Trans Siberian Railroad

[betsyboop]

Has anyone done the Trans Siberian Railroad? DH may be getting a huge bonus at the begining of May and one of the things we want to do with it is take a fantastic pre-ttc trip this summer. The trans-mongolain route is one of the top contenders right now just because I've always had a fasination with Mongolia and DH has this new buddy at work who is from Beijing and he's been learning a ton about China and it's been making him want to go there. We've only done a little bit of research at this point and the first question I have is if it is better to do it on your own or to go with some sort of tour group. We're totally not tour people, but I've also never travelled anywhere that I can't speak at least some of the language/read the alphabet, etc. I found this tour online: http://www.onthegotours.com/Big_Rail
It looks great and it seems like it would take a lot of the guess work out of the organizing, but I don't know if it would be lame to be in a group...

Any other favorite memories, helpful hints, pictures etc would also be appreciated!

[emmjay]

DH and I did it from Beijing to St. Petersburg - we stopped in Beijing, Ulan Bataar, Irkutsk, Yekaterinsburg, Kazan, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Mongolia is AWESOME - I have always been fascinated by it too, and I loved it. I would love to go back for a longer amount of time, and not in the winter. If you go in the summer they have a festival called Nadaam (??) that looks amazing. There are pictures at the end of my journal of China and Mongolia but I haven't gotten the Russia pics in yet (link in my signature).

You don't need to be on a tour at all. We are not tour people either, and I'm so glad we didn't go on one (we looked into that too) In fact it is incredible how much more expensive it is to go on a tour. I can probably go back and check the exact amounts, but I know for sure our train tickets were less than $300 each for the entire thing. Also we met lots of interesting local people in our train compartments (instead of other people on a tour). One tip: you can't buy hop-on/hop-off tickets for the train - you have to get out at each destination and buy new tickets from there to your next destination.

Language - that is tough, I won't lie. Especially in Russia. In China no one expects you to speak Chinese so they will work with you if you are pantomiming. And it is easy to get your train tickets from hotels or ticket offices, and there are enough English-speakers in Beijing to get by. In Russia if you try to pantomime/gesture, they just stare at you like you are a bug that needs to be smashed. ;) But we always got where we were trying to go, so it all worked out! People do speak some English in Moscow and St. Petersburg; not so much in Siberia. But if you don't like tours, I wouldn't use language as the deciding factor. You will be fine.

The Cyrillic alphabet is pretty easy to learn - we were able to write out the names of the cities and the dates, and even decipher most of the signs by the end (we were in Russia/Mongolia for a month). And we picked up several useful Russian words as well, like "tickets", "night train", "beer", etc. :)

I would be happy to answer any questions you have, if I can.

[emmjay]

I put most of my Russia stories and pictures in my journal if you are interested. :)

[betsyboop]

Wow, thanks for all the info! I checked out your journal and I think we have similar travel tastes since we've been to several of the same places- we even have a picture of the same woman from the Uros floating islands in Lake Titicaca. You have a picture of her sorting fish with a blue sweater and red skirt on. We have her crushing corn or something with a stone in the same outfit. Anyway, I thought that was pretty funny.

Thanks for the tips on the language stuff. I don't know why I'm sort of weirded out by it. I guess I should just get over it- especally if the tickets on the train only cost $300! The tours all seem to start at $2k and go way up from there the more stops you want to make. Good lord, that's a huge difference. And like you mentioned, it seems like everything I've read mentions all the people you meet on the train and we'd be missing out on that if we were on a tour.

I'm sure I'll have more questions as time goes on. We still don't know 100% if we're getting the bonus or not. It depends on a customer of my husband's company NOT approving any other vendors before May, but it's not like anyone at his company has any control over that:rolleyes: So we all have to live in suspense for the next month and a half and it's still up in the air whether or not we'll even be going on this trip. I'll be totally bummed if we don't get it, but that's life, I guess.

[emmjay]

No way! That is so funny about the Uros lady!

For the fares: now that I'm thinking about it, I think it was less than $300 for the Russia portion only from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg with the stops in Yekaterinsburg, Kazan, and Moscow in between. I had $300 in my head but when I started adding it all up from China, it wasn't coming out right! The Beijing to UB, and UB to Irkutsk legs were only around $100 each, so ~$500 total for each person. Still much cheaper than the tour prices!. That was for 2nd class, which is a 4-berth compartment. They also have 1st class for the internal Russian trains which only have 2 berths per compartment, and those are around twice the cost of the 2nd class tickets.

We met some memorable people in our cars! We had these two Russian army officers in full uniform who were really kind of scary at first - they had some drunk guys thrown off of the train, and when one of them came to beg the officers not to file a report the officers barked "NYET!" and slammed our compartment door in his face. My husband and I were just looking at each other like "ooookay". Then my husband gestured to the corridor where the drunks were and said, "Novosibirsk [the next stop]... kaput?" and drew his hand across his throat (meaning they would be kicked out at the next stop). The officers thought that was hilarious and kept saying "KAPUT!" and laughing for the rest of the ride. And then the ice was broken and they wanted to know where we were from and did we like Russia, etc. They ended up being really nice.

I hope it works out that you can go! It will be a very cool trip. How long would you be able to take?

[lawgirl4]

no input here but I have to say I am sooooo envious!!! I've had a longtime interest in Mongolia too, as well as an interest in the t-s railway - you'll have to come back and post if you get to go!!! :)

[betsyboop]

Since we're way in he beginning stages of this and neither of us has mentioned anything to our bosses, I'm not totally sure how long we'll be able to take. Ideally, I'd like to be able to take a month, but I'm not sure if we'll both be able to get that much time off. I don't think I'd want to do it in much less than 3 weeks though. I'd hate to feel too rushed. What would you recommend as the minimum time to do it? Would you strongly recomend going all the way to St Petersburg instead of ending in Moscow? We're also thinking of doing like 2 days or so of sight-seeing to start off the trip in Beijing and also in whichever city we end the trip in.

[emmjay]

I think it depends on how many stops you want to make. If you want to do the "big" stops (Beijing, UB, Irkutsk/Lake Baikal, and Moscow) you could do that in 3 weeks easily, including sightseeing - you would have to factor in the train time but you could do a couple of days each in Beijing and Moscow with more time in Mongolia/Siberia. That train from Irkutsk to Moscow will take several days to go straight through and the other ones are about one day each. We did UB to St. Petersburg with several stops in less than a month, and that included a week in Mongolia.

You don't *have* to go to St. Petersburg. It is a very nice city, especially if you are into Russian history, and the Hermitage is one of the best museums I've ever been to. However, it's a lot easier to get there than to the "other end" of the journey so I would say if you have 3 weeks, use any extra time in Mongolia and Siberia (places you're less likely to return to). If you have a month, I think you could spend a couple of days in St. P but, again, I personally would spend the time in Mongolia since I loved it there!