My last day in Ulan Ube was leisurely. I was woken at 6am by my current weird sleep pattern problem and read for an hour until a 7am breakfast in the hotel bar. It was not due to get light until 9.30am at the earliest and the temperature was hovering around -30c at this unearthly hour, putting you off going for an early morning walk.

To cut a long story short, I did not have enough time on my Russian Visa to obtain a Mongolian Visa so I am taking the train that skirts Mongolia and ends up in Beijing.

I unpacked my backpack and decided to have a sort out, emptied it’s entire contents all over the room and threw out anything that was not absolutely necessary. I was not planning to do much, my train was leaving 4pm local time so I re-packed my bag, read for a bit, did a bit more packing and a bit more reading.

Midday I went on a fruitless attempt to procure some warmer clothes. After an hour of trecking round the small town centre I failed to find a clothes shop which resulted in contracting the first stages of hypothermia. Not nice. I could not get warm, I was shaking and sweating and then the panic attacks came. This was obviously the worst thing that could have happened as my train was at 4pm and I had to get out of the country or risk overstaying my Visa and having to deal with the corrupt and unstable Russian border officials (a recent report shows that 60% of Russian border guards are mentally unstable), they regularly have mass shootouts with each other.

I medicated myself with three cups of tea and a large bar of nutty chocolate which seemed to do the trick as by 3pm I came round a little and managed to drag my back pack over the ice to the station. By the time I reached the station I was back on form again and eager to get out of Russia.

I boarded the train and found my cabin. I was sharing with a Russian woman in her fifties who spoke no English. She was nice, she made my bed for me and generally mothered me and was concerned that I was travelling on my own. We had a chat about family and friends for a couple of hours and I headed for the bar to read my book and have a beer.

At this point let me introduce you to Christof because he is probably an important factor as to why you are not attending my funeral today. Christof was a well healed Polish eccentric in his fifties. He was a Borat who claimed he was an advisor to President Vladimir Putin. He described himself as a businessman but his business was very vague, vague to point of being damn right dodgy. He has been robbed on numerous occasions and had recently had his glasses stolen so could not see very well. He spoke around six different languages but his English was pretty poor, resulting in him rubbing his temples frantically when he could not remember or was too drunk to remember an English word.

He was generally pretty chilled out but when he lost his cool he would screw his face up, clench his fists until his knuckles went white, start shaking and endlessly mutter ‘the bastards, the bastards’

The mere mention of George W Bush would send him off into a trembling and silent fit of pure rage complete with clenched fists and white knuckles and it would not have been wise to remind him that he was operating on American dollars only.

Christof wore a dead animal type hat which he would never remove or let anyone touch. He even slept in it. He had a pouch with his remaining personal effects that had not been stolen, including some beads that he seemed particularly proud of and a tatty Chinese newspaper cutting which contained a photo of him and an accompanying story about him getting his bag Stolen at a Chinese railway station ten years ago.

Christof was partial to Vodka in no uncertain quantities and had a piece of material wrapped around his wrist which he used to wipe vodka off his clothing and chin when he missed his mouth.

Back to the bar, I was on the last twenty pages on my book which I was on a mission to finish. Within minutes of settling with my book and my beer, two Russians appeared and promptly forced me into a Vodka session. One of them, Vlad, was another Alan, well built, rough looking but far more intense if that sounds possible and he insisted on the hugging, the head locks and the rough and tumble. Why can’t these people just have a beer and chill. Vodka after Vodka was being poured and things were getting pretty scary. I was trapped by the window by these three hulks and there was no getting out.

When one went to the toilet I saw my opportunity and escaped, shouting behind me that i will be back.

not much more than ten minutes later I bumped into Vlad and his mate who were having a ciggie between carriages. After another attempt by Vlad at a head lock my glasses fell to the ground and I kicked off big time shouting at the bastard.

When he saw the shit I was getting, Christof appeared like a fairy godfather. Christof (affectionately known as ‘Our Man’) spoke some Russian. It transpired that Vlad was Russian Mafia and was taking a six day train journey to collect a debt in Harbin, China. Apparently he was convinced that because I am British, I worked for British Petroleum and he wanted to do business with me. My subsequent refusal had offended him and he had decided he was going to kill me. Our man Christof informed Vlad that he had friends in pretty high places in the FSB (former KGB) and the Russian mafia and told him in no uncertain terms that if he killed me dark things would happen to him. After Our Man had made some throat slitting gestures and accompanying sound effects, Vlad changed his mind about killing me, to my relief.

Afterwards Vlad got himself so drunk on Vodka that his friend had to carry him off to his carriage. Things chilled out in the bar so myself, two Welsh lads and a Scottish couple drank with a lovely young Russian couple who apologised profusely for the truly appalling behaviour of Vlad the Impaler.

The morning of day two we went to the bar carriage for some food and our man, Christof, was in there. Christof sat us down and informed us in all seriousness that he liked women with small breasts and he didn’t have much time for homosexuals.

In the afternoon Vlad cornered me between carriages, apologised for the previous night’s behaviour and tried to have a conversation about Chelsea, The IRA and Queen, his favourite band. He also made it blatantly clear that if Chelsea did not win the Premiership, he would carry out his previous night’s threat to kill me. Super.

Late afternoon we got to the Russia/China border, by this time I was pretty keen to get out of Russia. It was dodgier than Colombia but I am glad I went. The train pulled into the Russian side of the border and surly looking border guards got on and came down the carriage collecting passport and searching for drugs and contraband. They largely left me alone whilst giving the Chinese in the carriage a good going over and no end of grief.

Myself and my new western train friends, accompanied by Our Man, left the train and went to drink beer and eat pizza for three hours whilst the train was taken into the siding for a Chinese restaurant car to be attached, the carriages to be hoisted into the air and bogies (wheels) changed as the track gauge is different in China to that of Russia.

After re-boarding the train the Russians handed me my passport back and we made the lengthy 1km journey to the Chinese side of the border where the same process was repeated (with friendly and smiley Chinese border guards) By then it was 8pm and we were not due to move again until 1am.

We left the train on the Chinese side to change our Russian Roubles, all the money changers were operating from the confines of the men’s toilet and at that point were realised for definite, we were back in Asia again!

The first thing I managed to do upon entering the continent was to accidentally set fire to one of the bins on the Chinese side of the border. I snuck away and don’t think anyone noticed it was me.

Once back on the train, there was nothing more to do than drink Vodka in my compartment with the door locked to keep out Vlad (who had been trying to track down which compartment I was in but was flatly refused the information by the carriage attendant). I passed out before the train got moving again. I was in China and sleeping.

The next morning I headed to the new Chinese bar carriage to find Our man sitting there, drunk as a skunk, lolling and grinning with a three quarter empty bottle of vodka on the table. He reasserted his slight dislike for homosexuals, briefly got angry about George W Bush and informed me that he had stayed up drinking all night as he was paranoid about the Chinese putting narcotics into his bag. It sounded like a perfectly unreasonable excuse to me.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, Vlad left the train at Harbin to collect his mafia debt and an air of peace and tranquility overcame the train, our man left the bar, staggering off in the wrong direction, not to be seen again until the morning, and most the Chinese passengers left the train.

Due to a 5.30am arrival in Beijing, myself and my two Welsh friends crashed out at 8pm for a well earned sleep.

5.32am, two minutes late on a journey from Moscow to Beijing (some 6000 miles), we pulled into the main station. I walked down the platform to find the Welsh lads as we had decided to go to the same hostel in a taxi. Just after they appeared from the train, Our Man staggered out looking somewhat ropey. He had four brief cases sealed in cellophane and a duffle bag. He was rather annoyed that his assistant had not turned up so he commandeered us to help him shift his baggage. The briefcase I took was very heavy and rather suspect and I was hoping the police were not going to swoop on us.

He eventually managed to procure the services of a porter and went into a forehead clenching meltdown after he could not agree a price with him. All was eventually settled; we walked alongside the porter and managed to lose Our Man so we were stuck with all his dodgy baggage. After about twenty minutes we located him and his assistant (who unsurprisingly was a young and pretty Chinese girl).

After bidding farewell to Our Man and his assistant, we got a taxi to Leo Hostel near to Tiananmen square and got a few hours sleep safe in the knowledge that The Impaler was 1000km away, debt collecting.

Photo “USSR RUSSIAN S.F.S.R. IRKUTSK OBLAST, SIBERIA, 1980 series Trailer plate” by woody1778a on Flickr

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I arrived at the Moscow train station at about 8.30pm to meet my two Aussie friends, the ones I met in Tallinn. After an endless queue to get my train tickets (I booked over the internet) we went to the platform and watched our train being shunted in backwards.

We soon made ourselves comfortable and as the train moved off, we cracked open the Vodka in our compartment. I was at the Russian end of the train and Nick and Chez were in the Chinese end, sharing their compartment with Kiwi Henny and Polish Mihail who I had met in the wonderful Hostel Comrade.

I was sharing my compartment with three Russians who got off the next morning. It was not long before a rough looking Russian called Alan from the next compartment made himself known to us. Alan had just finished a fourteen year prison sentence for knifing someone to death and was returning to his home town, Magadan in Eastern Russia.

Myself and Nick got dragged into his compartment for some more Vodka and to share his food which consisted of some bread, some cheese and some sort of feathered beast’s leg which had no doubt been dispatched to the great hen house in the sky by his own fair hands.

It wasn’t long before Alan was Vodka’d up and started to get pretty scary. Whilst ( was passing through the bar car, he demanded I drink Vodka with him. He had grabbed my coat in a vice like grip and would not let go for love nor money.

The scary and starey eyed bar man had no interest in helping me out and found the scenario to his great amusement.

Not wanting to offend the crazy bastard due to safety concerns, I ended up having three shots with him before managing to escape to the safety of my friend’s compartment.

Alan was persistent though. No matter how many ways we tried to lock the door, he managed to get in. He made several attempt to kiss my neck which is Russian tradition after Vodka apparently. He gave up in the end and went on the rampage elsewhere. Crazy Alan was not fucking about, he went on a forty eight hour Vodka binge and finally crashed out for twenty four hours and looked rather sheepish for the remainder of the journey.

We spent the first night in the bar with some more Westerners – six Swedes, an Englishman with a very posh upper class accent, an Irish guy called John and a Russian who claimed to have murdered two Chechnans – he was not very fond of Chechnans apparently. He was another that I though best not to offend in anyway, despite my lack of Chechnan characteristics.

The night was finished off with a snowball fight at a station we stopped at and then to Linnea, the Swedish girl’s first class cabin for a lot of drunken nonsense ranting.

There was snow lying deep in the countryside after leaving Moscow and for the rest of the journey. The days were spent looking out of the window at the frozen rivers and the snow covered pine trees. Transversing several time zones over land leaves you somewhat dazed and confused.

The whole journey is scheduled on Moscow time so you never really have any idea what time it is locally, how much daylight is left or what time you have got up or gone to bed or woken up. The days seem to meld together and stops are welcome so we could buy beer and food from the platform traders and get our feet on some solid ground. By day three we were starting to go pretty crazy.

The last full day I was on a bit of a downer because I had realised I would arrive in Irkutsk at 4am and had nowhere booked to stay which did not sound good to me. The main reason I was a going to Irkutsk was to obtain a Mongolian visa. I was as nervous as a whore in a church, to put it mildly.

A friendly Belarusian guy called Serge had a chat with the starey eyed bar man and it turned out I could stay on the train until Ulan Ube and get off the train at 1pm the next day (local time). The only problem with this was my ticket was only to Irkutsk so it would mean moving out of my cabin, saying farewell to the Russian carriage attendant and moving into a spare bed in the Chinese end of the train with Irish John and Sergio, which was not problem for them.

I had spent three days in the Chinese section of the train with my friends so I assumed the Chinese guys thought I was on that carriage anyway. They were pretty chilled out and probably didn’t care much that I was jumping the train ticketless.

This afternoon the train pulled into Ulan Ube and I said a sad farewell to my new friends and hailed a beat up old Lada to take me to the hotel. The taxi driver was another crazy guy who was not going to let the snow and the ice on the road put him off flooring the accelerator. I made the ten minute drive in one piece and he gave me his number in case I wanted to hire him again. I think I will probably not.

I am in a rather nice hotel which is not cheap so I may move to a flea pit tomorrow but having a decent shower after four days of train skankiness is worth it.

This afternoon I hung out in the town square practicing my Russian by chatting to the locals. I think I am the only foreigner in this small chilled town and all think I am crazy for coming to Siberia at this time of the year.

The square has a vast, sinister bust of Lenin’s head made of black granite (biggest in the world I believe) with icicles hanging from his nose and all around people are making huge ice sculptures of bridges and palaces, presumably for Christmas. It is -20c outside so any trips out have to be kept fairly short and to the point in order to avoid hyperthermia.

It is Saturday today (I think) and I am stuck here until Monday when the Mongolian consulate opens but there are worst places to be stuck. Hopefully this visa process will be smooth but if anything goes wrong I will get the Beijing train that does not go through Mongolia as my Russian visa expires soon and I don’t fancy much spending Christmas in a gulag. As it stands it looks like I will be spending Mongolia in Christmas which could be good!

Photo “Cruzando el río Lena congelado” by ntx on Flickr

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I thought I’d jot some notes down about my planning of the Trans-Siberian Railway come March of 2009. It’ll definitely be an adventure, but it’s also testing out my awesome logistic skills and trying to plan everything out ahead of time.

If you’re interested in doing this trip yourself, or at least seeing the method to my madness, keep reading. This is all the pre-planning many months out. And of course, it’s the Hawkins 7.

Step One: Read the awesome Seat61.com guide to the Trans-Siberian Railway.
All good journeys start with a first step, and this is the best way to get your feet wet with thinking about the journey. And then start buying books. The Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian book sucks, but Bryn Thomas’ Trans-Siberian Railway book kicks ass.

Step Two: Figure out where you want to stop off.
If I wanted to lock myself on a train for a week, I’d take Amtrak somewhere. But I wanted to see Moscow, see some of Siberia, see Lake Baikal and of course, Mongolia. I’m doing two major stops on the train from Moscow to Beijing – Irkutsk and then Ulan Bator, Mongolia. If I had the time or money, I’d consider stopping at the major stops, even though it seems like there’s just a day’s worth of stuff to see.

Step Three: Beg for time off of work.
Enough said. I’m taking three weeks.

Step Four: Check out the timetables.
“Duh.” Well yes, I know that this is a no brainer, but it’s important to know which trains run on what days, and plan your trip around that instead of when you want to go. As much as I’d like to stop in various places along the way, it’s going to be drawing out a long process.

Step Five: Construct a draft of the itinerary.
I’ve been sketching one out in Google Documents. I know, a spreadsheet – but at least I didn’t use Microsoft Project and bust out a Gantt chart. As you can see, I’ve got 2 days in Irkutsk and 3 days or so in Ulan Bator with a few days in Moscow and Beijing on either end. Those I can be flexible with – the ones in the middle I can’t.

Step Six: Start looking at flights.
The Seat61 guy, being London based, said that it’s cheating to fly from the UK to Moscow to do the Trans-Siberian. However, since I’m about 3950 miles west of London, I decided that I’d rather spend the time I would have spent going from London to Moscow via rail actually exploring Moscow and having a good time. I cashed in some frequent flier miles and got the ticket taken care of. Otherwise, it’s a major pain to find one-way tickets from those cities, but it can be done.

Step Seven: Start saving money.
I budgeted $1000 for the train ticket itself, and it’s reasonable considering it’s lodging + entertainment + transport. What I need to save my shekels for is Moscow. It’s the most expensive city in the world, and I’m struggling to conceptualize as to why though. If you ever want an eye-opener, look at hotel prices in Moscow. Even 2-3 star hotels are $200 a night.

As the trip approaches, another Hawkins 7 list will pop up dealing with those fun things like visas, currency, gadgets and all the things that make life worth living.

Photo “Trans-Siberian Railway” by yeowatzup on Flickr

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