lunch! I don’t know how often trains pass through here but I was amazed that they wouldn’t be taking full advantage of a bunch of trapped foreigners with time to kill and rubles to discard.

The border crossings into Mongolia and China would have been fairly painless had we not had to wait around for 5-9 hours at each stop. At the Russian-Mongolian border it took 7 hours before the train even crossed into Mongolia. Our carriage with its guardian provodnitsa was left alone, detached from any engine for hours and we couldn’t wander too far as homeless children begged for empty glass bottles and offered to exchange rubles for Mongolian Tögrög. With our visas all in order, an onward ticket in hand and only two backpacks, customs and immigration was no problem for us although interestingly when entering Mongolia we had to declare if we had SARS or not.

For some unknown reason, the crossing into China took almost half the time as the crossing into Mongolia. This is hard to understand when you consider that in addition to clearing customs and immigration, you also have to wait while all the bogeys on the train are changed out for the narrower standard gauge used in probably every country in the world except those that fell within the former U.S.S.R. In our guidebooks it indicated that passengers had the option of leaving the train before it moves to the bogey-changing shed but if that opportunity presented itself, no one in our carriage noticed. We all stayed on board (with crossed legs as the toilets are closed for the duration) as our carriage was shunted to and fro and eventually elevated so the wheels could be changed out beneath us. It’s an unusual sight watching the wheels of your carriage roll away into the dark of night. At 1.15am the toilets finally re-opened and everyone scrambled to be first in line after what was certainly a very unique border crossing experience.

The trackside littering had cleared up once we reached Ulan Baatar, but then it would take an incredibly resilient race of people to dump out their rubbish across the Gobi Desert. Through Mongolia the views are fairly consistent. Sand, sand dunes and the odd cluster of gers are all you really see on this route but it is in some ways more dynamic than the Russian taiga as it’s not every day you can take a train through a desert. Once we crossed into China the landscape changed again and almost immediately you become aware of the population increase. Fields everywhere are neatly ploughed and even the smallest green spaces have been cultivated. People ride bikes along dirt trails beside rice fields. The flat plains give way to misty forests, which eventually reveal glimpses of the Great Wall of China. Not long after, the trees are replaced by towering blocks of offices and flats and the air becomes soupy with a smog that welcomes you into Beijing.