Travels in our Jeans
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Travels and Tribulations (Blog)
  • Where's Molly?(Blog)
  • Recent Photos
  • Archive Photos
  • Links
  • Blogging Again in the Unutterable Year

Irkutsk-Yekaterinburg......Trans Siberia!!

13/6/2010

0 Comments

 
Picture
A Siberian village - beautiful forests surrounding quaint wooden housing
Picture
Yenisey River, Krasnoyarsk - 2 rail bridges across the worlds 5th longest river. The Yenisey has the greatest flow rate of any river not in the tropics.....I think!
I don’t know what mystery Yekaterinburg held for us but we wanted to go there and thus train tickets were sent for……..well, actually, I tried to buy tickets at the station but after 40 minutes all I could determine was which ticket window I could buy them from – determining train numbers, available seats and other options proved impossible. Once again my 5 words of Russian were not enough.

So with the assistance of our hotel reception we purchased the most expensive transport tickets since arriving in Thailand. At first it was a shock but then we realized we would be on the train for 55 hours, pass through 3 time zones and get 2 nights sleep. Lucky we could only get tickets on the “slow” train, I imagine the express charges a little more!

At the station we met a Kiwi guy called Steve who was on the same train – it was obvious who was on our train as it had been delayed and no platform number had been determined so we all just hung around in the waiting hall.

The train was older than most we have managed to get so far but it was quite comfortable and as the journey went on, it was often quite empty – quiet, no queues for the toilet and a clean toilet – for me this was our best train experience. Steve dropped in for a beer as we headed on – I think he was wondering what to do with himself past Yekaterinburg as he was on until Moscow – a further 30+ hours!

For us it was fun, lots of cards and yahtzee – and to Molly and my delight Julia agreed to play charades!! We had several sessions of charades and I highly recommend it for train journeys – of course you must leave the door open to panic the other passengers as Julia did, pretending to be a thief and darting out of the cabin straight into one of our barrel chested neighbours!

By far the highlight of the trip was the endless forests of the Siberian plateau. It is how I have always imagined Russia and it is still overwhelmingly impressive. Interrupted by small villages of wooden huts, the occasional soviet industrial town, often abandoned, and areas of vast wetlands. We crossed some of the biggest Rivers in the world, their water from Mongolia and Kazakhstan heading North to the Arctic.

At every station there seemed to be a lone Lada sedan waiting for it’s owner to return. At some stations people with bucketfuls of potatoes would run along selling them and we had a fur salesman try his luck with us a couple of times. Yet it was the scenery that remained the most lasting impression of Siberia.

 
Picture
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Mark
    Julia
    Molly

    Archives

    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009

    Categories

    All
    Argentina
    Australia
    Austria
    Belgium
    Brazil
    Cambodia
    Chile
    China
    Croatia
    Czech Rep.
    Denmark
    England
    France
    Germany
    Hungary
    Ireland
    Italy
    Laos
    Lichtenstein
    Lithuania
    Luxembourg
    Mongolia
    Northern Ireland
    Peru
    Poland
    Portugal
    Prep
    Russia
    Scotland
    Singapore
    Slovakia
    Slovenia
    Spain
    Switzerland
    Thailand
    The Netherlands
    Trans Atlantic Crossing
    Trans-Atlantic Crossing
    Tunisia
    Usa
    Vietnam
    Wales

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.