Trans-Siberian Express

[loyal-blue]

As a continuation of my earlier topic, a friend suggested I could do this today.

I had a really quick look and love the idea of going from Moscow to Beijing on the train. I was then looking at the possibility of visiting North Korea from Beijing and perhaps moving around China for a week or two.

Has anyone done this? Could anyone recommend a company that can sort tickets and visas?

I'm thinking it would be more expensive to get to China than the USA, however it will be cheaper when you arrive. Is that fair?

Also, standard questions, would it be safe? Any ideas on a daily/overall budget?

[bullywee]

G Adventures do Trans-Siberian trips that start in Moscow, end in Beijing and you go through either Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan depending on which trip you choose.

It's something that I really want to do and would probably try to throw in trips to N. Korea, S. Korea and Japan as well.

[Tight minge]

Can't comment on the rail trip itself, but the rail network in Russia, is principally crap. Travelled a few times by train for work and never a good experience. Once went to Obninsk, a closed city during communist times and the home to the first nuclear reactor, so kind of expecting things to be quite good. Got there and found the biggest pile of rubbish I have ever seen on the platform with rats all over it and the station consisted of two portacabins. I'm sure a famoue route like the Trans Siberian will be better though.

Getting visas for Russia and China are pretty easy.

Throwing in North Korea may be a challenge. There is a company based in Beijing who do organised trips (the only way you can go), but there is a lot of preperation needed. The trips, once arranged are pretty much infelixble and you have to 'toe the line' including taking a shirt and tie with you and laying flowers at the memorial of Kim.

It would be a hell of a challenge to do a train trip and tie it in without a hiccup with a trip to NK.

[MangoBroccoli]

I met a group of English guys in Warsaw who were travelling from Beijing all the way back home. I was amazed they'd done the Trans-Siberian express and kept pushing them on it - what was it like? How much did it cost? Would you do it again?

In all honesty, they were all pretty 'meh' about it. At the end of the day it was just a train ride for days on end. In fact they enjoyed Moscow a lot more.

However, they were totally glad they had done it, they'd probably never do it again though.

Dunno if that's any use at all (it's probably not) but thought I'd pass it on anyway

[Furious George]

I am intending to do the Trans-Siberian in November for my honeymoon...oh yeah...romantic!

We are doing it independently with the intention of making lots of stops along the way, buying tickets at the station and only following a rough plan. We will do the Vladivostok to Moscow route. Booked flights from London to Moscow (easyjet so cheap as we booked them far in advance - they also fly to DME from Manchester) and the Moscow to Vladivostok flight with Aeroflot (£100 each for a 9 hour flight!).

Train tickets can only be bought 45 days in advance. Some agents allow you to buy them before - but they can't buy them more than 45 days in advance either. Agents add a fee, but I have checked out the rdz (? Russian Railways) website which is straightforward enough (though apparently some types of credit card have difficulty paying) and cheapest. Depending on the time of year and class of travel turning up at the station can be easy enough.

We will use visitrussia for our visa. Think it was around £120 last time we went. Took about a week. You need to stay in a hotel for at least one night to register the visa. There are alternatives but they are complex and involve dealing with the police. You can theoretically use a transit visa apparently for up to 4 days which may be enough to get you from Moscow to Mongolia if you do the trans-Mongolian route to Beijing, but probably not enough for trans-Manchurian route to Beijing.

The trailblazer guidebook is really good. Much better than the rough guides one.

As for the rest - no idea! But I love the idea of going to North Korea - Brandt does a guide to that which is also tremendous.

I love guidebooks - I am Fucking boring as this post would suggest.

Edited cos I am shite

Seat 61 is a good source too: www.Seat61.com

[Tight minge]

As mentioned above, here is the company doing the trips to NK: http://www.koryogroup.com On the whole expensive, especially for what you get, but its not a normal holiday.

I'd kind of go with mangoBroccoli's thoughts that it may just be a 'train ride' as it bears out my train experiences in Russia. All in all Russia is a fantastic country and the people are really friendly (as long as they know your not American). Moscow is a fantastic city (but horrendously expensive), but when you get into the country and some of the smaller cities and towns, they are great, but you will not to learn your cyrilic to get by.

[Enigma]

I'd like to do this one day. I'd get the train from Drem I think, down to London, on to Paris, then Moscow. I'd take the Vladivostok option then take a ferry to Niigata, Shinkansen to Tokyo then fly back. I haven't really looked into it properly but I imagine that it would take me a fair amount of time.

My auntie took the train from her hometown in Yorkshire and did it to Beijing then down to Hong Kong a good wee while back.

I also know my Cyrillic alphabet.

[Alert Mongoose]

I am intending to do the Trans-Siberian in November for my honeymoon...oh yeah...romantic!

We are doing it independently with the intention of making lots of stops along the way, buying tickets at the station and only following a rough plan. We will do the Vladivostok to Moscow route. Booked flights from London to Moscow (easyjet so cheap as we booked them far in advance - they also fly to DME from Manchester) and the Moscow to Vladivostok flight with Aeroflot (£100 each for a 9 hour flight!).

Train tickets can only be bought 45 days in advance. Some agents allow you to buy them before - but they can't buy them more than 45 days in advance either. Agents add a fee, but I have checked out the rdz (? Russian Railways) website which is straightforward enough (though apparently some types of credit card have difficulty paying) and cheapest. Depending on the time of year and class of travel turning up at the station can be easy enough.

We will use visitrussia for our visa. Think it was around £120 last time we went. Took about a week. You need to stay in a hotel for at least one night to register the visa. There are alternatives but they are complex and involve dealing with the police. You can theoretically use a transit visa apparently for up to 4 days which may be enough to get you from Moscow to Mongolia if you do the trans-Mongolian route to Beijing, but probably not enough for trans-Manchurian route to Beijing.

The trailblazer guidebook is really good. Much better than the rough guides one.

As for the rest - no idea! But I love the idea of going to North Korea - Brandt does a guide to that which is also tremendous.

I love guidebooks - I am Fucking boring as this post would suggest.

Edited cos I am shite

Seat 61 is a good source too: www.Seat61.com

Thought for a minute there you were going to rubber the new other half!

[Florentine_Pogen]

Try and get hold of "The Big Red Train Ride" by Eric Newby - a classic travel book. Pretty sure it's still in print.

[tongue_tied_danny]

Paul Theroux has wrote a couple of books about crossing Asia by train. I'm not the biggest fan of his writing style but still worth checking out.

[welshbairn]

Used to be an old commie in Huddersfield who had the UK rights for Soviet Railways. London to Vladivastok return was under £100. The one I was tempted by was Moscow to Tehran. It was run by Iranian Railways, so was teetotal, but if you were discrete there was no problem apparently. £15. Then that Gorbachev cnut screwed it all up, and the occasionally hot conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia where the train has to pass.

[Furious George]

Bump....because I have bought my first tickets and I am now excited!

Vladivostok - Irkutsk with a day in Khabarovsk for about £400 each in a 2 berth compartment. Raring to go!

[Baw Jaws]

It's a long train ride and in truth a bit dull. I went to Beijing via Irkutsk and Ulan Baatar. Take plenty of reading and vodka. In Irkutsk make sure you go to Lake Baikal. Take snacks and buy the smoked fish at the stations. Avoid the kebabs at stations in Siberia. I used a broker to book the tickets, etc. it was twelve years ago so no recollection of who they were. They change the wheels in Ulan Udey which is pretty cool.

[Yoss]

Bump....because I have bought my first tickets and I am now excited!

Vladivostok - Irkutsk with a day in Khabarovsk for about £400 each in a 2 berth compartment. Raring to go!

I'm planning to do this in April. So, very interested to hear how you've been getting on. (It was November you said you were doing it, right?)

[Furious George]

Tremendously well - was brilliant and would do it again in heartbeat. Already starting to plan the next trip....when I can convince the wife. Some generic thoughts:

1) Buying tickets is easy, register on rzd.ru and either print them out at home if you know your route before, or print them out at the self service checkouts in the train stations if you are buying as you go. The 'long distance' kiosks are staffed by people who rarely speak english so unless you can speak russian could be a nightmare. Some big stations have 'travel centres' where someone can speak English if you are lucky. I reckon the net is the easiest way.

2) Trains are hot. Very hot. -19C outside and +30C inside. Take one of those keys for opening British gas meter boxes (yellow for triangular 'lock'). You might well need to open a window if you get the chance.

3) take noodles/ instant porridge and stuff. The restaurant cars are fine (we stopped off lots so used various 'local' trains for overnight journeys as well as the main Rossiya train - quality and availability of food seems to vary), but you want a break from going there 3 times a day. Take vodka.

4) I took too much stuff to do - games, films, books etc. Didn't use half of it. I was either sleeping (due to temperature, motion, jet lag or wedding stress) or looking out the window for hours on end. I did not find this boring (but I am a boring man).

5) bring an alarm clock and keep it on Moscow time. All trains run to Moscow time and timetables are in each wagon. I still can't work out time in Russia - when you got off as often as we did it is pretty disorienting.

6) buy a Russian SIM card if you can. It's good for knowing the weather (if you do it in winter).

7) Provodnistas in the wagons dont speak much English. They still try and sell you stuff though. Weirdly the people in the restaurant car might.

we were the only foreigners on the trains in November except an Aussie couple from Ekaterinburg to Moscow.

9) travel light in general. No suitcase.

10) toilets in trains as are clean. Generally the standard of cleanliness leaves the east coast / west coast mainline here in the shade.

11) trains are slow and smooth...but on time. There are some places you stop for 30+ mins - and lots of platform kiosks and people selling their products (even in November) at the stops so easy to get off on the longer breaks.

12) you end up in places at weird times of the day. Can be pretty disorienting to be walking around Ekaterinburg at 6.30am having just arrived.

13) station facilities are good. Use left luggage rooms. Only use toilets if you are ill - they should be paying you to use them. 24hour McDonald's are a good bet.

14) trains are plentiful west of Irkutsk - as in many per day. They are less common east of Irkutsk it seemed (one per day - probably depends if you are doing the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Mongolian or Trans-Manchurian).

15) just go really.

Don't know how much you intend to break your journey. We started in Vladivostok, and stopped in Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg and ended up in Moscow. Outside Moscow only Irkutsk was set up for tourism in anyway. It's a nice city though - really liked it there. Plus it has Lake Baikal.

I can speak enough Russian to get by. Was handy on trains and at the stations. And bars. Restaurants. Some people speak English - depends on your luck.

Time for lunch. If I think of more I will let you know.

[sjc]

My Aunt & Uncle did this recently.....looked fcuking amazing.

[ICTChris]

What's Vladivostok like?

[Furious George]

What's Vladivostok like?

Interesting place - busy as f**k. I guess due to having the Pacific fleet based there and it being a massive port. More 24 hour flower shops than you will ever need. I liked it - would be an easy place to spend 2/3 days.

[sjc]

Interesting place - busy as f**k. I guess due to having the Pacific fleet based there and it being a massive port. More 24 hour flower shops than you will ever need. I liked it - would be an easy place to spend 2/3 days.

Was that not where the Japanese kicked their arse in 1905?

[Yoss]

Much useful advice there George, thanks for that.

I'm intending to make my way overland to Moscow then was thinking of joining an organised trip from there to Beijing. Trying to pick one with the right stops though - would like to see Ekaterinburg but it looks like that's going to bump up the cost a fair bit. Is it worth seeing?