I was 16 when I first read about the Trans Siberian and my young mind was fascinated by the idea that a train went all the way across Russia to China. The more I read the more intrigued I was and decided there and then, some day I’m gonna do this epic rail journey. Yes, it was many years later but I finally got on this epic train.
We started our journey in the Venice of the North, St.Petersburg, a beautiful city, more European than Russian, as we would later discover. The city, despite its size, is very walkable plus it has a decent public transport system incorporating metro, tram and buses.
There are plenty of sites to visit including the Church of Spilled Blood, plus we also did a day trip to Peterhof. However the big draw is the mammoth Hermitage museum which is vast and a full day could easily be spent there admiring all the amazing works of art.
After a few days in St.Petersburg, we hopped on a high speed train to Moscow. We were here for three nights which was plenty of time to visit Red Square, the Kremlin and several other attractions. But of course, the main reason we’re in Moscow is for our little train journey.
Besides the main journey, Moskow to Vladivostok, there are two other main journeys that a lot of tourists take. The trans Manchurian, probably the most popular, which goes to Beijing, the trans Mongolian which goes to Ulaanbaatar. For us, it’s all the way Moscow to Vladivostok.
There’s a misconception that the Trans Siberian is a special “tourist” train, but this is certainly not the case, it’s a regular scheduled train service that departs Moscow two to three times a week on its seven-day journey across this vast country.
There are several accommodation options available but we opted for a first class cabin for our first leg of the journey, Moscow to Irkutsk .
Once we stepped on board we were greeted by our Provodnitsa who will be in charge of our carriage for the duration of our journey. Despite her having next to no English and us with no Russia with a little pointing and smiling she showed us how to lock our cabin door, use the samovar at the end of the carriage and showed us her cabin if we needed anything.
Our train departed right on time and it was close to an hour before we were out of the city enjoying the view of the countryside.
After a few hours we visited the dining car to have a celebratory drink and a nibble. I opted for a beer, C had a wine and we had a tiny salad with fried potatoes. It became pretty clear that dining here was not going to be an option. The food, while tolerable was very over-priced, my beer was fine but the wine was, well let’s just say, interesting 🤔
Life on board is uneventful for the most part, so it’s important to have some music, cards and a few books to pass the time. However, staring out the window as the scenery and landscapes change is enjoyable and a very sublime experience. As we travel along you also see a lot of old looking villages, which look as if time and progress has passed them by. In fact you see next to no cars or any sort of transport and bar seeing a few chickens or the odd goat, there’s very little livestock – life out here is tough.
There are a dozen or so stops each day, some no longer than a minute or two, some up to a half hour or so. It’s a chance to hop off and buy some supplies. A lot of the larger stations have shopping kiosks where you can stock up on fruits, snacks, drinks and our food of choice, noodles. Thankfully C had brought some oat biscuits from home with some teabags so for the most part we survived on those. However we did buy some chicken from one of the kiosks – which was a real treat 😋
After three nights we arrived at our first stop, Irkutsk . We were staying on the outskirts at the Irkutsk City Lodge, so we got a tram to our hostel which costed less than 10 cent each for the journey. After four days on a train it was nice to have a hot shower and for dinner we picked up a few groceries at a nearby store.
Irkutsk like a lot of small cities has some wealth but also some poorer parts. There are some nice places to have a drink and a bite to eat and English is spoken a little. There’s a few sites to visit, museums, monuments and the like. There’s also a line on the streets that if you follow it goes past all the places of interest – great idea.
After three nights, it was time to hop back on the train for the final leg to Vladivostok. For this part of the journey we booked a 2nd class cabin, which is the same size as our 1st class one, except it sleeps four. So it was cramped to say the least, as well as four adults, everyone also has luggage. Over the next few nights, we had some interesting conversations with broken English and we also have people leave only to be replaced with different passengers. While we survived our cramped accommodation, despite some interesting, lets just say scenarios, next time, it’ll be 1st class all the way 😏
Vladivostok and the end of the line. Our epic journey reached it’s end, our train arrived into the station on time to the minute.
The only thing left to do was get to our hotel, have a hot shower and find a place to have a drink and decent food.
We had a few days in Vladivostok to check out some of the sites so it was nice to wander around and the weather was really good.
The trip overall was an amazing adventure and something we would love to do again perhaps taking the trans-Mongolia or trans-Manchurian. The final thing left to do was get to the airport and catch our flight to Seoul, which you can read all about here.
C&J
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