56 hours on a train!!

Departing Yekatering meant setting off on our longest train journey of the trip, a whole 56 hours. The train unfortunately wasn't the nicest rain we've had, not really any AC so it was pretty stuffy, we rotated going to the restaurant car, for air and a break from our cabin, as you can't lock the cabin it means someone needs to man the bags. WE had bought plenty of supplies for the journey, but by the second day we were well and truly sick of noodles, bread and cheese. So we dined in the restaurant car on the second eveing, food wasn't worth the effort. On the first night we stayed up pretty late and recorded our Russian song, called "Russian girls" (not exactly my choice of topic but I'm well and truly outnumbered!) Vodka fuelled, our Moscow guitar in tow, on the Trans-Mongolian train and armed with Dave's video camera seemed like the perfect time to do it!! The finished product to be put up on U-Tube purely for your entertainment!!heehee!

The first morning involved us being awoken by an attendant banging on our door saying yum, yum: Jim's acute sense of the Russian language meant he heard breakfast and swiflty ordered 4 Stroganov's!ugh! The rest of us were panned out with exhaustion and heat and all I remember from the first morning is the smell of 4 stroganov's wafting into our cabin when I first woke. Needless to say I abstained while james munched on his.

The same the second morning, I tried as best I could to order just three, but she wasn't happy with that, and brought me four anyway!

The carraige attendants or provodnitsa as they are called, is a job these people take fierce pride in, and the manner and sense of humour of the carraige attendant varies hugely and so your service. We have met very few Westerners on these trains, mainly Russians, who give us curious looks. But it's great to feel fully immersed in their culture, and not constantly meeting tourists. It means alot of the time not being fully sure of what's going on if there is a commotion of any sort, but we've gotten used to it. It's a bit funny really.

The days pass with reading, snoozing, maybe a beer, writing, listening to music, talking, singing. We passed through diferent time zones yet the clock on the train is on Moscow time, even though we were somewhere between 3 and 5 hours ahead of it at different points along the way, so we ate when hungry and slept when it was dark.

It was 3 nights on the train so by the third night cabin fever was setting in. However even though we were dying to get off by the end, it was a very cool experience to be racing through the Siberian landscape, looking out the window at small villages, jumping off at occasional stations to stretch the legs and breathe fresh air. I really enjoyed it. The landscape was mainly forrests covering flat plains and mountains, largely uninhabited. Sunsets prolonged because we were constantly going east, some beatuiful scenery. The villages we did pass consisted of wooden shacks with galvanied roofs, and no paved roads, just dirt tracks. Some houses having small plots of land with enough vegetables growing for subsistence farming we reckon.

It's insane the difference between the cities and then a few km outside them, particularly in the case of Moscow. The wealth there compared to elsewhere in Russia is ridiculous. I mean basic stuff like plumbing, roads, electricity. Huge pacts of land un-utilised, they import a large % of agricultural produtcs, when they have the potential to supply themselves it seems. Moscow is certainly a sub-economy, while the rest of the country is in catch-up: slowly.


Reply
Forward