Month: July 2010

Greetings from almost home: last time the train stopped, I was 1171 km from London! I took a normal night train to St. Petersberg to make the most of my time. It wasn’t a great night of sleep because the train only took 7 hours or so, but it was enough. Upon arriving, I saw…

I made it to Berlin after 36h on a train. I don’t remember how far that is from London… under 3000km for sure. More to follow :)

2 nights ago, I boarded my train to St-Petersburg when they opened the doors… strange, my carriage was almost empty. Then about 15 minutes before departure, the circus started. About 20 French people showed up and started boarding. They all had rolling luggage, most of which was too wide to roll down the hallway, but…

It’s pronounced Moskva but it’s spelled Mockba. Crazy cyrillic. I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod early on Saturday afternoon, intending to spend the night here before taking a Sunday night train to Moscow. The city has a strange layout: most things are on the west side of the Oka and Volga rivers, including the train station,…

There are no hostels between Irkutsk and Moscow, so the cheapest place to stay is usually a Soviet-era hotel. The price is anywhere from 600 to 2000 roubles per night ($20 – $70.) For this, you get a small concrete room with a single bed and a sink. There’s a shared toilet down the hall,…

I counted yesterday. I had to tell 5 people that I didn’t speak Russian. That’s a typical day for me. It seems that “point and grunt” communication is a skill, and one that many Russians lack. I guess I’m used to Southeast Asia and China where most people you interact with are part of the…

The largest supermarket chain in Mongolia is NOMIN. Kinda appropriate :) Their shopping bags are sturdier than average. I’m still using mine, and every now and then I see someone on a platform with a NOMIN bag and ask them when they were in Mongolia. According to a book we found aimed at teaching English…

Here are some train-related photos from the trip so far: Bogie changing in Erlian, at the Chinese border with Mongolia (another photo). A "MADE IN USSR" double-unit engine, as used in Mongolia (nameplate here). When I saw it, I thought it belonged in a museum, and indeed it does: there’s a very similar engine pair…

The main part of my Mongolian adventures was a trip organized by Ger to Ger, travelling with the nomads (and 2 Norwegians I met online) then visiting a few sights by jeep. June 28, 7:23: Dragon Bus Center, Ulaanbaatar I don’t see any dragons. Buses, yes. OK. We’re getting on a bus for Rashaant, where…

Train from Krasnoyarsk to Novosibirsk, 3379km to Moscow, 7495km to London Every overnight train I’ve taken since Beijing has involved another time change. This one is no exception, changing from Krasnoyarsk time (Moscow +4) to Novosibirsk time (Moscow +3.) You get to thinking in terms of offsets from Moscow time on the Trans-Siberian since all…

My first overnight stop after Mongolia was Irkutsk, the usual jumping off point for exploring Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. I toured around town on the first day. Unlike Naushki, Irkutsk is less than 50% rundown, and there are some beautiful old wood buildings still standing. Also some churches, one of…

On the way back to Beijing, I stopped in Chengdu for 24h to see the pandas… Giant pandas are endangered, mostly because of habitat destruction, and there are active attempts to breed them in captivity. Chengdu is home to the research centre where most of this takes place. Now that I’ve seen them, I think…

I’m on train 363 from Ulaanbaatar to Irkutsk, exactly 9800km (by the route I’m following) from London. This is a 36 hour train ride, including several hours at each of the Mongolian and Russian border stations. I got off the train for a few hours at Naushki, the Russian border station, while they spent over…

I’ve finished uploading my Tibet photos.. in this batch: more prayer flags, more mountains, more better. Here are the new photos. Here’s the entire set sorted by date. (I was in Tibet from May 28 – June 15, 2010. I’m currently in Ulaanbaatar, leaving for Irkutsk in 2 hours.)

I’m back in Ulaanbaatar briefly.. the first part of the tour was great, the second part was OK, but the trip home involved an unplanned 8h stop in the middle of nowhere and an overnight in Rashaant. My train is in a few hours and I have some errands to do, but I’ll post more…