Trans-Siberian Railway (Part 5: Life on the Rails)
We’ve spent a good deal of time experiencing the Russian train system, so we thought it might be interesting to cover what it’s really like travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Our route was the ‘traditional’ one, the 9,288km stretch from Moscow to Vladivostok, though there are others that run through Mongolia and China to Beijing. There’s no one train that plies the route (no such thing as a Trans-Siberian Express), but a variety of smaller trains that stop everywhere, luxury palaces-on-wheels that cost tens of thousands of pounds and don’t stop anywhere, and standard long-distance trains that most Russian use and on which we were keen to travel.
Pretty much all Russian trains nowadays are electric affairs, kitted out in a light grey and red highlights motif, much like my bedroom back in the 1980’s. Nothing flash or glamorous about them in the main. All based on functionality & utilitarianism, but that’s what this is all about. It’s not a ‘tourist playground’ for the likes of us, it’s a very much used working entity and an economic lifeline connecting East and West.
In total our journey took 6 days, 11 hours and 55 minutes (nearly 156 hours or 9,355 minutes!!) with the longest stretch from Ulan-Ude to Vladivostok taking 2 days, 21 hours and 41 minutes. Makes your commute to work look puny by comparison does it not? Strangely though, you have no real concept of the vast distance you’re travelling. The scenery, though gorgeous, is largely unchanging so is no useful guide. At times it felt like we must have been on a big circular loop, with lots of trees outside. Hard to believe you’re travelling across almost a quarter of the circumference of the Earth….
If you might have had the idea that travelling and overnighting on trains was a romantic ideal, the reality soon disabuses you of that notion. Nights are often ‘endured’ as the train’s mechanical reverberations seem to amplify once the lights go out. No gentle, repetitive clickety-clacking to lull you asleep here. Loud cracks and bangs randomly shatter any peace, people routinely talk in loud voices at all times, snoring of others is an ever present annoyance and passengers embark and disembark at all times of the night. Provodoniks offer no concessions whatsoever to those sleeping and clatter around carriages seemingly without need to rest themselves. Bright lights stream in from platforms and the sudden pressure change from passing trains causes carriages to jerk violently and jolt you sideways. Without earplugs and eyemasks you’re doomed to frustration, awaiting the onset of exhaustion to claim any sleep whatsoever. It’s no different here of course to anywhere else on overnight trains and we’ve learned to cope as best we can. Sleep deprivation is always the outcome – it’s just the severity that varies – though to be fair it’s a much easier time in First class as the lack of others makes sleep that bit more viable.
There’s a world of difference between the classes of travel here. Plazkart, or Third class, is much the same as we’d experienced in Kazakhstan on our 24 hour journey to Karaganda. Top bunks restricted to coffin-like spaces, a complete lack of privacy, no room in which to swing the tiniest of cats, the pleasure of brushing past bare smelly feet poking from thin sheets (occasionally more intimate parts) as you stagger through body-lined carriage corridors. Bags, baggage, bedding and backsides strewn around as if a benign bomb had gone off.
Kupe, or Second class is better, naturally, but a full compartment is still not exactly private. As in Third, beds have to be made-up in the rocking, rolling motion of the train, but at least there’s room for luggage and for sitting upright on top bunks. We had one four-berth compartment to ourselves for a whole day after the sullen bloke who overnighted with us slunk off at 6 in the morning, but otherwise it was a matter of delicately dancing around each other in a bid to maintain a tacit living arrangement. The livery here was still standard utilitarian grey and red, but at least in this class you’re provided with a ‘hygiene-kit’ – a plastic bag with toothbrush, eye-mask, ear plugs, slippers and a large folding comb.
The jump up to Spalny Vagon class, or First, is like moving from Mablethorpe to Mayfair. Here wood panelling and the luxury of a padded velvet swoosh seat back (coloured deep crimson, royal blue or taupe) are the order of the day. Beds are thick and comfortable with crisp linen sheets, plump pillows (two!), duvets and patterned bedspreads all pre-made-up for your convenience. Mirrors on every wall bounce light around the compartment and damask linen table cloths cover the wooden centre table. Cleaners come round and vacuum the rug between the beds twice a day. Tied-back curtains at the window and subtle side-lighting complete the picture. Even the hygiene kit is better – in addition to the second class kit, you’re provided with a shoe-shine sponge (!) and, even better, thicker slippers…. Best of all is the sense of space in your completely private world. It feels airy and light and turns the journey into a pleasure worth doing for the joy of it, in direct contrast to Second or Third which feels merely like a point to point exercise, a matter of getting from A to B and putting up with the situation in the meantime. Being from Yorkshire I am, naturally, somewhat parsimonious, but I must admit it’s most definitely worth the extra spend for this kind of experience. Helen kept telling me I was glad to have upgraded to First, so it must be true.
Whilst we were glad to have tasted the full range of train travel experience here, we were generally surprised, unfortunately, at the lack of ‘comradery’ we thought we’d feel on board. We understood that the vodka-fuelled back-slapping, friendship-forming days of haze were long gone (more’s the pity in my opinion), but the obvious language barrier – pretty much nobody speaks English unless they’re less than 20, my Russian is poor, Helen’s is non-existent – restricted communication to smiles and hand gestures at best. Of course this is fine in most situations, but is somewhat limiting on 24 hour journeys. Equally we encountered no other tourists on board with whom to bond and swap experiences. Though we’re more than comfortable in our own company, we’ve not been anywhere where we’ve felt quite as isolated. Luckily that doesn’t bother us at all, we just lamented the fact that any meaningful social interaction was rare and fleeting.
A significant factor here was our suspicion that the trains were being used as a means to transport off-duty or injured military personnel back to their home-towns across the country. We saw many individuals with bandages or slings and several with missing limbs. Most of the passengers on the platforms at stops were single men. Clearly, those coming back from conflict are unlikely to want to indulge in meaningless chit-chat with the likes of us……
Life on board the railway can be peculiar. Time, and your appreciation of it, becomes somewhat warped. Eight hour journeys seem like nothing. You literally lose hours as you trundle through the countryside and seamlessly pass through time-zones, not even noting that the clocks have jumped forwards by one or sometimes two hours on a journey. Equally strange, there’s a sensation you sometimes get from long distance travel, where the journey itself becomes a comfort, a little bubble of existence, and the thought of leaving it, of having to break out of the inert state in which you’ve become comfortably immersed is not overly welcome. We experienced this kind of train torpor on several occasions but none so much as on our final leg, where our mini-world, our small gilded cage of a compartment, became rather difficult to leave.
Yet, as complete contradiction, you eagerly scan the train timetable hung on the carriage walls for stops of more than five minutes. “There’s a stop for 23 minutes at 12:30, and another one for 41 minutes at 20:05 – make a note so we can get off and enjoy a bit of fresh air”. Not that you can get very far in any event. Guide books suggest you can visit the squares outside most stations, do a bit of shopping, see some of the village or town. In reality you’re often simply stood between two trains on a platform with no other views than your fellow passengers and a provodnitsa making sure you don’t wander any further than her visual leash allows, before being unceremoniously ordered back on board well before the train actually leaves. Time for a quick cigarette if you smoke, a quick stretch of the legs, a browse of the goods on offer for sale (we only saw purveyors of hard bread and enormous fur hats in the 23 degree heat), then you’re off again….
The brain invents a myriad of coping mechanisms on trips of this length. Helen found that she started counting train carriages as they whizzed past our windows and estimating the minutes between the making of cups of tea, as well as immersing herself in reading or research. Staring at scenery becomes somewhat soporific too – sleep often took us by surprise and we woke up startled and worried at the time we’d simply ‘lost’, like a pair of nonagenarians on the nod…
We began to be amused by trivial things. Our train app translated station names into their English equivalent, for some reason. We laughed with a slightly hysterical air on arriving at ‘Coal’ or ‘Goat’ or the unfortunately straight ‘Curved’ station. Best of all was ‘Swamp’ where we got off and wandered the disappointingly dry platform. Sad is really not the word….
Food can be an issue too. We were determined not to give in to the ‘just get a pot noodle on the station’ kind of advice we’d been reading about, so made an effort to prepare good pasta meals for any journey that involved an evening and take fruit, muesli and yoghurt for breakfast, plus tea and coffee of course. We bought plastic cups, plates and food boxes and did as the Russians do – bring your own and don’t mind the smells everyone’s creating. We attempted to venture to the restaurant car once on our Vladivostok leg, only to be told that this train didn’t have one, even though it was the one that travels all the way from Moscow…..
The journey gets better, in our opinion, the further you travel from West to East. The initial industrial landscapes and larch-lined tracks through to Krasnoyarsk are largely replaced once you reach Lake Baikal, though the ubiquitous thin and bright silver birch trees with brilliant yellow foliage enlivened every view. Autumn is a wonderful time to travel here – we could see the colours maturing into ever deeper shades of russet red, orange and gold over our month-long progression to the East. From Irkutsk, the tracks follow the lake for many miles and the views are magnificent, particularly for us as we saw the abrupt change of weather from the muted grey of the industrial heartland to cloudless blue for days on end. From Chita, you follow the Ingoda and Shilka rivers over hundreds of kilometers – snaking silver ribbons cut into the landscape, flashing sunlight from the waters. Every day on our last leg we awoke to sunshine that lasted all day followed by sunsets of vivid red. We’ve never seen so many trees. How many? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? From this perspective it seems the country is made pretty much entirely from trees….
(Written in Shanghai): Throughout our time in Russia, it was difficult to express and record our thoughts on what we’d seen and heard, and, like our time in Afghanistan, we’re still a little ‘conflicted ‘ about it. Frustratingly, we had to avoid mentioning anything that might have jeopardised our time in the country (and indeed that of any Westerners who might care to follow us.), knowing that online commentary can get you into serious trouble. Outside of Moscow we started to see much more in the way of propaganda around the current conflict, including some bold and frankly offensive messaging. Many businesses – shops, supermarkets, buses etc, proudly displayed military symbols, the letters ‘Z’, ‘V’ and images of black and tan ribbons. Even the trains we travelled in had brochures from which you could select and buy military themed memorabilia. But it was equally difficult to see despondent, injured personnel returning from front lines – kids really, who probably had little choice in their participation. Billboards offering money to join up were commonplace in other towns and cities. As we progressed West to East we saw the army join up reward seemingly increase from 3 million to 4 million Roubles….
Yet, with one obvious exception, we did not feel anti-Western sentiment towards us and 95% of the time we were welcomed as friends. In all honesty, and in the round, we really enjoyed our time in the country and felt that in a miniscule way, our encounters with ordinary Russians were reaffirming our belief that people are basically decent individuals who seek to avoid conflict and are not the demons portrayed by their respective governments, nor support their actions. Is that willfully naive, or seeking self-justification of our time there? Maybe, who knows….
Ultimately, we still wanted to make the effort to travel the length of the world’s longest railway, despite the politically volatile environment, despite being on our own and without any safety net because we considered the pros of doing so outweighed the cons. We’re proud we’ve negotiated a tricky destination and still come out smiling, though it’s felt like a pretty unique experience in pretty unique circumstances. Hopefully our peers will understand that. In other words, we decided not to avoid the moral banana-skin of Russia – we rather jumped on it and coolly slid our way across the country…..
Simon (3rd October 2025)
Would you like a train journey when you come home? Glad you enjoyed the experience though. It did bring back your memory of your bedroom of grey & red that made me smile. You both look well in these photos. On to the next adventure. Take care love mum. XX
Hi, always an interesting read but this one was exceptional. I loved the picture of Helen with what I assume is your luggage. I wondered what you two were travelling with and now I’ve seen it….you must enjoy times without this lot on your back!
What a fantastic immersive write up Simon. Glad you and Helen are having a great time. Take care.
Cheers Paul – most appreciated. Lovely to hear from you & hope you’re well
Also what a word….’ parsimonious’
Had to google it 😆
Ha ha – my pretentious way of saying tight as a gnat’s chuff….
So interesting, thanks for this train themed post, just incredible when you lay it all out like that. Brill to see the insides of the trains too! You both look and sound really happy after this great adventure.
Thanks Angela. We’re still chipper about the whole thing to be honest, though it can get a little ‘full-on’ at times!