Trans-Siberian in november, anyone done it?

maccarthy

Hi, I'm thinking of travelling for 5 weeks from St.Petersburg to Beijing in November. Will the weather be awful? Anyone done it at that time of year? Hints?

Norinoco

Hi Ya,

2 of my friends are doing it at the moment.

Not sure on the weather in November.

The girls started in Moscow - not sure about starting in St.Petersburg

If you are starting from Moscow, buy the train ticket when you get there - it will save you at least a couple of hundred euros. Travels Agencies rob you blind booking it from here. And in November, im sure that the train will not be booked out!

Google the Trans Syberian railway and you will come up with loads of class websites.

Big tip : Bring a sink plug. Appaently they have no running hot water, so to wash you have to get the water from a pot and pour it in to the sink, and obviously there are no plugs on the train.

If I get a few websites from them I post them

robindch

hmm... the trans-sib in November? What a strange idea.

First off, it's going to be damn cold with average temperatures probably between -20 and +5 degrees, so bring plenty of thermal underwear (buyable in the Great Outdoors, just off Grafton Street) and warm clothes. Buy a furry hat in Russia; it'll serve as a handy-conversation starter with the locals as well as keeping your bonce warm. Personally, I'd go for the good black mink-fur ones, as they're the warmest -- should cost between 80 and 120 euro for a top-class one. Rabbit-fur and fox-fur are much cheaper and you can get them all in the large markets in Moscow's suburbs. Bring an MP3 player too.

It's probably "cheapest" to buy the ticket in Moscow, but as Norinoco said, you should avoid going to travel agents as my experience with them is that they will rip you off blind. Two years ago, there was an official English-speaking ticket office run by the venerable Intourist (the official government tourist agency) in Leningradskiy train station in Moscow and I assume that it's probably still there and they'll probably be able to sort you out, though be prepared to spend some hours doing it. While you're not going to pay Russian prices, at least Intourist are unlikely to rip you off as much as the travel agents. If you do want to use travel agents, then make sure that they know that you're going to shop around for the best price, at which point the russian instinct for cutting a deal might override the russian instinct for making a quick buck.

If you speak Russian, then you won't have much trouble buying the tickets at the ordinary kassas; just remember to bring along all your documentation.

If you don't speak Russian, then you must at least learn the Cyrillic alphabet -- it's takes about 20 minutes to do and will save you some trouble. A small phrase book will be useful too, though not very much. If you're a drinker, then bring headache tablets. Regardless, get rehydration tablets and diahorrea tablets. You can do without water purification tablets and much of the other junk which the guide books tell you to bring. If you get into bureaucratic trouble anywhere (lost tickets, documentation, closed hotel), do feel free to shout into the street something like "hello, does anybody speak english?" -- you'll be moderately likely to get a response and if so, whoever provides it is likely to be helpful.

If you don't have anybody in Russia whom you're planning to visit, then I'd plan to stop in Ekaterinburg, possibly Novosibirsk (just to break the journey), Irkutsk and maybe Ulan Ude (if you've got plenty of time. there's not much there, despite what the guide books say). While in Irkutsk, make sure that you visit Lake Baikal -- it's incredible.

The most important thing to bring is wet-wipes for the toilet, preferably in several flavours, and allow around 4 or 5 per day. Get them in medium-sized (not more than 20) packs and make sure that the packs are resealable. 'Sure' deodorant ones are the most suitable for the sheer range of uses to which they can be put.

Be prepared for rudeness on a galactic scale -- some of it is genuine, but much of it is staged; prod a little bit and you'll find the real warm/friendly/wild/enthusiastic/morose russia underneath. Outside Moscow and St Pete, hotels and accommodation is primitive, often in the extreme. Be prepared to enter freezing rooms with mildew and suspicious stains on the beds.

Finally, and I suppose this is the advice you will ignore: why bother going then? All you'll see is six days worth of snow and ice interspersed with rain and more forests than you can comfortably deal with. There's a russian word for the madness which comes over one when one gets lost in the Taiga, the endless birch woods which stretch from the Urals to Vladivostok -- consider yourself liable to come down with a touch of it during this trip. A couple of weeks ago, I was on the train from Pyongyang in North Korea to Beijing, and got chatting to the two provodnitsi (carriage-managers; one was semi-plastered, the other almost unable to stand up) in the one Moscow-bound carriage. Told me that six weeks in a room the size of a fridge did strange things to a man and to enjoy my freedom outside...

Frankly, if I were you, I'l just hitch myself in St Pete and stay there for two weeks. It's much more fun than Moscow, Omsk, Ulan Ude, Ulaan Bataar and Beijing and the food + beer are better too. Can't speak for Ekaterinburg or Novosibirsk, but I can't imagine that they're any better than Moscow which I find an unpleasant city at the best of times.

Whatever you do, enjoy yourself -- Russia is a nine-ringed circus and you'll never be bored.