Riding the TransSib

Photographer Mike Buscher spent two months traversing Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 2003.

I don’t remember the name of the small town where we first set foot in Russia.  I do recall that the border officials were dumfounded when they saw American passports at the remote checkpoint, where the foreigners were mainly Chinese.  My fiancée, Cate, and I were on our way to Vladivostok, the end of the line in the Russian Far East and the starting point for our Trans-Siberian Railroad adventure. We had been traveling for nearly two months through Southeast Asia and China, but it was the train expedition across Russia that I was most excited about.

Ever since I hosted an exchange student from Novosibirsk in 1996, I had pondered the idea of traveling through Siberia. I remember searching for our friend’s hometown on my map and finally finding it, hovering in a mysterious void above Kazakhstan. Since then, I often wondered what it would be like to experience life in Siberia, a place that for me had always been associated with gulags, tigers, and ice.

The 9,289-kilometer train trek from Vladivostok to Moscow was full of memorable moments. On the train, we watched with amazement as the barren landscape unfolded before us. I was surprised when a picturesque wooden village or a drab housing block temporarily interrupted the seemingly never-ending taiga or steppe. We met Russians who shared with us their meat, bread, vegetables, and vodka. During lengthy stops, we joined the crowds on the platforms to buy hot pirozhki and pelmeni from the babushkas who have made an art out of selling food to travelers. Off the train and away from the tracks, we wandered through several large cities and through some villages so small that they are not even considered worthy of most maps.

With camera in hand, I set off with Cate to document life in places such as Bolshiye Koty, a village of only a few hundred people on the shores of icy Lake Baikal. We visited the spot in Yekaterinburg where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.  In Tomsk, we met two young men who took us to a biker bar that featured large portraits of Lenin and Marx, both clad in leather motorcycle jackets.  We explored the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan, the tree-lined boulevards of Khabarovsk, the unassuming town of Svobodny, the Buryat city of Ulan Ude, and, of course, mighty Novosibirsk, where I was reunited with my old friend.

Siberia was much more than I ever had imagined. I discovered warmth beneath its cold exterior.

After almost two months in Russia, we rolled through the Urals and towards Moscow, where we would collect ourselves and prepare for our onward travels. I felt sad as we left Asia. I looked forward to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but I knew that they would never compare to my experiences in Siberia.

A week later, on a fancy Finnish train bound for Helsinki, a Russian official glanced at my passport and asked a few routine questions as we left his country. He quickly provided our exit stamps, smiled, and moved on.