long red lines across a map

Where Anthony Makes An Appearance

montombo — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:24:21 +0000

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. (more…)

A video introduction to life in platscart.

montombo — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:23:49 +0000

Courtesy of Rdoc

Joyous Nature

montombo — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:03:10 +0000

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? (more…)

Train Leg #9

montombo — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:22:55 +0000

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. (more…)

Womble Town

montombo — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:44:30 +0000

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. (more…)

Disproving Chekhov.

montombo — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:58:48 +0000

I think we were all well ready to leave Yekaterinburg. Myself because the kitchen incident was still a thing of embarrassment, Rdoc because the keyboard monument was a moment that could never be topped, and Arnika because she is a restless soul who has to keep moving. As this was to be the longest single train leg it was a nice feeling to be embarking with a pack full of freshly laundered clothes. With free breakfast, free wifi, free washing machines, a good selection of movies in Russian the Europe Asia Hostel really was a big improvement on the previous assortment of hotels and monasteries. Except in one key area; snoring. Both nights spent there have had the same occurrence of two big Russian guys coming into the room about 4am promptly collapsing (more…)

Song Of The Rail.

montombo — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:24:30 +0000

(more…)

Blowing up the kitchen.

montombo — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:58:50 +0000

Being in a city for only a few days you are really only trying to build a slight impression of the place. For Yekaterinburg that would be unfinished buildings. Most strikingly was what I assume was supposed to be a communications tower. Instead of one aerial thrusting upwards there were many strands of concrete reinforcers forming a bamboo fence like crown. Also impressively on this particular structure was some of the graffiti. Not in itself but more from where it was being right at the top of this maybe thirty story structure with only a very rickety metal ladder up the side to climb. For a city supposedly showing off its new found mineral wealth it was not doing a very good job. Perhaps the highlight was getting halfway down the central city river walk only to have the path end and end up scrambling around rubble and through collapsing buildings to break through back onto the street grid.

This river walk had sucked us in with the promise of perhaps the most inexplicable monument ever. Richard was as excited as I think I have ever seen him. In his words ‘a rendering of something I’ve spent half my life at.’ What else could elicit such emotion from our implacable companion than a twenty metre long stone Qwerty keyboard. Recessed into a grass bank and with two sullen types occupying the number keys it was magnificently improbable. The look on myself and Arnika’s faces mimicked the bemusement shown on our host’s face that morning when he got asked to locate it on a map for us. We jumped around the keys for a while spelling our names and the like. The teenagers glowered at us.

Humour I suppose.

(more…)

Straddling Continents

montombo — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:37:43 +0000

It has felt like a long time coming but after nearly four weeks of baby steps the trans-Siberia starts now. Technically only starting in Moscow the traditional route goes down through Nizhny Novgorod across through Perm and the Ural mountains to our current destination of Yekaterinburg and then further on out to Vladivostock. Because of the false start out of Moscow that was the Golden Ring and then getting sidetracked to Kazan this fourteen hour overnight leg felt like the real beginning of the journey east. Not least because Yekaterinburg is a further time zone away from Moscow. The fourth out of eight on the trip. This leg also marks the point, in the form of a handy white pillar, where Europe becomes Asia and we reach the verges of Siberia.

Europe on one side, Asia the other.

(more…)

The great river.

montombo — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:05:10 +0000

The thing is that, despite all previously documented troubles, Kazan is a really great place and I am really glad that the route was able to be influenced away from the usual stop in Perm to include it. Officially the third capital of Russia and recently done up to celebrate its 1000th birthday the tone of the place starts at the Kremlin which models co-operation to all by containing both a mosque and an orthodox cathedral. We had read that there was a strong separatist movement in Tatarstan and to expect to be asked about this. We weren’t asked so we sought out opinion on this and found that there may have been murmurings in the 90s but it seems that money has quelled those with the resource boom making the region very wealthy. Or maybe it is because FC Rubin Kazan is top of the league.

(more…)