Bill and Alma Have an Unforgettable Trans-Siberia and Trans-Mongolia Train Adventure Across the Breadth of Vast Asia

Our train route is the yellow line, St. Petersburg and Moscow to UlaanBataar, Mongolia, and then by plane to Beijing, Hong Kong and finally Melbourne

It was an adventure we’ve both dreamed about, in different ways, for many years. On July 17, 2004, we completed a 3 ½-week-long journey from Melbourne to Bangkok to St. Petersburg to Moscow and then across the Urals and the vast steppes of Siberia until we finally alighted from our train in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia, the seat of the far-reaching Mongol Empire that was created by Ghengis Khan and his fearsome hoards of warriors.

On our way home, we visited Beijing for a few days, which only whetted our appetite to return to this amazing country that seems poised to try to challenge the United States and the European Union as a world economic power one day.

What a place and what energy!

But first the train journey.

We traveled on one of those very comfortable “Orient Express”-type private trains, with old-fashioned German-built carriages. We’ve done the third-class travel bit when we were much younger and fitter, in Europe and even such places as India and Sri Lanka. At our age, comfort loomed large to us this time.

Our tour was run by GW Trans-Siberian Express, a British company, and the train staff came from a Russian department that operates the private trains of President Vladimir Putin and other VIPs. Some of the air-conditioned luxury carriages, with wood paneling and velvet curtains, were previously used by former Soviet Politburo members. In all, there were about 15 cars for the 70 passengers and train staff. They even had a Russian doctor on board in case.

We flew from Melbourne, via Bangkok, to St. Petersburg and spent four days in St. Petersburg. We could have stayed four weeks. The city is huge and stunningly beautiful architecturally. Its old tsarist palaces, of course, are breathtaking. But less well known, perhaps, is the beauty of thousands of ordinary apartment buildings from pre-Revolutionary days and even those of the Soviet era which survived the awful siege of the German Army during World War II.

St. Petersburg has some of the Old World beauty of Vienna and Venice combined (yes, it even has lovely canals snaking through its old cobblestone streets). It has majestic cathedrals, monuments of all kinds (to both imperialism and communism) and it has those incredible tsarist palaces. Walk though one of them and you know what revolutions are inspired by. We visited, of course, the Hermitage and its priceless art treasures, Catherine’s Palace, Orienbaum (known as the “Chinese Palace” for its interior decor), Peterhof and its famous fountains, and the Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was murdered. On the Soviet-era side, we saw the Smolny Institute, first home of the Bolshevik government; Finland Station, where Lenin arrived in a sealed boxcar to lead the revolution; Dr. Pavlov’s laboratory and other famous sites.

Four days can’t do justice to this amazing city. We’ll be back.

Then we traveled by overnight train to Moscow, where we spent a couple of days before the start of our private train journey.

As someone who experienced the Cold War decade of the 1950s while aged 14 to 24 and had a mental picture of a bleak, ugly, gray, austere, tasteless city dominated by a dungeon-like Kremlin (an image encouraged by western propaganda), I was surprised and delighted to find that Moscow is a lovely city with architecture as appealing as St. Petersburg’s in places, with beautiful rivers and parks and a Kremlin and Red Square that is not ugly and forbidding but stunningly beautiful. Even its red brick wall is pretty, and its Russian Orthodox cathedrals are colorful and glittering. (The “Red” in Red Square has nothing to do with communism. The term dates to the 16^th century when “red” was interchangable with beautiful.) I’m not naïve about the excesses, abuses and global intentions of the Evil Empire during the long Soviet era, but I must say I came away feeling a bit misled by the image of Moscow’s cityscape that had been foisted off on me in my youth.

You just can’t believe what you read in the papers, can you?

On July 3 we boarded our private train in Moscow for the Trans-Siberian segment of our adventure, via Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Novosibtrsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tayshet, Irkutsk, Lake Baikal and Ulan Ude several thousand miles across vast Russia.

From there the route dropped down to UlaanBaatar, the capital of Mongolia, arriving just in time for the Nadaam Festival, an ancient National Day pageant dating back to Ghengis Khan that draws Mongolians from across the country. I’ve always wanted to see Mongolia, ever since I was around 10 years old and listened enraptured to radio broadcasts with my grandfather as the famous adventurer/commentator Lowell Thomas described his travels in Mongolia and talked about this mysterious (to me) culture, the ancient Mongolian wars, the terrifying Ghengis Khan etc. I used to have dreams about those stories and visiting this exotic corner of the world.

The main purpose of going to Mongolia at this precise time was that the famous Nadaam Festival was on. It’s a sort of Mongolian Olympics featuring the country’s three top sports—wrestling, horseracing and archery. In a colorful opening pageant fierce-looking Mongolian riders with spears and rifles galloped around a track; dancers and acrobats performed, bands played traditional music. All very dramatic stuff. There were 120 wrestlers in an elimination round, all wrestling at once sumo style until a throwdown was achieved. At the archery arena, a dozen archers stood in a line and fired their arrows at another line of archers at the other end. They were the “scorers,” I was told, but they looked more like targets to me as they jumped this way and that to avoid being hit by the arrows. The president and prime minister of Mongolia took turns shooting arrows and almost lost a couple of constituents in the process.

Ulaan Bataar is very interesting and Mongolia’s history (gleaned at a very good National Museum) is fascinating. But it’s a bit hot at this time a year, and the city is a bit tired-looking and run down. Also very dusty and air-polluted. Not a place you would revisit every year, but I’m glad we got to see it. Our last day was spent in a cashmere-buying frenzy (the cashmere in Mongolia is good and very cheap)

On July 13 we flew on to Beijing, where we spent three days visiting such well-known sites as the Forbidden City (which is vast), the Heavenly Palace, Tianamen Square (also vast), the Great Wall (stunning), the Ming Tombs (deep, deep down), the Summer Palace etc. Since these places are better known (and probably visited) by you, I won’t go into the detail like I did with Siberia and Mongolia. But we were impressed by this ancient and amazing country. We were also stunned by Beijing’s size (13 million people) and its booming economy. It’s a huge, vibrant and modern city now. Bicycles have been largely displaced by high-performance cars, markets have been replaced with enormous Hong Kong-style shopping malls and houses have been knocked down to make room for vast complexes of skyscraper condominiums. It boggles the mind.

With our minds thus boggled, we headed home at last and were happily met at the airport by Lisa and a beaming Tilly, who gave her “Grandma” and “Papa” big hugs and asked, “Do you have some pressies?”

Of course, we did.

A brief diary of the train portion of our trip follows:

Diary:

July 3-Endless pine forests (“taiga,” they’re called here) as we head toward the Urals on the main Trans-Siberian rail line. The train is quite comfortable and the people generally interesting—a mixture of mostly Americans and Brits. Quite a few elderly widows who clip dividend coupons most of the year and travel a lot during the rest. There’s Mimi, who says she fled Miami Beach because of all the crime (“Honey, you can’t believe what they do down there”). She reminds me, in a nice way, of the very funny “Fruitcake Lady” on the Jay Leno Tonight Show on the Comedy Channel, who dispenses advice, and she’s delightful. John, the Cape May, NJ, retired probation officer, is a hoot, too. Generally this is a very nice group, about 60 or so in all, ranging in age from 29 to 84. Tonight the bar car rocked because Helmut Lotti, a Belgian pop star was aboard the train with a film crew making a “From Russia With Love” music video. Nobody here ever heard of Helmut Lotti but he assured us that “millions know me.” He sang old Beatles songs, but not particularly well, I thought.

July 4-On approach to Yekateringburg we pass an oblisk marking the end of Europe and the start of Asia. We pass another time zone (one of 11 in Russia). Lots of birch forests and old weathered farm houses with peasants in head scarves carrying buckets of water and the like. Very rustic. We disembark to visit Yekateringburg, where Tsar Nicholas II and the rest of his Romanov family were murdered by Bolsheviks in a farmhouse basement, and where U-2 spyplane pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960. We visit those places, have a look around and then reboard the train. Tonight in the dining car there’s an awkward moment as a very in-your-face American patriot and outspoken George W. Bush supporter insists that everyone sing “God Bless America.” Okay, I have no problem with that on Independence Day, even though I’m not particularly fond of that song because it seems to suggest that America alone is God’s country. But our Bushie cheerleader agressively insists that everybody (including the increasingly uncomfortable non-Americans aboard) sing THREE more jingoistic songs of U.S. nationalism, which seems a bit excesive considering a majority of those on the train are not Americans. Finally I try to internationalize the evening a bit by suggesting we all sing “Waltzing Matilda,” and Aussies Ray and Ronda from New South Wales heartily chime in and soon the whole car is singing this famous Aussie ballad, while superpatriot seems to be glowering at me like I’m some kind of commie traitor. (A few days later it seems clear what he thinks of The Washington Post and other leftist rags when a copy of the Rev. Moon’s reactionary Washington Times is discretely left in my sleeping car). I ignore it.

July 5- We roll into Novosibirsk pop. 1.4 million), a Stalin-era purpose-built city with 40 technical universities and lots of heavy industry. The River Ob is here—Russia’s largest. Also a nice opera house, an interesting market, many 100-year-old log houses. We reboard the train. I continue to send and receive text messages from Lisa on my cellphone, which by some miracle works in Siberia. Also we receive an email via the train’s onboard computer from Lisa. This train has everything: a great shower car next to our sleeper, with half a dozen huge shower compartments, two dining cars, a well-stocked bar car. Our new Aussie friend, Ray, turns out to be a very good jazz pianist who has played in some good Sydney bands and who, with his wife, Ronda, now teaches music to kids in rural New South Wales. He knocks out a few dozen jazz numbers, including my request, “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Desmond, another great Aussie bloke in our sleeping carriage, is an 84-year-old retired high-voltage power lineman who has made 72 major trips abroad in the last 40 years. I try to impress him by dropping a few names of exotic places I’ve seen, and he replies offhandedly, ‘Oh yeah, I was there on my overland trip from the Sudan to Cairo.” I surrender immediately. Des is a salt-of-the-earth guy, and we enjoyed him immensely. Two Aussies on the train, and both are great blokes. That’s tells you something about Australia.

July 6—High drama aboard the Trans-Siberian! We awake at 6:30 a.m. to find the train going backwards at high speed. Rumors are flying. Some of the Old Dears speculate that the engineer may have mistakenly gone onto the wrong track and has to race backward to avoid a headon collission. Others suggest sabotage on the line ahead. Meanwhile, no one has an explanation for why the showers have no water, but a conspiracy is suspected. Finally, after breakfast, comes a more mundane explanation from Megan of GW Travel: In order to take a detour through some very scenic country through the Sayan Mountains we had to switch from 3,000-volt DC electric power to newer 25 Kvolt AC power in a push engine. At 9:30 a.m. we have the first of two Russian language classes and we learn a few words of this difficult language. We disembark for a walkabout in Abakan. Not a particularly inspiring place. Outside Abakan the scenery becomes beautiful with a glorious panorama of mountains, rivers and lakes. Hardly the bleak frozen tundra you expect in Siberia. Trainmaster Andrei Bobakov gives a lecture on cultural aspects of Russia in which he seems a bit nostalgic for the security of communist life. “We were very safe, no crime, no drugs…We have too much freedom now. The Soviet time was not so terrible,” he says. Understandable, as rampant crime, an uncontrollable Mafia, economic stagnation and poverty in many places are real problems here. But Russia is beginning to deal with some of its problems one at a time, I think.

July 7—The steppe is vast, much like Montana and the other Great Plains states in the U.S. Russia has the world’s largest network of electrified railways, we learn as Peter from GW Travel gives a lecture on the Trans-Siberian (5,772 miles long) which was built with the help of slave labor from the gulag. At lunch we meet the Roller Coaster Lady, who travels the world seeking roller coasters to ride and then enters them into her “life list” of roller coasters much like birdwatchers list birds they see. She says she stopped counting at 400 roller coasters and began to lose interest until she thought of the idea of taking along her No. 1 Teddy Bear (she collects Teddies) and starting a life list for him. She’s been fascinated by roller coasters since 1978 and belongs to a national (U.S.) roller coaster enthusiasts club. I test her by asking her about the Playland Roller Coaster at Rye Beach, N.Y., which I regularly rode as a youngster. Yes, it’s on her life list, of course, and she recites its dimensions. She’s had four instances of broken ribs and a broken wrist on roller coasters. Like I said, there are some interesting people on this train. We stop in Irkutsk and visit the restored Prince Serge Volkonsky house. He was one of the 1825 “Decemberist” leaders of an uprising by noblemen and military officers against the tsar in St. Petersburg and he was exiled to Siberia for it. His wife, Princess Maria, bravely followed him into exile and they built an elegant timber house which became a social and intellectual hub in this faraway land. The home is now a museum and we get not only a private showing, but a special performance by several excellent Siberian concert pianists, violinists and opera singers. This was an absolutely enchanting performance by candlelight in the princess’ drawing room and using her priceless Lichtenthal piano. We all toasted one another with Russian champagne.

July 8-We awake to see beautiful Lake Baikal out the window—395 miles long and 1 mile deep. It holds one-fifth of the world’s fresh water supply. It rains all day and a planned barbecue on the lakeshore is canceled, but we tour some early settlement reconstructions and other historical sites. The train runs along the shore of the lake and the views are completely unspoiled and stunningly beautiful. I put this at the top of my list of the world’s most beautiful freshwater lakes.

July 9- We stop in Ulan Ude and it’s raining again. Ulan Ude has a decidenly Mongolian flavor, unerlining the incredible ethnic diversity of Russia. We visit a Buddhist monastery, have a lunch that includes yet more folkdancing and singing performances (this is a regular feature of this tour). Then we visit the Old Believers Village, a restored settlement of breakaway Russian Orthodox fundamentalist who in the 16^th Century were exiled first to Poland and then to Siberia.

July 10—Our train rolls on to the Russia-Mongolia border, where we spend several hours being processed aboard the train by humorless immigration and customs officers. The contryside here is very green, gently rolling, and from our compartment we see countless nomadic settlements with lots of camels and horses and people cooking meals in their gers. Soon the outskirts of UlaanBataar appear, and before long we are in this colorful Mongolian capital for a very unusual five-day stay before embarking by plane for Beijing and a completely different kind of experience.

Here are just a few of the 300 digital photos we took during our great train adventure: