long red lines across a map

It is quite easy to spot other backpackers on the trans-Siberian.  Even as out of practise as we have been through lack of opportunity these past few weeks.  So while waiting for 11:15pm to roll around it is a nice surprise to see a young guy come into the waiting hall and stand beside his green pack.  The ability to differentiate is possible because locals travel in one of three ways.  No luggage at all or maybe an overnight bag.  Even if the journey is nearly two days long.  Otherwise they will be lugging one of those ungainly square rice bags, the largest size only.  Or else it may be a collection of string tied boxes.  Rarely a suitcase and never a backpack.  So Anthony, for this was his name, really stood out.  A Scot who lives in Northern Ireland as we found out in the preliminary conversation.  Then our train was finally announced but we would see him again soon enough as he was booked into the same Irkutsk hostel.  Yes a hostel, and we know where it is.  This time was going to be easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Courtesy of Rdoc

Krasnoyarsk is a place that makes itself very hard to like.  The buildings are dour and the sky has not changed its dark gray complexion.  Most likely because of the continuous smoke you can see belching from the smokestacks across the river.  In the central area every lamppost has two speakers fixed onto it.  I am sure that in times past these were for party slogans providing encouragement for the brave souls working hard for the destiny of the Soviet dream in such dour surroundings.  Such exhortations would actually be preferable to the awful, bland jazz that now gets forced on you as you navigate the streets.  All of yesterday’s slog around in search of a place to stay was sound tracked by this which only made Rdoc and I even more irritable.  This was also after more incidents with pushy old ladies.  They need to be culled.  Three people standing at the front of the queue for the bus into town.  All with packs front and back.  Thus encumbered there is an obvious hesitancy when climbing up quite a high step.  Instead of allowing the second it takes to gather oneself to do this two babushkas, scarf wrapped head down, bag in each hand, pushed past Arnika knocking her back.  Taking this as a cue another bunch followed until the bus was full and we were still standing there.  They really are a menace.

There is no way to counter either, are you supposed to push an old lady out of the way? Read the rest of this entry »

Seventy-nine kilometres out of Tomsk is the junction where the branch line we are on rejoins the main east-west route.  In a classic piece of short sighted lobbying the Tomsk city administrators of the time wanted to protect their own transportation monopolies and so got bypassed by the railway.  Then their town got bypassed by progress.  Thick taiga surrounds us as we cover in a couple of hours what took a year to construct.  At the obviously named Tayga we are only a couple of hundred kilometers away from the halfway point between Moscow and Beijing.  This train is almost perfectly timed, leaving in the late evening and by crossing yet another time zone, thus gaining an hour, we should arrive in Krasnoyarsk just before lunch.  The published arrival times are actually quite reliable as the drivers get bonuses for pulling into the stations at the advertised time.  A side effect of this can be long periods in the middle of the night where the train is stationary so as not to get too far ahead of schedule.  The whole time zone thing has become quite confusing.  All schedules are on Moscow time and so you are constantly adding and subtracting hours to work out when you actually are.  For example the printed arrival time to Novosibirsk was 3am which would be a terrible time but when three hours get added to this it actually works nicely.  Tomsk was a bit confusing however as it was not particularly clear which time zone we were in.  According to all our maps and the inside the station clock it was four hours ahead of the capital.  But on the main clock it was still the three that Novosibirsk had been.  In the end it hardly mattered.  We had been checked out of the hotel since midday anyway and had spent most of the afternoon just hanging out waiting for the departure time to roll around.  Getting there early also allowed me to run across to the supermarket next to the station and restock our supplies and grab a couple of mystery pastries for dinner.  One meat one cheese. Read the rest of this entry »

  While I freely admit to having a bit of a boner over trains, being forced to take a bus really makes you realise why.  My poor cycled out knees ache when forced to stay in one position for too long and with seats this tight I cannot even get into my usual sleep sitting up position.  Maybe this love of the locomotive stems back to when I was a kid and our family won a trip in the cab of a steam train.  Or that there are so few trains back home which is such a shame as they really are the best form of transport.  It just feels so much more civilised than being herded into some metal tube.  Another advantage that trains have is that once you board at a usually central station it just goes.  None of this tedious getting out of town through traffic and intersections just two rails pointing in the direction you want to go.  Even just boarding is fun.  Stand on the platform as a mighty piece of engineering pulls in.  The immaculately presented providnista’s stand ready to welcome everyone aboard.  Once underway there is so much more freedom to move around and looking out the window is far more accessible than a bus and more interesting than a plane. Read the rest of this entry »