Beijing to Moscow: Six Days on the Trans-Siberian

It is 10:30 p.m. on a crisp September night when my friend and I sweep into Beijing central railway station. We pile our packs on the floor and lean self-consciously against a pillar near the entrance.

The station is not well lit and it is difficult to focus on details. Red marble floor, grand central staircase, large stained-glass window. A grimy precommunist building modified with gold stars and political inscriptions that are beginning to fade. I feel like we’re being scrutinized, but no one, not even the teenage soldier wearing an oversized khaki jacket, is looking at us.

After a week in Beijing, we’re about to take the six-day, 9,289 km Trans-Siberian express from the Chinese capital to Moscow. Built by Russian imperialism and adapted to Soviet needs, it is the longest passenger rail route in the world. It is popular with both traders and foreign tourists and is also a lifeline for remote towns throughout the region.

Our train is announced and we pass through to the platform and pull ourselves up the steps of the Russian train, the only one in the station. It is  suffocatingly warm inside yet smells reassuringly like my English grandmother’s house—coal smoke and unaired rooms. Squeezing along the corridor, scraping our packs against the wood-patterned Formica walls, we find our compartment. The train lurches and we drop our bags and collapse on the long red seats.

We exchange our tickets for bed linen with a middle-aged Russian attendant (provodnitsa) who fills the doorway. She smiles nervously but doesn’t speak, and we do the same. Later, we use the stiff, yellow sheets to turn the seats into beds and try to sleep as the train bounces us through the night on uneven tracks.

Begun 110 years ago this May and inaugurated in 1900, the Moscow-Vladivostok stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway was a textbook example of how not to build a railroad. Pushed through by imperial decree, reckless methods and haste characterized the construction project. But the line endured and there are now three Trans-Siberian routes, each sharing the same tracks through Russia but separating before northern China. The original line to Vladivostok can now be extended by taking a ferry across to Japan. The second route, the Trans-Mongolian, branches off near Siberia’s Lake Baikal and cuts down through the People’s Republic of Mongolia. The Trans-Manchurian route leaves the Russian line further along, enters northern China and circumvents Mongolia. Both the Trans-Mongolian route and the Trans-Manchurian line (the one we are on) terminate in Beijing.

In the line’s early days, sumptuously decorated carriages with deep carpets, oak paneling, and armchairs were exhibited at the Paris Exposition to attract wealthy travelers. Today’s railway is more a reminder of later Soviet functionalism. (Although luxury options are being resurrected – see box, page 40.)

Our train, the Vostok, was built in East Germany in the 1970s and contains 13 carriages, each with 10 compartments and a coal-fired hot water samovar. There is one first class car (SV), mostly used by foreign tourists, which has two beds per compartment rather than the standard four in a coupé wagon. Each compartment is about six feet across and has long padded seats separated by a folding table. Nothing seems to have been replaced since the carriage was built, except the curtains, which are a dazzling gold.

There are two well-designed washrooms in each carriage but they are cold and grubby enough to make us want to avoid them. A hot tap delivers only cold water and the toilet flushes halfheartedly, perhaps in protest at the maintenance man who beats it with a sledgehammer every morning. Like the two provodnitsas in our carriage, he goes about his business quietly and efficiently, almost as if the passengers aren’t there.

For those not working or engaged in commerce, time is a nebulous concept on the Trans-Siberian. The route crosses several time zones, and although I try hard to keep my watch adjusted, it never matches the stop times on the timetable or the clocks at the stations we pull into. Many passengers adopt a more intuitive existence, getting up when they want breakfast, eating meals when they are hungry and going to bed when they’re tired.

We spend most of our time playing cards, drinking warm Chinese beer and gazing at the endless golden larch trees punctuated by occasional clusters of finely carved wooden houses with blue picket fences. Although we had expected to be bored by the lack of activities and attractions, we find the sense of deep relaxation a restorative antidote to the fast-pace of everyday existence: if nothing else, a trip like this is a convalescence from the way many of us live our lives.

Most of the passengers we meet are also foreign tourists: a train enthusiast from the United States, a young couple from Germany and a group of backpackers from the Netherlands on a shoestring budget who spend their time looking for ways to save money. They haggle with food sellers over a few coins and pool their meager resources whenever they can.

For the first two days, the only Russians in our first-class carriage––an affluent-looking, thirty-something couple––seem to be avoiding us. We see each other in the corridor but, perhaps due to the language barrier, only exchange nods of recognition. On the third evening, though, as I head past their open door to the washroom, I am beckoned into their compartment. They have food and some vodka gathered on their small table and, after a few gestures and smiles, I return with my friend and we all sit facing each other as the night falls outside.

Few words are offered as the food–– boiled eggs, ham, cheese, bread, crackers and chocolate––is handed around. We show photos of our hometowns as the vodka is shared. After one or two drinks, our companions begin to speak in halting English. They are travel agents from St. Petersburg, using their Trans-Siberian trip to develop business in the East, while visiting relatives in the region. They have never traveled abroad, but they harbor a great ambition to visit London. After a further exchange of photos––and more food than I’ve eaten in several weeks––we head back to our compartment. It is going to be a good sleep.

The food we have brought with us for the journey is quite basic: dry noodles, oatmeal, and soup that we rehydrate from the samovar. But most of our supplies are bought at stations along the route, where the train stops for about 20 minutes two or three times each day.

Chocolate, ice cream and dark Russian beer are easy to find, but the best food comes from the droves of gnomish old babushkas who descend on the train as it enters a station. Dressed in head scarves and thick woolen coats, most have red faces, bright blue eyes and strong, scarred hands. Many sell stews and boiled vegetables, cooked in their kitchens and warmed on their car engines for the trip to the station. Others walk the platforms with pale cheeses, curled brown sausages, smoked fish and leather-skinned rye breads. My favorite breakfast of the journey turns up in Omsk: a plastic bag of warm potatoes drowned in butter and herbs.

The train bursts into life at these stops, and it is the only time we see passengers from the other carriages. Many are Chinese merchants, and they hit the platform running before the train has even stopped. The merchants sell different goods at each station and the locals wait in groups to see what the traveling market is bringing. Striped sweaters are hawked in Omsk, jogging pants in Tomsk and clocks and ornaments in Ekaterinburg.

At Irkutsk, once dubbed the Paris of Siberia, plump middle-aged women in bright, flowery dresses chatter excitedly as the train jerks to a halt. Young Chinese merchants jump off the train and hurry over to them, carrying heavy fur coats wrapped in plastic bags. The women paw and stroke the black fur, check the linings and tug at the stitching. Within minutes, they are wearing the coats and strutting around the platform admiring each other. Most of the women are laughing, their heads thrown back. Sometimes they swap coats. The merchants have circled the women and are already lowering their prices, but the women are enjoying themselves and seem to have no intention of buying anything.

As we approach Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, known locally as the Holy Sea, it starts to feel colder in our compartment and the trees begin to thin out. All we can see is brilliant blue—the train is right on the edge of the lake. There are no boats, no shorefront homes, just seagulls overhead screeching at the train.

When I pull down the corridor window to face the icy wind, one of our provodnitsas leans out into the corridor, narrows her eyes, shouts something and gestures at me to push the window back up. The rest of the day, during which we never leave the shore of the lake, is a good-natured running battle with her to keep the window open. I am scowled at for waving my camera through the opening, but the provodnitsa runs back into her compartment when I point it at her instead.

Lake Baikal is the turning point on the Trans-Siberian. The small villages and impenetrable forests are replaced by sprawling cities and hissing Siberian factories. We are moving toward the industrial heartland of Russia. The sun disappears. Fog and faint, persistent rain take over. Endless concrete apartment buildings loom over us and the carefree nature of the trip is replaced by a resigned desire for the journey to end. Judging from the faces of the other passengers, most of us now can’t wait to reach the end of the line.

Although it is only mid-afternoon, It is already dark as the train eases into Moscow’s Yaroslavl station. The provodnitsas are standing on the platform as we pull our bags down the metal steps and disembark, but they are not looking at us. Few of the Trans-Siberian passengers wait around and most quickly disappear into the shadows of the train station. We notice that many passengers look tired and disheveled and we congratulate ourselves for having paid the extra few dollars for a first class compartment.

Yaroslavl station is not as bold about its communist past as Beijing’s central railway station. Completed in 1904, It is a fascinating, stylized reproduction of an old Russian fort, including a gabled roof and a tall, shingled spire. It is more Swiss chateau than Soviet functionalism and it reminds us that we have arrived in European Russia and left the distinctiveness of Beijing and the mystique of Siberia far behind. RL

John Lee is a British-born freelance journalist who lives in Vancouver, Canada.